Belmonte changes mind, divorce law not priority

The reproductive health law may have successfully hurdled the congressional wringer despite stubborn opposition from the Catholic Church, but another potentially divisive measure also opposed by the Church may not be as lucky in the incoming 16th Congress.

“It’s bound to be a divisive measure and it’s not going to be prioritized,” Speaker Feliciano Belmonte said Tuesday.

Belmonte’s lack of enthusiasm for the divorce bill was in stark contrast to the optimism he expressed soon after the House passed the RH bill last December. At the time, he said he was in favor of the divorce bill and wanted his fellow congressmen to have the measure “at the back of our minds.”

“I want that to remain in the consciousness of the congressmen so that, at some point, we could take it up again,” he had said then.

He had also said he believed the bill would pass the 16th Congress.

Despite Belmonte’s apparent change of heart, party-list Rep. Luzviminda Ilagan (Gabriela) on Tuesday said she would file the divorce bill again in the next Congress, “with a few enhancements.”

“It may be divisive from the point of view of another sector, the Catholic Church, but it may not be divisive if the people understood, if people knew where we were coming from,” she said in a phone interview.

In the explanatory note to the divorce bill that she had filed, Ilagan pointed out that “there are many failed, unhappy marriages across all Filipino classes.”

An antithesis to the Gabriela bill was the one filed by Marikina Rep. Marcelino Teodoro. His  proposed “Anti-Divorce and Unlawful Dissolution of Marriage Act” seeks a “guarantee that no legislation encouraging or facilitating the dissolution of marriage and recognizing divorce shall be passed.”

In the explanatory note, Teodoro said divorce would “undermine the value of marriage by encouraging couples to put an end to their relationship instead of allowing them to reconcile immediately or fix the same over time.”

The Gabriela bill remains stuck at the committee level where it was tackled “only in passing” during discussions on a related bill filed by Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez.

The Rodriguez bill sought to amend the Family Code and “harmonize” it with a Supreme Court ruling on “divorce obtained by the alien spouse in another country.”