Pass the bill adding a new district to Camarines Sur province first and let the Supreme Court decide later on whether it is constitutional or not.

This was Sen. Joker Arroyo’s to his fellow senators in the plenary session Wednesday as the body deliberated on a proposal to add a new district to Arroyo’s home province.

Arroyo was responding to the interpellation of Sen. Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino who vowed earlier to block the passage of the bill in the Senate.

Favoring Dato

House Bill No. 4264, authored by Camarines Sur Rep. Luis Villafuerte, sought the creation of a new district in Camarines Sur. The province, which has a population of 1.4 million, currently already has four districts.

The bill, which was already approved on final reading at the House of Representatives, is touted to benefit the president’s son, incumbent Camarines Sur 1st district Rep. Dato Arroyo, by helping him hold on to his current seat in the House of Representatives.

This is because, observers say, creating the new district would prevent a direct contest between him and budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr., who used to hold the post. The first district has been the domain of the Andayas for decades. The young Andaya practically inherited the post from his father, the late Rolando Andaya Sr.

Arroyo for his part only migrated to Bicol after enrolling at the Ateneo de Naga in Naga City. He sought the congressional post after the young Andaya was appointed as budget chief following his third term as congressman.

Less than 250,000

Aquino, chair of the Senate committee on local government, opposed the passage of the bill as the new district would fall short of the Constitutional requirement of having at least 250,000 constituents. The new district would only have over 170,000 inhabitants.

As chair of the committee, Aquino was supposed to sponsor redistricting bills. Arroyo took the cudgels for the measure, however, when the former refused to sponsor House Bill No. 4264.

Arroyo argued that Article VI. Sec. 5.3 of the 1987 Constitution only specified the 250,000-population mark for cities, not provinces. The said subsection reads “…Each city with a population of least two hundred fifty thousand, or each province, should at least have one representative.”

“There is nothing in section 5 which talks about numbers. In subsection 3, the number’s for the city, there is no number for the province. The Constitution is silent,” he explained.  

Arroyo said that objections to the proposed new district for Camarines Sur should not be grounded on the issue of constitutionality, a matter better left to the High Tribunal.

“Pass [the] Camarines Sur [bill], then let the Supreme Court decide,” he said.

Territoriality only

Asked by Aquino as to what requirements HB 4264 met for it to merit the approval of the Senate, Arroyo reasoned that the new district has “practicable, compact, contiguous, compact, and adjacent territory,” another requirement which, he said, preceded the specifications on the population in Sec.5.3.

Aquino however, insisted that Arroyo should not set aside the population requirement and insist on the legality of the new district just because it fit the territorial description.

“If the population requirement does not matter, we will just approve and approve all these measures from both houses on re-districting?” he bellowed.

Reversed roles

Aquino also questioned Arroyo’s change of position on the population requirement.

He pointed out that Arroyo previously opposed in February the passage of a bill which created a congressional district for Malolos City in Bulacan for the very same reason that Aquino is opposing the Camarines Sur bill now.

Arroyo at that time pointed out then that Malolos City fell short on the population requirement of 250,000 as it only had 223,069 residents.

The Malolos bill was passed on second reading after Aquino threatened to resign following a proposition from Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile to have the matter studied first by the rules committee because it raised questions of unconstitutionality.

Arroyo explained, however, that the Constitutional violation is explicit in the Malolos bill because Sec.5.3, or the provision on the population, refers particularly to districts within a city and not to a province.   

Aquino, for his part, previously raised in the committee report that noted constitutionalists Fr. Joaquin Bernas and Dean Pacifico Agabin already confirmed that the population requirement for new districts is applicable to both cities and provinces. – with a report by Gemma Bagayaua Mendoza (abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak)

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