House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/JOAN BONDOC
House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman on Saturday said the agreement among congressional leaders to use the legislative process to amend the Constitution was “infirm” and unconstitutional.
Lagman said amendments by legislation, or through a proposed variation of a bicameral constituent assembly, were not authorized by the Constitution.
“What the Constitution clearly provides for, no one must be allowed to alter,” he said.
The leadership of the Senate and the House of Representatives announced on Friday that they had agreed in principle to adopt a bicameral constituent assembly as the mode for amending certain economic provisions of the Constitution. The proposal, pushed by Senator Franklin Drilon, was to have both chambers vote separately on bills promoting Charter change (Cha-cha).
But Lagman said the constitutionality of a “legislative variation” for the convening of a bicameral constituent assembly must first be assured, amid calls from foreign investors to liberalize the economic provisions of the Charter.
Lagman also said the current economic provisions in the Constitution were meant to protect Filipino citizens and safeguard the national patrimony.
The congressional procedure of enacting a law, wherein a bill is initiated and approved separately by each chamber and differing provisions are reconciled in a bicameral conference committee, cannot be made to apply to a constituent assembly, said Lagman.
By tradition and experience, a constituent assembly, which is one of the only three modes of conducting Charter change, has its own nature, processes and objectives which are vastly different from the legislative functions of Congress, Lagman said.
Other modes for change
The other two modes are a constitutional convention and a people’s initiative.
As far back as Nov. 9, 1967, he said, the Supreme Court (Gonzales v Comelec) made an unequivocal distinction between the legislative authority exercised by the Congress and the constituent power discharged by a constituent assembly.
The High Court ruled that: “Indeed, the power to amend the Constitution or to propose amendments thereto is not included in the general grant of legislative powers to Congress … hence, when exercising the same, it is said that senators and members of the House of Representative act, not as members of Congress, but as component elements of a constituent assembly.”
“Representatives and senators must not be precipitate in adopting a variation of the constituent assembly to propose amendments to the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution which innovation may be a mongrel bereft of pedigree under the fundamental law,” Lagman said.
Cannot be altered
With respect to the voting procedure in the constituent assembly, Lagman said that Section 1 of Article XVIII is “indubitable and clear when it provides for a vote of three-fourths of all” the members of Congress constituting the constituent assembly.
The three-fourth vote requirement cannot be altered except by a constitutional amendment, Lagman said.
“This provision is not subject to congressional variation or innovation,” he said.
Bayan Muna party-list Representatives Teodoro Casiño and Neri Javier Colmenares also vowed to block the proposed bicameral constituent assembly and the move to amend the Charter before the Supreme Court.
No pressing need
In a joint statement, the two said there was no pressing need to amend the Charter and neither was there a strong clamor from the people to change some of its provisions.
“The Constitution is not the problem why the Filipino people are poor. The problem is in fact the foreign stranglehold on the Philippine economy which stunts domestic industries and destroys agriculture, kills jobs and worsens inequitable wealth and income,” they said.
Colmenares suspected that the proposal to amend the Charter had come from the American and European chambers of commerce as well as big foreign banks and corporations that want further control of the economy.
He said the Constitution must be differentiated, in terms of treatment and procedure for its amendment or revision, simply because it is the organic law of the Philippines from which all other laws and actions of the state must take their validity.
Thus, the procedure for amending it is subjected to stricter and more rigid process. Amending it like a mere law is contrary to the nature of our Constitution, he said.
Colmenares said that amending the Constitution just like passing a law was dangerous.
“If leaders of both houses of Congress would insist on this line of another divisive and misguided plan to change the Constitution then we may have to block it in the Supreme Court,” he added.