Senate President Francis Escudero said a bill seeking to amend the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution was not a priority when Congress opens its session on Monday.

In an interview with dzBB, he said the economic Charter change bill was not one of the priority bills of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (LEDAC) and was going through the regular process of passing a measure.

“That was never discussed in the LEDAC. That’s not one of the priority measures of LEDAC,” Escudero said.

“The chaos that could be created from that (Charter change) could affect the valuable laws that the President asked us to pass based on our last meeting in LEDAC. So we will focus on that,” he added.

“Procedurally, for now, the subcommittee which tackles this does not have a chairman. Even though I don’t want to pre-empt it, my personal plan is to give this to the Committee on Constitutional Amendments of (Senator Robin Padilla) and to just let it follow the ordinary, regular rules according to our process. And that will not become a priority in the Senate through the creation of a separate committee,” he said.

During former Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri’s term, a subcommittee on the economic charter change bill was created chaired by Senator Sonny Angara who left his post as a lawmaker after he was appointed as Education secretary.

Escudero also said that President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. did not push him to prioritize the measure.

“He never really mentioned that to me before or after I became the Senate President,” Escudero said.

Jaspearl Tan/DMS