Drilon vows Senate OK of BBL

The senate will pass the Basic Law of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (BLBAR) despite Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s recent pronouncement that the measure was dead in Congress, Senate President Franklin Drilon said on Thursday.

“The BLBAR is not yet dead,” Drilon said at the Kapihan sa Senado forum, the day after Marcos said that Congress” just ran out of time” to pass the measure.

READ: BBL is dead, says Bongbong Marcos

Marcos on Wednesday said while the Senate continued to deliberate on the BLBAR bill, the House was not doing its part since there were strong objections to the measure in the lower chamber which could not muster a quorum.

Marcos, chair of the local government committee, said the Senate could not approve the measure—called a bill of local application—until the House approved it first.

Congress adjourned last Wednesday for a monthlong break, without passing the BLBAR.

On Thursday, Drilon conceded the Senate was taking a “conservative” line and would consider the bill as being of local application.

He said legislative history showed the Senate “would wait for approval of the House version as far as organic laws are concerned,” in the way Congress passed the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) law, among others.

“What we intend to do is debate it in the chamber… we will process it to the point probably of passage on second reading, then await House approval and pass it on third reading,” Drilon said of the measure that has been greatly revised from the original version hammered out by government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) peace panels.

The original Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) has undergone drastic revision in Marcos’ committee. In the House of Representatives, it is mired in interpellation compounded by a daily lack of quorum.

The measure would seal the peace deal between the national government and the MILF and lead to the creation of a new bigger region to replace the ARMM.

Drilon said there was “no serious objection” to the measure in the Senate where interpellation is close to wrapping up. He said there were no quorum problems in the Senate.