(Eagle News) — The 22-member Consultative Committee (ConCom) which was tasked by President Rodrigo Duterte to review the Constitution unanimously approved on Tuesday, July 3, in an en banc session, the draft of the proposed charter that will allow a shift to federal-presidential form of government.
The final draft will be submitted on July 9 to the President, in time for his State of the Nation Address on July 23.
The Consultative Committee is headed by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno.
All of the 22 member committee signed the draft federal Constitution which contained 21 articles, which is more than the articles of the 1987 Constitution that presently has 18 articles.
The voting was done four months since Concom officially convened on February 19, 2018.
Each member took their turn in signing the draft federal Constitution. The first to sign was the lone female member of the committee, lawyer Susan Ubalde-Ordinario, while the rest of the members were called to sign in alphabetical order.
Puno said that the federal constitution will give more power to the regions of the country.
“The essence of federalism is non-concentration of power,” he said during the committee’s first National Forum and Public Consultation on the draft federal presidential constitution on June 21.
“Our regions deserve more than trickles of power. Our regions deserve to govern themselves, because they can govern themselves. This can only be done through federalism,” he said then.
In the first National Forum and Public Consultation revisiting the 1987 Constitution, Puno explained the contents of the proposed constitution that pushes “radical changes” in the Constitution to allow for a federal-presidential form of government where both the President and the Vice-President will come from one political party, among other things.
The President and the Vice-President will also have no term extensions, he added.
Under the transition period for the proposed Constitution, “there will be no term extension for the President and the Vice-president.”
“We specifically provided that the term of the president and the vice-president which shall end on June 30, 2022, shall not be extended. And we set the first national, regional, and local elections under the new constitution to be held without postponement on the second Monday of May 2022,” Puno said.
