Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Tuesday, June 1, gave officials of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) assurance that the Senate in the next few days would pass on second reading the bill deferring the autonomous region’s first regular elections. However, he said they would need to “lobby” the House of Representatives to act on the bill.
“The not-so-good news I have to tell [BARMM officials] is that I had a meeting with the [House] Speaker this morning, and Speaker Velasco said…the BARMM bill is stalled in the committee,” said Sotto during the Senate plenary session on Tuesday evening.
Several BARMM officials had been a constant fixture at the gallery while the legislative chamber deliberated Senate Bill No. 2144, which seeks to postpone the elections from May 2022 to May 2025.
“So it is best that they also go [to the House of Representatives] and talk to the people there because here, it is just a matter of time” until the bill is passed, said Sotto.
“The House of Representatives has not even started, so it’s better that as you talk to them, inform them of the lobby that is necessary,” he said.
Congress will adjourn sine die on Friday, June 4. Sotto said the Senate could pass the measure on third and final reading in early August or after the 18th Congress would resume session for President Rodrigo Duterte’s State of the Nation Address.
The main proponents of the bill included Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri and Sen. Francis Tolentino. They hoped to pass the bill on final reading before the sine die adjournment this week.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said there was no need to rush it because there is no certification from the president that it is urgent.
“What’s the message here?” Lacson asked Tolentino, the bill sponsor. “Why the rush when there is no certification?”
Lacson pushed for more time to examine the proposed measure’s legal implications. He also said earlier that postponing the first regular elections would require plebiscite approval, which Tolentino and Sen. Franklin Drilon opposed.
The Commission on Elections (Comelec) asked Congress to decide on the proposal by July to give poll officials enough time to prepare if the BARMM elections pushed through.
Lacson also quizzed Tolentino over his speech on Monday telling senators that the coronavirus pandemic hampered the work of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) in passing measures that the autonomous region would need to conduct elections.
Tolentino said the BTA had yet to enact an electoral code, apportion the region’s parliamentary districts, and create a registry of voters. He said the BTA was also waiting for the result of the 2020 census to apportion the districts.
“The reasons cited are not valid reasons,” said Lacson, who argued that the Senate was able to draft and pass a number of laws despite several of its members contracting Covid-19.
The BTA had drafted an electoral code, which it submitted to the Comelec, according to Lacson. The poll body made some modifications and returned it to the BTA, but the transition body still failed to finish the measure, he said.
There would be no need to postpone the BARMM’s first regular elections scheduled in May 2022 if the BTA went back to work on the electoral code, said Lacson.
Tolentino disagreed. He said the BTA would still have struggled to legislate parliamentary districts because of the realities of the pandemic. He earlier cited poor Internet connectivity in several BARMM municipalities.
Lacson cautioned Tolentino against citing the coronavirus pandemic as basis for postponing the BARMM elections. He said it might “establish a very dangerous precedent” for postponing the national and local elections in May 2022.
Lacson said the BTA could have used the 2015 census if the 2020 census was not yet available.
“We’re treading on very dangerous ground…if the pandemic is [cited as] the reason for the postponement of the BARMM elections, it could open the floodgates to a no-el (no-election) situation in the national and local elections next year,” said Lacson.
The period of interpellations will continue on Wednesday, June 2.
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