Rodriguez: Zubiri seeing ghosts on House Charter amendment push

THE chairman of the House committee on constitutional amendments cried foul today over the statement of Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri that the delay in the enforcement of three laws may be related to the larger chamber’s push for rewriting the Constitution’s economic provisions.

“That’s foul, that’s pure speculation that has no basis at all. The House has no control over the executive agencies tasked to implement the three laws by issuing implementing rules and regulations (IRRs),” Cagayan de Oro 2nd District Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said.

“My beloved Senate president from Mindanao may be seeing ghosts where there are none. He should overcome his fear of the unknown. He should give us, his former colleagues in the House of Representatives, and executive officials some good faith,” he said.

He said Zubiri’s allegation “is unfair to House members, especially our Speaker Martin Romualdez, officials of the executive branch, which is led by no less than President Bongbong Marcos Jr. to whom his underlings are ultimately answerable to him, and even to senators in favor of amending the Charter’s economic provisions,”

He added that it is the President who has administrative control over the agencies mandated to issue IRRs and implement the three laws Zubiri referred to.

In a television interview on Wednesday, Zubiri said the National Economic and Development Authority and other concerned agencies have yet to release IRRs to implement amendments to the Public Service Act, Retail Trade Liberalization Law and Foreign Investment Act more than a year after these were passed by the 18th Congress.

He said these laws were already sufficient to attain the goal of Charter amendment proponents of attracting more foreign investments into the country.

“Are they delaying [the approval of IRR] for some underlying reason? Why don’t they let the IRR go and let it out so that more direct foreign investments can come to the country?” he asked.

“These three [laws] were [passed] to answer the problems in the restrictive economic provisions of the Constitution,” he added. “What else do we want to loosen up in the Constitution for economic reasons? Is it the ownership of land? Because personally, I am against the [full foreign] ownership of land,” he said.

He added that allowing foreigners to own land would only increase real estate prices in the country to the disadvantage of poor Filipinos.

Rodriguez reiterated that the House Charter amendment initiative is aimed at rewriting the basic law’s “restrictive” economic provisions so the country could entice more foreign investors.

“The restrictions that hamper investments are still there, because laws cannot amend the Constitution,” he said.

He said Zubiri and anti-Charter reform senators should give House members the benefit of the doubt on the latter’s economic reform objective.

“The best proof that we want the envisioned constitutional convention to limit itself to the economic provisions is the seven-month deadline for this assembly to finish its job,” he said.