Senate minority ‘open’ to seek SC intervention on Cha-cha vote

The Senate minority is “open” to the possibility of going to the Supreme Court should Congress decide to vote jointly on Charter change (Cha-cha), Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said on Wednesday.

“We are open to it. Ultimately, it will have to be decided by the Supreme Court,” Drilon said in an interview over CNN Philippines.

The senator was responding to a question if he or the minority has plans of bringing before the high tribunal the manner of voting by Congress on Cha-cha.

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has openly expressed his opinion that the Senate and the House of Representatives should vote jointly on proposals to amend the 1987 Constitution.

But Drilon insisted that the two chambers should convene and vote separately on Cha-cha. Congress voting jointly, he said, would render the Senate “irrelevant.”

“Yes, if we vote jointly we become irrelevant. That is an unfortunate interpretation because if we change the name of a high school, in any place in this country, the Senate can veto by not acting on the proposal from the house,” he said.

“If the Senate’s vote is needed to change the name of a high school, I cannot imagine that the framers of the constitution contemplated of the situation where the senate’s vote is just equivalent to that of 290 or so congressmen in a joint voting. No senator will agree to this kind of interpretation,” he added.

Drilon said there was also nothing in the Constitution that says that the two chambers, in amending the Charter, must vote jointly.

“Show me a provision of the Constitution, which says that the two houses must convene physically together. The Constitution says that Congress, by three-fourths vote of all its members, may propose amendments to the Constitution,” he said.

“Congress has two chambers. Where does it say that we must convene jointly?” he further said.                        /kga