Bicam forgoes listing reserved, concurrent powers of nat’l, local gov’t in BBL

The bicameral conference committee has decided to enumerate the powers to be devolved to the Bangsamoro government instead of listing down the reserved and concurrent powers of the national and local government to avoid confusion.

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon said Wednesday they were able to convince their House counterpart to adopt the Senate version of the bill pertaining to the powers of the government in the proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law.

“I led the Senate contingent and the House was convinced that that is the better system and the Constitution says that those powers which are not in the Constitution or in the organic law should pertain to the national government,” Drilon told reporters before the formal resumption of the bicam meeting.

“That is what the Constitution says and therefore, what we did is to enumerate the powers of the Bangsamoro government,” he said.

He said they did not include the provision on reserved powers of the central government which was in the House version of the bill “because the Constitution says what is not provided for belongs to the national government.”

The joint panel also did not include concurrent powers because “it is a prescription to confusion and to delay and to conflict.”

“Concurrence means the power belongs to two agencies: the national and the local or the autonomous region. Does it mean that, the one who will first assume this power will do so to the exclusion of the other?" he said.

"Number two, supposed the two — the national government and the Bangsamoro region — will exercise it at the same time, who will prevail? At the end of the day, it will just cause confusion,” Drilon explained.

He reiterated it would be better to discuss what power should be devolved to the autonomous region rather than debate on the reserved powers and concurrent powers because it is unconstitutional and will simply cause confusion in the process of making decisions.

In the Senate, it was also Drilon who moved for the deletion of the same provision. — MDM, GMA News