Sotto: I sense Senate will oppose term extension

Senate President Vicente Sotto III said on Thursday that he senses his fellow senators will oppose any term extension under the proposed federal Charter.

“I do not want to be speaking for everyone else but that is the sense that I am getting from the rest of the Senate,” he said in a press conference.

“I have yet to hear a member of the Senate who agrees to that particular people’s initiative or other forms of extending the terms of officials,” Sotto added.

Sotto was commenting on the proposal of House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez to postpone the 2019 mid-term elections to speed up the shift to a federal form of government which is being pushed by the administration.

Alvarez also said that if the Senate will not agree to postpone the 2019 polls, citizens can make use of a people’s initiative to amend the constitutional provision that requires the conduct of an election every three years.

READ: Alvarez floats people’s initiative for poll postponement

Sotto, however, argued there is no law that enables a people’s initiative.

“We will have to pass an enabling law first,” he said.

The Senate President said there was a law passed in 1989 on the people’s initiative but was later struck down by the Supreme Court due to its “inadequacy.”  /muf