By: Mario Casayuran
Members of the Senate majority bloc yesterday said they fully support President Duterte’s plan to call Congress to a special session to act on proposals to give autonomy to Muslim Mindanao.
“We are willing to work overtime just to help Mindanao,’’ Sen. Nancy Binay told Bulletin on the President’s determination for both the Senate and the House of Representatives to pass a proposed Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL).
Binay said she and her colleagues could do the job having worked well into the night, debating on controversial provisions of the tax reform bill of the President since it was sponsored on the Senate floor last Sept. 20 by Sen. Juan Edgardo Angara, chairman of the Senate ways and means committee.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate economic affairs committee, said passage of the BBL would hopefully bring peace to troubled Mindanao.
He expressed hopes that unconstitutional provisions of the BBL be deleted and that the existence of warlords and private armies of politicians must not be perpetuated.
But the most important is resource allocation “because without resources, autonomy is very shallow,’’ he explained.
