Chiz on Robin chairing Senate consti amendments panel: No special qualification needed

Senator-elect Francis Escudero said Monday that actor and incoming senator Robin Padilla is qualified to chair the Senate committee on constitutional amendments.

Escudero, a lawyer, said all senators are equal with each getting one vote and the same amount of monthly salary.

"A senator can chair any committee. There is no special qualification to chair a specific committee. Senator Padilla is as qualified as any senator elected to serve as such to chair any committee that the majority decides to elect him to," he said in a statement.

Padilla, who topped the 2022 Senate race with over 25 million votes, earlier said he wanted to push for charter change.

"It (being named committee chair) rests solely on the decision via election made by a majority of senators on the floor. No senator should be discriminated upon and should solely be judged by his/her performance after serving as such," Escudero added.

Outgoing Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, also a lawyer, earlier said that Padilla would need a lot of schooling as the actor takes on the responsibility of chairing the Senate committee on constitutional amendments. 

“You know the committee that he chose to head, the Committee on Constitutional Amendments and Revision of Codes and Laws, this requires...legal knowledge and not only legal knowledge, you must have an exposure to the Constitution and it also said revisions of codes and laws and the codes there would refer to major laws like Civil Code, the Revised Penal Code, the Corporation Code, all the codified laws,” Drilon said in an ANC interview.

“And it’s not easy to do that. I don’t claim to know all of those, but certainly to a neophyte senator who has no exposure to these subjects, he needs a lot of schooling,” the veteran lawmaker, also a former Justice secretary, added.—Llanesca Panti/AOL, GMA News