Speaker Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte Jr. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—Despite the passage of the Reproductive Health Law, another potentially divisive legislative measure strongly opposed by the Catholic Church would not be a priority in the House of Representatives in the coming 16th Congress.
“It’s bound to be a divisive measure and it’s not going to be prioritized,” Speaker Feliciano Belmonte told the Inquirer in a text message on Tuesday.
Belmonte’s position was categorical compared to the relative optimism he expressed soon after the House passed the RH bill on third and final reading last December. Saying then he was in favor of the divorce bill, he told reporters he wanted his fellow congressmen to have the measure “at the back of our minds.”
“I want that to remain in the consciousness of congressmen so at some point, we can take it up again,” he said last December, admitting that there was no more time to take up the divorce bill at that time. Asked if the bill could pass muster in the 16th Congress, he said he still had no idea who would get elected to the House, “but I think so.”
Gabriela Representative Luzviminda Ilagan said on Tuesday she would again file the divorce bill “with a few enhancements” in the next Congress despite Belmonte’s misgivings.
“It may be divisive from the point of view of another sector, the Catholic Church,” she said in a phone interview. “But it may not be divisive if people would understand, if people would know where we’re coming from.”
Where Ilagan’s group was coming from was spelled out in the previous divorce bill’s explanatory note, which stated: “Reality tells us that there are many failed, unhappy marriages across all Filipino classes.”
“For a large number of women, the inequalities and violence in marriage negate its ideals as the embodiment of love, care and safety and erode the bases upon which a marriage is founded,” Ilagan and fellow Gabriela Representative Emerenciana De Jesus wrote in House Bill No. 1799.
An anti-thesis to the Gabriela bill in the 15th Congress was the one filed by Marikina Representative Marcelino Teodoro. It was called the “Anti-Divorce and Unlawful Dissolution of Marriage Act,” which sought a “guarantee that no legislation encouraging or facilitating the dissolution of marriage and recognizing divorce shall be passed.”
In the explanatory note, he said a divorce measure would “undermine the value of marriage by encouraging couples to put an end to their relationship instead of allowing them to reconcile immediately or fix the same over time.”
The Gabriela bill was stuck at the committee level where it was tackled “only in passing” during discussions on a related bill filed by Cagayan De Oro Representative Rufus Rodriguez. The Rodriguez bill sought to amend the Family Code and “harmonize” it with a Supreme Court ruling on “divorce obtained by the alien spouse in another country.”
“The Filipino spouse need not seek judicial recognition or enforcement of the foreign judicial decree of absolute divorce and its registration by the civil registrar shall be sufficient for the issuance of a marriage license,” read the amendment.
Asked about the divorce bill’s chances of hurdling the House, Ilagan said: “We should always be optimistic, but we should also be realistic.”