[Cha-Cha means Charter Changer]
Perhaps the regime figured that enabling Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to extend her immunity by allowing her to run as representative of her district and then become prime minister is less costly politically — with less chances as well of inviting an upheaval — than postponing the 2010 elections or declaring martial law, without completely closing its doors on these options.
By BENJIE OLIVEROS (Bulatlat)
MANILA – After months of playing coy and testing the water, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s minions in the House of Representatives led by House Speaker (read: Stooge) Prospero Nograles have finally rammed through House Resolution 1109 providing for the convening of Congress as a constituent assembly to amend the 1987 Constitution with both houses of Congress voting as one.
The penultimate drama, perhaps played to lure the public into complacency, was the withdrawal last month of sponsorship of the resolution by Rep. Luis Villafuerte of Camarines Sur. The drama reached its climax with the midnight passage of the resolution on Tuesday, June 2, perfectly timed on the last week of the Congress’s session.
The administration party, which has recently emerged from a merger of Lakas and Kampi, explained the railroading of the charter change (cha-cha) resolution with the inane excuse that it just wants the Supreme Court to rule with finality on the supposed constitutional gray area of whether, in a constituent assembly, both houses should vote as one or separately. They probably thought the Filipino people are so stupid that we would accept such an silly excuse. It is no different from a criminal who fires a gun at a person and explains in court that he never intended to kill or injure the victim — he just wanted to see if the victim would die after being hit.
In the first place, the Supreme Court could not act on the matter if the Senate sits on the resolution and if nobody files a petition before the High Court. Well, of course, the Arroyo government has erstwhile Marcos loyalist Oliver Lozano who immediately filed, on cue, a petition before the Supreme Court to declare House Resolution 1109 as unconstitutional. In effect, this pulled the rug from under the Senate, which was planning to block the House resolution through its inaction.
It can be recalled that it was also Lozano who filed the weak impeachment complaints against President Arroyo in 2005 and 2006 to preempt the filing of the stronger complaints. Lozano’s action enabled the administration’s underlings in the Lower House to dispatch of these with ease.
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