Arroyo agrees to separate voting by two chambers on charter change

By Charmaine A. Tadalan
HOUSE Speaker Gloria M. Arroyo has agreed to separate voting when the two chambers of Congress convene into a Constituent Assembly to amend the 1987 Constitution.
“We want to move forward, to be realistic. Better to move forward and achieve something rather than be stubborn and achieve nothing,” Ms. Arroyo said in an ambush interview Wednesday.
“We will work with the Senate. We are going to constitute a committee on Constitutional Amendments,” she added.
A resolution convening the Senate and the House of Representatives (HoR) as a Constituent Assembly was adopted by the House as early as January 2018.
For his part, opposition Senator Francis N. Pangilinan, who heads the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes, said in a phone message: “Looking at the voting record of the Supreme Court in the last two years, a ruling in favor of Con-Ass voting jointly is not far-fetched.”
He added: “The SC already rendered the Senate inutile and inconsequential in removing (the) Chief Justice through impeachment. What will prevent it from doing it yet again in the constitutionally mandated process of amending the Charter?”
Senator Aquilino Martin L. Pimentel III, on the other hand, welcomed Ms. Arroyo’s remarks. “That helps because at least that should settle the issue on how the vote is taken and counted; Hence we can now focus on the substance of federalism,” he said.