DESPITE the administration’s reluctance to open the 1987 Constitution for amendments, Congress leaders are set to meet anew after the Christmas recess to firm up plans to lift constitutional barriers seen to be holding back the entry of more foreign investors into the country.
“We respect the position of Malacañang but the responsibility to amend the Constitution belongs to Congress,” Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile told reporters at the weekly Kapihan sa Senado media forum.
Under the Constitution, Congress, voting separately, could introduce amendments by three-fourth votes, subject to the approval of the President.
“The House Speaker [Feliciano Belmonte] and I talked about this…we will [be] meeting again in January about it,” Enrile said.
Citing the initiative of Congress leaders to amend the constitutional provision limiting to 40-percent foreign ownership in key industries, Enrile said: “We are not doing this for any motive other than for the country to move forward. We have no political agenda. I’m no longer running for any re-election.”
Enrile said Congress decided to support the proposal to remove the investment cap after a review of the economic situation affirmed the need for the government to find ways to create more jobs for the growing population.
“I have not heard them [legislators] say that [lifting the foreign investment cap] will not improve the economy,” he said. “I think we have been applying the constitutional mandate [limiting foreign investments] and it has not brought us any good, or considerable progress. And yet the countries around us do not have such limitations.”
Enrile said he was informed that Belmonte had asked members of the House of Representatives to “prepare the items listing the provisions that will be considered for possible revisions.”
“And I agree with him [Belmonte] that we should initiate there [in the House] and we will also look at it here [in the Senate],” he said. “It is better they start it in the House [but] I would see what the latest position is. We have already agreed that we tackle this as separate chambers voting separately. That is no longer a problem for us.”
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By: Butch Fernandez
Source: Business Mirror, December 1, 2011
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