Senate saves bills seeking ARMM poll deferment

(Updated 6:46 p.m.) The Senate on Tuesday saved the bills seeking to postpone the August 8 Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) elections from being junked by the chamber. In a privilege speech, Senate local government committee chairman Sen. Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. urged the Senate not to pass House Bills 4146 and Senate Bill 2756, which seek to synchronize the ARMM elections with the 2013 elections. "I invite my fellow senators to examine the findings and discussions made in the committee report filed today. I am confident that they will agree that the proposals in the legislation before us are ill-advised and untimely," he said. He explained his committee found that that HB 4146 and SB 2756 violate ARMM's autonomy and gives unconstitutional powers to the President to appoint officials to specific posts in ARMM. "Until concrete evidence and objective indications of political and electoral reform can be shown, we [should] conduct separate ARMM election to allow government to focus all its possible resources and energies to the peaceful conduct of these elections," he said. But since the committee report is "adverse" to the proposed bills, it was archived. Section 30 of the Senate Rules indicate that "if the reports submitted are unfavorable, they shall be transmitted to the Archives of the Senate together with the matters to which they refer, unless five (5) senators shall in the following session move for their inclusion in the Calendar for Ordinary Business, in which case the President shall so order." Marcos therefore immediately made a manifestation that the report be revived and be placed on the Senate calendar for ordinary business. But he noted that he was not contradicting his previous stand against the proposed postponement. "I have belief in the argument and findings we have. It must be subject to debate on the floor. We must not stifle public debate," he said. Senate Majority Floor Leader Vicente Sotto supported Marcos' manifestation and moved for the retrieval of the report. Marcos, Senators Antonio Trillanes IV, Francis Pangilinan, Teofisto Guingona III, and Sergio Osmena supported the motion. Sotto also moved to transfer the committee report to the special calendar of business. Sen. Franklin Drilon, author of SB 2756, immediatey sponsored the measure on the floor. In his sponsorship speech on Tuesday, Drilon said that allowing the ARMM elections to push through would be unconstitutional because it would be inconsistent with the Constitutional mandate to synchronize the local and national elections. "If anything, the proposal embodied in SB 2756 to defer elections in ARMM for the purpose of synchronizing them with the national and local elections in 2013 is actually in harmony with the intention in the Constitution to hold synchronized elections," he said. But aside from this, he said that a "broader concern" is the need to introduce urgent and crucial reforms into the electoral and political system in ARMM. "The ARMM was established with, among other expectations, the hope that it would address the staggering levels of poverty and underdevelopment in the region. Sadly, however, since the establishment of the ARMM, poverty incidence in the region has steadily increased," he said. The Senate is expected to debate on the proposed postponement on Wednesday. - KBK, GMA News