(Eagle News) — Senate President Tito Sotto on Thursday, July 19, said he senses the Senate will oppose any term extension under a proposed federal Charter.
“I do not want to be speaking for everyone else but that is the sense that I am getting from the rest of the Senate,” he said, reacting to Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez’s proposal the 2019 elections be postponed to immediately give way to a shift to the federal system of government.
Sotto also dismissed Alvarez’s proposal a people’s initiative be held to amend the constitutional provision that requires that elections be held every three years if the Senate was not amenable to the postponement.
Sotto said that for a people’s initiative to take place, an enabling law was needed.
“In order for us to realize na magkakapeople’s initiative, we need an enabling law and review the inadequacies mentioned by the Supreme Court,” he said, referring to the SC decision that struck down a law passed in 1989 on the people’s initiative.
Apart from the people’s initiative, there are two modes of changing the Constitution–the constitutional assembly, which allows members of Congress to make the changes; and the constitutional convention, under which elected delegates are allowed to do the same.
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