INCOMING Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez on Tuesday said he will file a bill that will allow the holding of elections for delegates to the Constitutional Convention synchronized with the barangay elections scheduled in October.
Alvarez, after filing his House Concurrent Resolution 1, said synchronizing the two elections would allow the government to save money.
“We can have a few months of extension to prepare for the election of Con-con delegates, so we can save money,” Alvarez told a radio interview.
He made his statement even as Senator Juan Edgardo Angara said he didn’t know if Charter change was inevitable, “but certainly it will get a big push because of the support of President Rodrigo Duterte.”
Angara also cited the fact that Cha-Cha would be done in the first half of the Duterte administration.
As a result, there would be no suspicion of any type of term extension which, historically, had been the obstacle to pushing any kind of Charter change.
Alvarez’s HCR No. 1 seeks a Constitutional Convention to propose revisions to the 1987 Constitution.
Alvarez stressed that under a federal system, “there won’t be any need for too many laws because each federal state will have its own laws.”
“The parliament will concentrate on managing the affairs of the federal government,” Alvarez said.
Duterte is pushing for Charter change to pave the way for a federal form of government with a unicameral legislature.
In his concurrent resolution, Alvarez proposes that the Con-Con be composed of elected and appointed delegates: one delegate per legislative district and 20 delegates to be appointed by the President.
Alvarez also proposed that no congressman or senator—at the time of the adoption of the resolution—may run as a candidate for or be appointed as delegate to the Con-Con.
He also says in the resolution that “the Con-Con shall be deemed functus officio, or an agency or office whose mandate has expired, upon approval of its proposals in a plebiscite called for such purpose, or after two years from its opening, whichever comes first.”