By Christine Herrera

The House of Representatives will hold its plenary debate on Charter revisions any day this month or earlier than scheduled to give itself a leeway to petition the Supreme Court for a ruling on whether or not Congress can rewrite the Constitution like it would amend an ordinary bill.

House Majority Leader Arthur Defensor said that lawmakers would also ask the high court for a ruling on whether the House and Senate, convened into a Constitutional Assembly, could vote separately or not.

Defensor said the early debate and the subsequent filing of a petition before the high court can be made if the Ortega panel submits its committee report this month.

?We plan to report out for floor deliberations the committee report of the panel headed by [La Union Rep. Victor] Ortega this month, not March. We expect the committee report this month. In that case, we have ample time to raise all legal issues surrounding the Nograles resolution, considering that it is a test case,? Defensor told Standard Today.

Defensor explained that Resolution 737, principally authored by Speaker Prospero Nograles and co-authored by 162 lawmakers, seeks to amend Sections 2 and 3, Article 12 of the Constitution like any ordinary bill or resolution.

The Nograles resolution seeks Charter revisions to allow for 100-percent foreign ownership of alienable and private lands. ?This is a test case since the tinkering of the economic provisions of the Constitution would pass the route of a proposal being adopted like an ordinary bill and not through Congress acting as a Constituent Assembly or through Constitutional Convention,? said Defensor, chairman of the House committee on rules.

Defensor, whose committee decides when to calendar bills for debates, said he would immediately report out for floor deliberations the Ortega panel committee report as soon as he receives it this month.

?If any member of Congress, be they members of the minority or majority, raises the issue of amending the Constitution through passing it like an ordinary bill, as unconstitutional, we are going to use that as a trigger mechanism to purposely force the hand of the Supreme Court to make a ruling,? Defensor said.

Defensor said any member of the House, any Filipino taxpayer or even a senator could file the petition if they believe amending the Constitution not through consa or concon is unconstitutional.

The filing of the petition, Defensor said, would depend entirely on the dynamics of the floor debates. ?We have to hear all arguments first. If someone raises that the Nograles resolution is unconstitutional, then we stop the plenary debate and a petition would be filed with the Supreme Court,? Defensor said.

The House leadership would exhaust all its powers to bar anyone from tinkering into the Constitution outside of the economic provisions that were embodied in the Nograles resolution.

But at the same time, Defensor admitted the House plenary could overrule the House leadership when deliberations begin this month.

?The House leadership would exhaust all means possible not to deviate from the plan to amend the economic provisions of the Constitution. But we cannot also rule out the possibility that the plenary would propose other political amendments, specifically on the shift from presidential to parliamentary system of government,? Defensor said.

Besides, Senator Francis Joseph Escudero has already declared that for as long as he is chairman of the Senate committee on constitutional amendments, no counterpart bills or resolutions to tinker the Charter would be entertained by his panel.