Virus of Representatives....Period!

I could not simply fathom the collective stupidity of it all, or at least, of its majority. I am referring to the House of Representatives, particularly in its recent approval of the House measure to convert Congress into a Constituent Assembly to amend the 1987 Constitution. Orphaned by its very proponent, who happens to be the Honorable Gentleman from my home province of Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Villafuerte, and repudiated by a significant majority of people if one believes in the opinion polls on the issue, the Con-Ass initiative was nevertheless railroaded by a majority whose acts constitute another example of how one of the basic tenets of democracy, that of majority rule, could go wrong. It is even more appalling how the majority muzzled the voice of dissent by abruptly ending debates on the issue (perhaps knowing that they already have the numbers) over the objection of the minority oppositors.

Speaker Prospero Nograles was almost waxing poetic when he declared that now that it is approved, Con-Ass will have to be implemented, except that he does not know how to proceed. Well, he got it right. He simply does not know how to proceed because he knows that this is an exercise in futility, as his counterpart in the Senate, Juan Ponce Enrile, has said.

The House assumes too much. It assumes that it can act alone on this, perhaps emboldened by the Constitutional fuzziness of a provision saying that revisions can be introduced to the fundamental law by Congress, acting as a constituent assembly, without explicitly saying that the House and the Senate are distinct entities. Thus, they pursue what legal minds would always say: that what the Constitution does not say, it does not say.

But as a non-lawyer, and a mere student of political science whose vast objects of scholarly inquiry include parliamentary processes, or if only to be down to earth about it, as a mere rational human being, one can simply raise the issue that while revisions to the constitution can be made by Congress sitting together as a constituend assembly, and while indeed, granting without accepting the argument that Congress could act as one and should vote as one, one has to also realize that before such assembly can be constituted, a resolution should first be passed by each house to create such assembly. Passing resolutions is a regular act of Congress, even in ordinary circumstances like summoning the President during the State of the Nation Address. Acting as a constituent assembly to amend the Constitution is not a regular job for Congress. Thus, it requries a resolution from both its Houses. A joint resolution can only be passed when the House and the Senate are already in joint-session , or if there are two parallel resolutions approved separately and reconciled for differences, the final versions of which are still subjected to ratification by each of the House and the Senate.

The fact is: The resolution convening Congress into a Constituent Assembly was approved only by the House. There is no indication that the Senate, even among its rabidly pro-Malacanang members, are ecstatic and excited to join the bandwagon. In the absence of a joint resolution, or a resolution from the Senate to convert Congress into a Constituent Assembly, the House's move is outrightly dead at birth. What the Constitution simply says is that Congress can convert itself into a Constituent Assembly to introduce amendments. It does not say that one House can unilaterally pass a resolution to make such act of conversion. The House of Representatives, acting alone, is not Congress. So, as what legal minds would always say, what the Consitution does not say, it does not say. And what is not said should be interpreted according to the conventional and the regular: that Congress is bicameral, and its regular business, including the approval of resolutions, is always conducted with the two houses voting separately. If indeed Congress can be converted into a constituent assembly to revise the fundamental law of the land, whether or not the voting to approve the revisions are done by the two houses voting together or separately is indeed a justiciable issue. But the act of converting Congress into a Constituent Assembly is an ordinary act of a legislature which requires the passing a resolution, which under the rules, is done with both Houses introducing similar resolutions, and acting on these as separate bodies.

So, what does this mean. Either the members of the House of Representatives are stupid. Or they are simply ignorant. Well, what can we say. Even its leader is confused how to proceed.

This is exactly what I was referring to in my last article. Compared to the H1N1 virus, many more lethal and virulently infectious diseases are upon us, threatening to do harm to our nation and our country. One of them is called the House of Representatives. Next time civil society activists attend their sessions, it would be a powerful symbol of protest if we all come wearing face masks.