PIMENTEL ON HOUSE LEADERS' CHANGE OF HEART
ON CHARTER CHANGE PLAN

Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said he is glad over the reports that leaders of the House of Representatives have one by one retreated from the plan to amend the Constitution even without Senate participation.

Pimentel said the backpedaling congressmen have become so contemptuous of the plan for the House to unilaterally amend the Charter, as contained in a joint resolution, that one of them, Majority Leader Arthur Defensor dismissed the document as just a "scrap of paper."

"It good that they now admit that the House can't change the Constitution without the Senate," he said.

Pimentel said some House leaders have broached idea of a Senate-House dialogue obviously because they know that the latest Charter Change attempt is destined to fail anew if they would pursue steps that do not conform with the Constitution.

He also lashed out at Palace lackeys in the House for insisting that all amendments to the Charter should be voted jointly, instead of separately, by both the Senate and the House despite the explanation of certain delegates to the 1986 Constitutional Commission that joint voting by the two chambers was never their intention.

Because of the House leaders' turnaround on the Charter Change issue, Pimentel said "the suggestion of certain congressmen for a Senate-House dialogue to thresh out their differences may be unnecessary."