Forme Ako Bicol Rep. Alfredo Garbin Jr. (Photo from the Facebook account of Ako Bicol)
MANILA, Philippines — Former Ako Bicol party-list Rep. Alfredo Garbin Jr. accused the Senate on Tuesday of taking credit for initiating the call for amendments to the Constitution.
According to Garbin, who was chair of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments, the House members knew all along who was leading the initiative for a charter change.
He added that the Senate made its own charter change move after Senate President Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri and other leaders of the chamber had a meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
READ: Senate to review proposal to amend Constitution’s economic provisions
READ: Villanueva: Cha-cha doesn’t resolve all of PH problems
READ: New initiative push: Perilous, dangerous
Garbin likened the senators to students being called by the principal (Marcos) to do their homework.
“The statement came out, and then the Senate said: ‘Okay, we will now do our homework,” Garbin said in Filipino in a statement.
“But it had a negative tone because they portrayed themselves as the ones taking the lead — whereas, they should have taken the lead for the longest time. It’s long been the consensus of Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, that the economic amendments to our Constitution should have been addressed a long time ago.”
Garbin said that it was the House that started calls for amending economic provisions of the Constitution.
“It should be emphasized that the House of Representatives is really taking the lead in this,” he said.
It was even in the previous 18th Congress that the House passed Resolution of Both Houses No.2, which proposed economic amendments to the Constitution, he added.
“We already transmitted it to the Senate. Nothing happened. They just sat on it. Now, in the 19th Congress, it’s the same story. Despite our efforts of calling for a Constitutional Convention to address the economic amendments to our Constitution, they [the senators] still just sat on it,” he said.
All this developed after Zubiri on Monday filed Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No.6, recommending certain economic provisions within the Constitution.