Cha-Cha, BBL Priority Gov’t Bills - Solon

 Mortz C. Ortigoza

                                                                        

LINGAYEN – The revision of the 1987 Constitution and the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) are the priority bills of the government thus members of the House of Representatives have their hands full deliberating them at the august body, a congressman cited.

Pangasinan Second District Representative Leopoldo Bataoil said that the ongoing debates for the charter change are in full swing in the Lower House and it is led by Constitutional Amendments Committee Chairman Congressman Roger Mercado.

HEARING - Pangasinan 2nd District Congressman Leopoldo N Bataoil (right) welcomes the Committee on Dangerous Drugs, for "A Forum on Dangerous Drugs (Maunlad na Republika Galit sa Droga)”. The Committee Chairman Representative Robert Ace Barbers (left) of Surigao Del Norte spearheads the public hearing held recently at the Narciso Ramos Sports & Civic Center in Lingayen, Pangasinan.

“We have been deliberating in the session of the 17^th Congress this year. What we are doing now continually monitored the exchanges of the ideas and position of the Higher and Lower Houses,” he stressed.

The Committee has 55 members.

Bataoil said as member of the sub-committee on Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) he and colleagues have been preoccupied deliberating the bill that even saw them extending the sessions for several periods of time.

“There can be a priority focus of the government now, the BBL and the Charter Change”.

He said the hearing on the constitutional amendment and the BBL is transparent to the public as they are closely monitored by the media.
The popularity of the BBL bill collapsed after the killings in January 25, 2015 by the forces of Moro Islamic Liberation Front of the government's 44 elite Special Action Force who surreptitiously sneaked in the camp of the MILF inTukanalipao, Mamasapano in Maguindanao to arrest two high-ranking Jemaah Islamiyah-affiliated bomb experts Zulkifli Abdhir (alias Marwan) and Abdul Basit Usman. Then House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. shelved it while waiting for the government to provide for another solution.

According to Wikipedia, as an organic act, the Basic Law should have provided for the basic structure of government for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and enacted the accords set forth in the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro which is the peace agreement signed between the Government of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in 2014.

It is now being pushed by President Rodrigo Duterte in the 17th Congress where members of the House and the Senate prepare to pass it within the second session.