TWO Cordillerans will join the committee tasked to review the 1987 Constitution
Former Regional Development Council chairman Virgilio Bautista and former Kalinga governor Laurence Wacnang are included in the team headed by Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno.
Last year, President Rodrigo Duterte signed an executive order creating a Consultative Committee tasked to review the 1987 Constitution.
The Consultative Committee will be under the Office of the President and is composed of not more than 25 members who will study, conduct consultations, and review the provisions of the 1987 Constitution.
Duterte signed on January 24 the appointment of 19 individuals as members of the committee: former senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr., Victor de la Serna, Ranhilio Aquino, Rodolfo Robles, Antonio Nachura, Julio Tehankee, Bienvenido Reyes, Eddie Alih, Edmund Tayao, Ali Pangalian Balindong, Roan Libarios, Reuben Canoy, Arthur Aguilar, Susan Ubalde-Ordinario, Antonio Arellano and Randolph Parcasio.
Both Wacnang and Bautista are part of the recommendees of Mayor Mauricio Domogan to the president.
A request to the President was made last year through the Regional Development Council (RDC) to include Cordillerans in the Constitutional Study Commission in preparation for the administration’s planned shift to federal form of government in the future.
The RDC-CAR underscored it is important for the President to consider including in the review committee veteran Cordillera leaders who can articulate the issues on regional autonomy and development to make government realize the importance of granting autonomy to the Cordillera in the light of the on-going move to shift to federal form of government within the next several years.
Members of the RDC-CAR also expressed its support to the administration’s bid to shift to federal form of government but it decided to first pursue the quest for regional autonomy as the establishment of an autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao and the Cordillera is already enshrined in the Constitution and because of the fact that an autonomous region can also exist within a federal state.