Gloria’s “final push” scrap May elections, Nov
The closer the time of reckoning (May 2007 elections), the more desperate Gloria Arroyo and her minions become.
Rejected twice by the Supreme Court for their fake People’s Initiative and unable to get majority of the senators to agree to a Constitutional Assembly to change the Constitution, Arroyo now wants to just change the Constitution through “congressional action”. What animal is that “congressional action” is,led lights, only Arroyo knows.
Here Malaya’s report:
BY REGINA BENGCO
A CAUCUS in Malaca?ang chaired by President Arroyo the other night agreed to scrap the May 11 elections and hold instead elections for parliament in November under the proposed shift to the parliamentary system.
Gabriel Claudio, presidential political adviser, said a “final draft” of the proposed charter amendments through congressional action will be ready by today.
Claudio said it will be “smooth sailing” at the House after the draft is approved by a general caucus of the chamber.
He said the administration expects that a referendum will be held before Feb. 12, the last day for the filing of certificates of candidacy for the Senate.
Monday night’s meeting was the second to be convened by the administration on charter change. The third and last was going on last night also in Malaca?ang.
Claudio said President Arroyo chaired the caucus but preferred to leave the details of Cha-cha to Congress.
Charter amendments through “,Replica Burberry;congressional action” is the preferred term for the latest Palace initiative because Constituent Assembly is widely understood to mean the Senate and the House sitting together.
Speaker Jose de Venecia is of the position that the House can propose amendments even without the participation of the Senate because of the constitutional provision which says Congress may introduce amendments by a three-fourths vote of “all its members.”
De Venecia places the three-fourths at 295, all House members if need be.
Claudio said holding of parliamentary elections in November will banish the “no-election scenario” fears.
“Walang ambush, booby traps, the purpose is mainly for the administration to put a reasonable gap between the two major electoral activities to come, to allow time for automation. We will be transparent. We will set the date of the election. Ito nga transparent to ensure that no surprises will be sprung on them. Ngayon pa lang it would provide political legal moral basis to (charter change),” he said.
He said a technical working group chaired by Rep. Constantino Jaraula (Cagayan de Oro) and made up of representatives from administration political parties will come out today with a “simplified document” containing the proposed shift to a unicameral parliamentary system.
He said the proposed amendment will define membership in the parliament. There will be three classes of members: those elected by district, those by region and those by party list.
He said he is hoping that the senators would participate once they see that the proposed amendment which will accommodate them as regionally elected members of parliament.
He said there are “back channel efforts” in order to “confront the objections or actions to be taken by the opposition.”
STRIPPED-DOWN VERSION
Sen. Ralph Recto said the “compact version” of the proposed amendments would not change the attempt of Cha-cha advocates to shift to a unicameral parliamentary form of government.
“Editing can probably squeeze the amendments into a compact document. But this won’t diminish the consequences of the changes sought,Wholesale scarves,” he added.
Recto reminded congressmen that the opposition of senators to the Con-ass “has never been editorial in nature, it’s more on the political thrust of the proposals, so the solution is not the crafting of a bantam version of the proposed amendments.”
Minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. denounced the supposed proposal for 36 regional members of Parliament “to bribe senators with positions in the proposed unicameral parliament (which unfortunately) will not save charter change from inevitable demise.”
CARROT AND STICK APPROACH
Pimentel assailed what he said was the mentality of De Venecia and his allies of dangling a carrot to persuade senators to drop their resistance to the convening of a Constituent Assembly where both chambers will vote jointly.
“The Senate will not stand for bribery. Speaker Jose de Venecia does not seem to get it through his head that offering benefits to the senators won’t get him anywhere,” he said.
Pimentel said that if Cha-cha advocates really want the cooperation of the Senate in pursuing constitutional reforms, they should give up their constitutionally flawed stand that the Senate and House should vote collectively, instead of separately, on the amendments.
He said the intransigent stand of the House that it can amend the Constitution by itself and ignore the Senate betrays the Cha-cha advocates’ determination to pursue a sinister agenda which is to perpetuate themselves in power.
Pimentel said if the House will pass a resolution on the convening of an assembly without Senate participation, the Senate will immediately go to the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule the scheme as unconstitutional.
He said it would look like the so-called administration’s Plan B for charter change will crash on the “boulevard of broken dreams.”
JDV MAIN OBSTACLE TO CHA-CHA
Sen. Joker Arroyo said De Venecia is the single biggest obstacle to the proposal to amend the Constitution.
“He can’t make up his mind. If he makes up his mind, and he doesn’t change this, perhaps we could go somewhere,” Sen. Arroyo said.
He said the Senate could not even act on the supposed two-page document containing the supposed amendments to the Constitution since it was not formally transmitted to the Senate.
“Unless, it’s formally transmitted to the Senate, there’s nothing that we can consider. The idea there is they meet in caucus then after that issue a press release, expecting that the Senate will react on the basis of a press release. That’s not the way of communicating with the Senate,” Sen. Arroyo said.
However, he said the Senate is duty-bound to act on a resolution to be passed by the House “if they communicate with us for concurrence on a resolution, in whatever form or whatever language.”
But because of time constraints, the Senate could not even take this up, he said.
“We can’t be bound by their delays, by their indolence. If they don’t want to work double time, and work hard, we can’t be at their beck and call,” he said. – With JP Lopez
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