I bewail the abandonment of HB 6732 on the proposed provisional franchise for ABS-CBN for the following reasons:
(1) This abandonment underscores the failure of leadership in the House after no less than Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano principally authored and passionately sponsored the ill-fated interim franchise whose approval was recommended by the “Committee of the Whole”, which is rarely constituted.
After speeding like a bullet train, House Bill No. 6732, which carries a proposed provisional franchise for ABS-CBN, appears to have stalled like a misdirected locomotive.
Although Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and the House leadership deserve to be commended for reconsidering the approval on second reading of HB 6732 to cleanse it of constitutional infirmity, they appear to have lost control of the train.
I laud Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and the House leadership for seeing the light on the need to reconsider the approval on second reading of H.B. 6732 granting a provisional franchise to ABS-CBN on the same day it was passed on first reading.
This concurrent passage on first and second reading on the same day on 13 May 2020 violates Sec. 26 (6) of Art. VI of the Constitution which unequivocally requires three reading on separate days for a bill to become a law, unless certified urgent by the President.
Exigency or even good motives cannot excuse or validate the repetition of an unconstitutional act or procedure.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, which Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano is wont to invoke, “What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted.”
Consequently, no amount of purported or actual passage of some bills in the past on first and second readings on the same day will constitute an unassailable precedent in violation of the Constitution.
Contrary to the baseless tirades, albeit obliquely, against me by Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano, I never blamed the House of Representatives for failing to act on the bills seeking the renewal of ABS-CBN’s franchise.
In fact, almost a hundred Representatives co-authored my Resolution No. 639 filed on January 6, 2020 which urged the leadership of the House to act forthwith on the franchise renewal.
