No guarantees on Moro law–Drilon

Senator Franklin Drilon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Given that Malacañang has yet to submit the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) to Congress, Senate President Franklin Drilon said on Saturday he could not commit to the passage of the law by yearend.

Drilon said that heeding President Benigno Aquino III’s appeal to Congress to approve the BBL by December made in his State of the Nation Address (Sona) would depend on how soon the executive branch could submit the draft law to the legislature.

“When will the administration be able to submit the draft?” Drilon asked in a phone interview last week.

“Suppose they submit it in December? Don’t insist that we pass it by December. In fairness to us, we haven’t seen what it looks like,” he said.

Drilon, who along with Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. had earlier boldly predicted the passage of the BBL by December, promised however to work on the draft law “double time.”

“I’ll wait for the receipt of the draft. But we will work on it, we will work on it double-time. We will give it the highest priority so we can pass it with enough time for ratification so that the new entity will be in place by July 1, 2016,” he said.

After some delay, Malacañang eyed its submission of the BBL to Congress after the President’s Sona last Monday. The BBL has undergone some revisions in the hands of the government negotiating panel and it has taken some effort by both sides to bring the agreement up to an acceptable level.

Last Friday, negotiators from the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front began a fresh round of talks to craft a mutually acceptable BBL that would carve out a new autonomous Bangsamoro region in the southern Philippines.

In mid-July, the two panels met in Kuala Lumpur for four days to thresh out the “grey zones.”

The signing of the peace agreement in March this year between the national government and the MILF came after 17 years of on-and-off negotiations between the two groups.

Sen. Francis Escudero agreed with Drilon that the Senate should not be pressured into meeting a deadline when the draft law had yet to be transmitted to Congress.

“It all depends on when it will be filed. It also depends on its content. Are there legal questions? Is it a no-harm, no-foul bill?” Escudero asked in a dwIZ radio interview.

Escudero said that the agreements forged by the government and the MILF were “political” in nature but crafting the BBL to make it compliant with the Constitution was a different matter, hence, the delay in its submission.

But like Drilon, Escudero said Congress could still pass it in time for its scheduled ratification next year.

“I don’t believe that we’re running out of time. There is always time. The only question is: Will we work on this overtime … what it only means is that we will work longer hours to legislate it, but there is always time to finish it,” he said.

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