CATBALOGAN, Samar
– Officials of the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP)
saw no impediment to the charter amendment they advocated.
Leyte Board Member
Carlo Loreto, who was one of the guests in the recent Charter Change
Advocacy Forum with local government officials in
Samar, allayed public fears that the move to amend the
constitution through people’s initiative might not push through since
he and other members of ULAP saw no legal problem that can bar its
implementation.
Loreto stressed that
the charter change ULAP advocated focused on the shift of the
government structure from the present Presidential-Bicameral to
Parliamentary-Unicameral which affects only one provision of the
Constitution.
This, he said, is the
assurance that this move will not be barred by the Constitution,
contrary to what the critics believed. He informed that the
Constitution granted people’s initiative as a mode of amendment
provided that the change is confined to one provision only.
The only fear that
ULAP is facing is the issue on the lack of enabling mechanism to the
people’s initiative as a mode of amending the Charter which was the
Supreme Court ruling to resolve the issue raised by PIRMA petitioners
in 1998.
However, Albay Board
Member Philip Berces expressed confidence that there is a chance that
the said ruling will be reversed since two of the Supreme Court
justices who aired dissenting opinion regarding the issue are still
around.
Berces named the
present Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban (who was then an Associate
Justice) and Associate Justice Reynato Puno as the two who belong to
the group who voiced dissenting opinion on the issue.
Earlier, Fr, Joaquin
G. Bernas, the country’s leading authority on Constitutional Law and a
member of the Constitutional Convention which framed the 1987
Constitution, in a TV interview said the shift from Presidential to
Parliamentary is a structural change and constitutes a major amendment
so that it cannot be done by way of a people’s initiative.
