Drilon: BBL must withstand judicial review

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said he has introduced several amendments to the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BLL), such as the removal of a provision that gives “reserved powers” to the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, so it can withstand judicial review.

Drilon said he expects that the BBL, once enacted into law, would be elevated to the Supreme Court.

“I want to make sure that the BBL that we will pass in Congress is 100 percent in conformity with the 1987 Constitution,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.

READ: BBL faces more hurdles in Senate

“All our amendments are designed to cleanse it of unconstitutional provisions so it can withstand judicial scrutiny. We cannot afford a repeat of what happened in the MOA-AD,” the senator added.

Drilon was referring to the Memorandum of Agreement on the Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), signed by the administration of President Gloria Arroyo and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2008. The said agreement, however, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

“It is imperative that we learn from the past and make sure that we avoid making the same deadly mistakes all over again,” he said, “We must do it right this time in order that peace and stability in Mindanao will finally be realized.”

READ: What Went Before: The proposed MOA-AD

Drilon said during the hours-long deliberations of the measure Tuesday that among his “substantial amendments” was the removal of “reserved powers” of the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region “given that the Constitution already provides for the residual powers of the National Government vis-a-vis autonomous regions.”

This provision, he said, would be among the contentious provisions when the Senate and House of Representatives pass their own versions and meet in the bicameral conference committee.

“We did away with nomenclatures, used no specific name and simply mirrored the wording of the Constitution, and gave powers to the Bangsamoro government in keeping with the constitutional provisions on local autonomy,” Drilon said.

He said he also successfully moved for the inclusion of the provision reiterating “that the Bangsamoro people are citizens of the Republic of the Philippines”— an amendment that he said is being opposed by the Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC).

But Drilon said his proposed amendment only reiterates the wordings of the Constitution on Philippine citizenship.

“This was introduced to prevent any misinterpretation that that there is a ‘Bangsamoro citizenship’, because we are all Filipinos and we are all citizens of the Philippines,” he stressed.

The senator said he also succeeded in removing the province of Palawan from the list of areas considered as historically part of Bangsamoro territory.

“The amendment was put on a vote following opposition from the sponsor and the BTC,” Drilon said. /ee

READ: BBL faces more hurdles in Senate