The Senate held a hearing today on the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) drafted by the Bangsamoro Transition Committee (BTC).
The proceeding was prompted by a bill filed by Senate President Koko Pimentel last November 6.
Present in the hearing are stakeholders in the BBL, representatives from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and Former Senate President Nene Pimentel.
Next week, the Senate sub-committee on BBL will hold consultations in Mindanao.
Sub-committee chairperson Juan Miguel Zubiri will take the lead.
The chamber wants to pass the BBL within the first quarter of this year.
President Rodrigo Duterte had earlier asked lawmakers to come up with a measure that will stand the test of constitutionality at the Supreme Court.
He does not want the proposal to be junked due to constitutional infirmities.
This is supposedly what happened to the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD) under the Arroyo administration and BBL during the Aquino administration.
Zubiri vows to draft the best version of the bill that seeks to give more autonomy to a region in the south.