THE House Committee on Constitutional Amendments on Thursday abandoned its planned approval of the proposed Charter change (Cha-cha) to allow lawmakers more time to study the proposals.
In an interview, Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said the panel has decided to give each member and ex-officio member a chance to comment on the new resolution, which will include the recommendations of Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on Constitutional Reform.
On Tuesday, Rodriguez had announced that his committee will approve the proposed Charter change by Wednesday.
“We’re giving each member and ex-officio member [a chance] to comment because as we have said, these are new proposals coming from government itself—the interagency task force on federalism [IATF] and the constitutional reform [commission]. This is now a government proposal from the Executive itself,” he explained.
“As I see it, we are still on page 4 and so we have about more than 20 pages and so it may not be able to vote [by Wednesday]. Otherwise, if we rush it, there will be the same problem. There’ll be questions from members. There’ll be questions from the media. We will keep this really a full discussion of every proposal of IATF,” he said.
Rodriguez said the committee has to study these proposals because “after all, the DILG has gone into 62 provinces to be able to come out with this proposal which came from consultation.”
The committee has so far tackled the territory and anti-turncoatism provisions. “Now we go to anti-dynasty, terms of office, then we go to the regional election of senators, and then the mandanas ruling increasing the share of our local governments,” he added.
Among other proposals of the administration’s Cha-cha task force are provisions against political dynasties and turncoats, creation of regional authorities, allocation of a larger share of national revenues for local government units, and state subsidy for political parties.
Interior Secretary Eduardo Año chairs the task force, with Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra as its vice chairman. It is composed of nine agencies.
Rodriguez said the committee will again try to vote on the resolution after deliberating on the whole proposal.
“So we see here that we could not rush this,” he said, noting the flak they got when they held an Executive session. “So this one will be open now.”