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THE
chairman of the House Committee on Suffrage and
Electoral Reforms branded as ignorant, improper and
unconstitutional the negative reactions on the bill
seeking a snap presidential election “to put a closure
on the issue of legitimacy of President Arroyo and
allegations of misgovernance.”
In a
privileged speech, PDP-Laban Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. of
Makati City said that to declare a legislative proposal
dead in the water with no hope of passage or even
further consideration is “ignorant, improper and
unconstitutional.”
“That
outright declaration of denial is what imparts to this
humble appeal the character of the highest
constitutional privilege . . . .Who is to say what idea
is dead in the water? Who is the judge of worth other
than the entire House?” Locsin asked.
“Do we
have fortune-tellers here who can predict how the House
will react after the merits of the measure are fully
revealed? Or are these people suggesting that they can
dictate the reaction of the House? Dictate? How
presumptuous. One bill is as good as another until it’s
heard,” he added.
Locsin
was reacting to the negative remarks issued by some
Executive officials and some members of the House on the
approval by his committee on Monday of House Bill 3589,
sponsored by Bagong Lakas ng Nueva Ecija (Balane) Rep.
Eduardo Nonato Joson.
The
House committee endorsed for plenary deliberations a
version of the bill that makes it possible for a virtual
referendum to be held on a president’s fitness to remain
in office if that president has served at least three
years of his or her term.
The
committee version may apply both to President Arroyo and
her successors.
Locsin
said Joson’s bill is just an idea, a brilliant one which
Locsin wished he had thought of first.
“Ideas
cannot be unconstitutional. Only official acts. To
declare an idea unconstitutional and, worse, undeserving
of a hearing in its proper forum, to wit, the House, is
unconstitutional for a curtailment of free speech,
popular representation, free assembly and conscience.
Not laws nor the Constitution, certainly not Congress
nor any member, can search into man’s mind to censor his
thoughts. That power lies nowhere,” Locsin said.
He added
that Joson’s idea is not unconstitutional because it
precisely begs for constitutional amendment by one
interpretation, or none in the author’s own view.
Locsin
said that instead of ignorant comments from the
sidelines, the matter must be resolved by debate on the
floor.
He said
that although the incumbent President has less than two
years to go, the bill is not aimed at her only but at
her successors as well “who must not be allowed to coast
along in their venality or incompetence after the
country has suffered three years of the term.”
“At the
same time, no president, now and in the future, should
ever again be hostage to a Congress that threatens
impeachment whenever it touches the bottom of its pork
barrel. A good president need never fear impeachment
again by malicious partisans for he can answer the
challenge with a call to refresh his mandate in a
referendum. But this time, he or she will seek it from
the higher ground of the presidency,” Locsin said.
The
lawmaker said the self-proclaimed defenders of President
Arroyo condemn her by their show of “exaggerated
hostility to the Joson bill.”
“Why? Is
it possible to believe that this president can win a
referendum so close to the end of her term? On the
contrary, she will not even be challenged,” said Locsin,
adding the presidential aspirants have declared they
will not, as they are “husbanding their money” for the
2010 polls.
“Who
will spend P6 billion or P10 billion to win the
presidency for a year? That is not enough time to steal
back their investment,” he said.
“And who
will vote to change a president who has managed the
economy and the country with a strong and steady hand
through crises that would send a weaker man screaming
out of the room?” |
