The Senate started yesterday the yeoman’s job of refining the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) after former Supreme Court (SC) Chief Justice Hilario Davide said there are some provisions of the measure that contain perceived unconstitutional provisions.
The refinement is needed because the BBL as crafted by the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Executive branch through the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) would not be passed either at the Senate and at the House of Representatives because of perceived infirmities, Sen. Ferdinand ‘’Bongbong’’ R. Marcos Jr., chairman of the Senate local government committee, told Senate reporters after a three-hour committee hearing on the BBL.
Davide told the Marcos committee that there are some provisions in the BBL that “need refinement but not the entire BBL.”
“We cannot declare the entire thing as unconstitutional if only a few are found violative of the Constitution… received to be violative of the Constitution,” he explained.
Davide is one of five members of the Peace Council created by President Aquino to review the proposed BBL and submit recommendations to the committees of both Houses of Congress deliberating on the contentious provisions of the peace measure.
The questionable provisions in the BBL that passed the Peace Council’s scrutiny are issues on constitutionality, patrimony, economy, security force and peace and order, and social problems, Marcos told Senate reporters in a briefing.
“This puts the committee in a quandary. We have to resolve those significant divergencies,’’ Marcos pointed out.
Manila Bulletin
