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Senators are urged to remain open-minded about changing the Charter.

On Thursday, a member of the House of Representatives asked senators to be open-minded about the lower chamber’s push to change the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution in order to increase foreign investment in the nation.

Rep. David Suarez of Quezon said the Senate should examine House Bill (HB) 7352, the measure that is attached to a resolution calling for a hybrid constitutional convention to propose Charter modifications, and schedule it for plenary deliberations rather than rejecting it as an unimportant right away.

“I am pleading with our honorable senators to take into account the fact that Bill 7352 easily passed its third and final reading with 301 votes. “The House of Representatives members voted overwhelmingly in favor of this,” Suarez stated. “Our colleagues in the Senate should analyze their stance and recognize the necessity to alter the economic provisions of our Constitution,” state the legally elected representatives of all districts from Mindanao, Luzon, and Visayas.

Bill 7352 was passed on March 14 with a 301-7 vote, whereas Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No. 6 was adopted on final reading at the House on March 6 with a 301-6 vote.

While steps have been taken in the past Congress to loosen the Charter’s restrictions, according to Suarez, these have not been sufficient to attract more foreign investment, which the government needs to address the economic repercussions brought on by the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) restrictions.

“We can all agree that the majority of our laws governing foreign investments are extremely onerous and have restricted our options for many years. These limitations impede us from generating additional jobs and attracting foreign investment, according to Suarez.

He argued that senators should take into account the benefits that a more open economy will bring to the nation.

The results of various investigations are conclusive. We must relieve our nation of its burdens if we hope to compete and remain relevant on a global scale, he remarked. It is the appropriate time for lawmakers to demonstrate that the welfare of the people always comes before our own personal goals. “It is the proper time for parliamentarians to demonstrate that we are always prioritizing the welfare of the people, not our own personal goals,” the speaker said.

Rep. Sonny Lagon of the Ako Bisaya Party, however, asserted that changing the 1987 Constitution’s economic provisions could hasten the nation’s recovery from the pandemic and provide millions of employment for Filipinos.

Lagon allayed worries that the bills calling for charter revisions were being approved in a hasty manner by asserting that the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments and the lawmakers who supported RBH 6 and HB 7352 were guided by “years of rigors deliberation” on rewriting the Constitution.

Since previous President Fidel Ramos’ administration, “charter modification” has been a hot topic of conversation. “And all the administrations after then have studied it,” he said. “And lahat ng administrasyon na yan. “Napakarami nang papers o position papers ang nagawa (There are many position papers that have been written),” notably with regard to modifying our Charter’s somewhat onerous economic sections.

The country is recovering from the negative consequences of the pandemic, to put it simply. Many people lost their employment when small firms closed down. To encourage more foreign investment in the nation, boost the economy, and create millions of jobs, we need to modify the 1987 Constitution’s restrictive economic measures, Lagon continued.

Lagon added that Speaker Martin Romualdez wants to run the House of Representatives “efficiently,” particularly when it comes to passing laws that will help the economy.

“The House of Representatives passed all bills after the thorough debate that preserved free speech and the consideration of opposing viewpoints. No one was killed. The same can be true of HB 7352 and RBH 6, according to Lagon.

All legislative proposals, including the two pertaining to the proposed con-con, have, in the words of Romualdez, “been widely and exhaustively deliberated” from the committee level up to the plenary hall.

He claimed that the two bills were passed with the explicit goal of changing the Charter’s onerous clauses in order to draw in more foreign investment and produce high-quality jobs.

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