House opens hearing on controversial divorce bill

MANILA, Philippines—The House of Representatives on Wednesday opened an inquiry into a bill seeking to legalize divorce in the Philippines, but the chamber was promptly reminded by a Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) official that the Constitution prohibited this.

Jo Imbong, legal counsel of the CBCP, said divorce could not be a remedy to marriages that were not exactly made in heaven.

Imbong told the bill’s authors—Gabriela Representatives Luz Ilagan and Emerenciana de Jesus—that the Constitution protects the sanctity of marriage and of family which the proponents of divorce seek to destroy.

“How could it strengthen the family as you said when it breaks the family?” Imbong asked. “It tends to break the sacred vow to live in sickness and in health even before it is pronounced.”

The 1987 Constitution says that “the state recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution.”

The Charter adds that “marriage, as an inviolable social institution, is the foundation of the family and shall be protected by the state.”

Not happy-happy

Ilocos Norte Rep. Rodolfo Fariñas said the Constitution must first be amended in order to accommodate divorce.

The constitutional mandate, Fariñas pointed out, is that marriage must be “secured from desecration.”

“If there is violence against women, we have enough laws to deal with that. It’s not enough to say that you’re no longer happy because when you marry, you promise to live together for better or for worse,” Fariñas said.

He said life was not all about being “happy-happy.”

The hearing on the bill, originally filed in the 13th Congress, followed the approval on Saturday in a referendum in Roman Catholic Malta of divorce in the tiny Mediterranean country.

Although nonbinding, the result of the referendum is expected to result in the Maltese parliament enacting a law allowing divorce.

The Philippines is the only other country where divorce is banned.

Ilagan said the divorce bill was crafted based on experiences of married Filipino women, their lessons and insights.

She said the bill sought to introduce another remedy in the Family Code to broken marriages.

“This is uniquely Filipino and not modelled after the divorce system of other countries. We put safeguards so that it may not be used to destroy marriage and family as social institutions. These safeguards are the same as the safeguards for legal separation,” Ilagan stressed.

Grounds

Under the bill, couples who may apply for divorce include those who have been separated for five years and those already legally separated for two years.

Grounds include psychological incapacity, failure to comply with essential marital obligations and irreconcilable differences.

The move to introduce divorce came amid a heated plenary debate on a reproductive health (RH) bill that has strained relations between Malacañang and the powerful Catholic Church hierarchy.

In a caucus on Tuesday afternoon, Ifugao Rep. Teddy Baguilat, Jr. said that pro-RH representatives were worried that starting the debate on divorce now would unduly divide the attention of Congress.

Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, main author of the RH bill, said the House was likely to pass the RH bill before October when Congress would start its deliberations on the 2012 budget.

Congress has only three session days left before it goes on recess, and Lagman hopes to wrap up the RH discussions during the period.