Senate promises to treat all bills equally

Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III

Senators have agreed to treat all measures pending before the chamber equally in the next two months and avoid letting controversial measures “eat up” their time.

A consensus was reached during a caucus attended by 15 senators in Makati Wednesday night, Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said in a text message to reporters on Thursday.

“We will strategize use of time this January to March session. We will identify non-controversial measures which can be processed alongside controversial ones,” Pimentel III said.

“We won’t let controversial ones eat up all our time that we forget processing pet or priority bills which are non-controversial. With time management technics, we believe we can do it. Process controversial ones while passing non-controversial ones,” the Senate leader added.

He said no details were discussed during the caucus but those who attended it were supportive of bills on free tuition in state universities and colleges, free irrigation, universal health insurance coverage and nutritious meals in public primary schools

Senate Majority Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto III said senators were asked to submit bills that they wanted to be approved in the next two months.

Congress took a break on December 14 and will resume on Monday, January 16.

Senator Joel Villanueva, who attended the caucus, said among the measures that they took up were the proposed end to labor contractualization or endo, the restoration of the death penalty, and tax reforms, among others.

“We will continue to tackle all these priority measures like endo, tax reforms, death penalty, Cha-cha (Charter Change) et al but we should also be aware that there are some non-controversial measures that we can easily approve like free tuition, national feeding program, etc,” Villanueva said in a separate text message. CBB/rga