An opposition legislator claimed on Tuesday that the newly found consensus in both chambers of Congress about the campaign to liberalize the 1987 Constitution’s economic sections amounted to declaring a “war” on the Charter.
Following the Senate’s unprecedented reversal on the proposed modification to the Charter, which Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said was done at the president’s request, Representative Edcel Lagman of the Albay, First District, declared that there are now two fronts in the “war” on the Constitution.
This is in response to Zubiri’s filing of Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No. 6, which restricts potential constitutional amendments to only the economic clauses limiting foreign ownership of public utilities, education, and other public services.
In response to claims that House members have been gathering signatures for a people’s initiative campaign to modify the Charter through a combined voting system that will benefit the lower house over the Senate, which consists of 24 members, Zubiri’s motion was introduced. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., according to the Senate President, has closed this down and directed the Senate to take the initiative in changing the Charter.
Even though parliamentarians vote separately through a Constituent Assembly, Lagman claimed that these “apparently separate efforts” from the House and the Senate will ultimately approve the easing of limits on foreign ownership in the nation.
The congressman continued, “When sensitive enterprises like public service, education, media, and advertisement are open to alien control and domination, the victim will be the nation’s patrimony.”
Congress is now on one Chacha track.
Similar to earlier Congresses, attempts to amend the 1987 Constitution frequently fail when they get to the Senate because senators were unwilling to make changes to the fundamental text, citing concerns about political changes or other legislative priorities.
A bill advocating for a constitutional convention to change the Constitution was passed by the House with overwhelming support in 2023. Sen. Robinhood Padilla was the only member of the upper house to genuinely endorse the measure.
According to the Senate president, Zubiri and two other senators filed RBH 6 on Monday in an effort to “avert a constitutional crisis” in light of the House’s ongoing drive to modify the Constitution.
A portion of the Constitution that only permits foreigners to own up to 40% of public utilities is proposed to be amended. In the meanwhile, by restricting foreign ownership limitations to basic educational institutions, the proposal also seeks to open up foreign ownership of higher education institutions.
With the Senate’s recent embrace of a modification to the Charter, House Majority Leader Manuel Dalipe declared that the Senate had “finally seen the light” and praised the “alignment of the Senate and the House in amending the Constitution.”
Speaker of the House Martin Romualdez also stated on Tuesday that the Senate’s actions to loosen the Charter’s economic limits are a “welcome development for our trade partners” and evidence that the legislators “walk the talk.”
But Lagman denounced the latest drive for changing the Charter as being “out of step” with the nation’s ongoing economic woes, as well as other concerns about education, food security, agriculture, and China’s ongoing aggression in the West Philippine Sea, to name a few.
Lagman continued, “The efforts to amend the Charter will confuse and divide the people and take the focus away from the actual issues that are not related to the Constitution.”
Christian Monsod, a lawyer and framer of the Charter, issued a warning in 2023 against attempts to undo the economic constraints imposed by the document. The reason for this was that the drafters of the Constitution purposefully limited the impact of foreign nations on the Philippine economy, allowing Filipinos to determine their own “national destiny” free from outside intervention.
Professors of political science at the University of the Philippines Diliman have also previously attacked the lower house’s efforts to change the Constitution, arguing that in order to draw in more foreign investment, infrastructure development should take precedence over modifications to the country’s foreign ownership laws.
