THE consultative committee is persuaded to require members of the Senate and House of Representatives to have a “college degree or its equivalent” in the draft constitution they will propose to President Rodrigo Duterte.
A Con-Com subcommittee voted to add this requirement on Monday, Conrado Generoso, senior technical assistant to the Con-Com chairman, told a press conference on Tuesday.
The 1987 Constitution has no such qualification requirement.
A person can be a senator as long as he or she is a natural-born citizen, able to read and write, at least 35 years old on the day of election, a registered voter, and a resident of the Philippines for at least two years preceding the day of election.
A person can be a member of the House if he or she is a natural-born citizen, able to read and write, at least 25 years old on the day of election, a registered voter in his or her district—except for party-list representatives, and a resident of the Philippines for at least one year preceding the day of election.
Con-Com Chairman Reynato Puno said there were long discussions on adding a qualification requirement, with some members saying it was undemocratic as only 10 percent of the Filipino population had a college degree.
But in the end, those who wanted the additional requirement took the debate.
“There is that school of thought that you need this qualification to improve the quality of laws that will come from Congress and, ultimately, the second school of thought won,” said Puno.
The concern on limiting the pool of possible lawmakers was addressed by allowing persons with the “equivalent” of a college degree to run.
By equivalency, this means a certification from educational institutions that a level of experience or training outside a university is deemed equivalent to a college degree.
Executive Order 330 gives the Commission on Higher Education that mandate to certify, after thorough evaluation “the pertinent work experiences and knowledge or expertise acquired by individuals from high-level, non-formal, and informal training toward the awarding of an appropriate academic degree.”
Puno also noted that most lawmakers today have a college degree, thus the proposed provision just mirrored reality.