Congress has approved the motion to reconsider House Bill (HB) 10171.
The motion to reconsider the controversial bill was filed by Cavite 7th District Rep. Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla.
HB 10171 or the University of the Philippines (UP) Security Act which would prohibit the inherent right of the state to exercise police power in its campuses will no longer push through the Bicameral Committee, the National Task Force to End Local Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) said on Monday.
The NTF-ELCAD said Remulla, who is currently the Senior Deputy Majority Leader of the Committee on Rules, had said that HB 10171 is “dead” as the House of Representatives on September 30, unanimously approved in plenary the motion to reconsider the bill.
Remulla revealed that the members of the Makabayan Bloc “smuggled” the bill by pushing it during the budgetary process in Congress.
“During the budgetary process, everyone (House members) is busy over their congressional district’s concern,” Remulla said, adding that it was during that time that the Makabayan Bloc moved to tackle the bill for the third and final reading.
He said the motion for reconsideration which he filed in two ways, one by himself and the other on behalf of the majority, was carried without any objections, thereby the 179 congressmen whom the Makabayan Bloc claimed to have voted in favor of the proposed bill will also be
considered to have voted for the approval of his motion.
This would mean that the bill will then be turned back to the committee level, particularly the Committee on Rules which is co-chaired by Remulla.
Remulla said that his motion is a “corrective action” as the UP-DND Accord of 1989, was abrogated by the Duterte Administration through Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and was not even made into law.
Remulla vowed that “House Bill 10171 is not going to be passed into law.”
National Security Adviser and NTF-ELCAC Vice-Chairman Hermogenes Esperon Jr. on the other end lauded Remulla in blocking the proposed UP-Security Bill and promised to “take the line of action” of the congressman in ousting the Makabayan Bloc from the House of Representatives, as disqualification cases were already filed at the Comelec.
HB 10171 is considered by many legal experts as a dangerous precedent if enacted into law because this would give criminals and terrorists a safe haven from the police.