Press Release
May 10, 2006

CHARTER DOES NOT PREVENT PGMA FROM PURSUING
ECONOMIC REFORMS -- ROXAS

MALOLOS CITYSenator Mar Roxas yesterday said there is nothing in the 1987 Constitution that prevents the government from pursuing vital economic refors.

Speaking before the Integrated Bar of the Philippines-Bulacan chapters Makialam! Malayang Talakayan, a public forum on current laws and legal issues held at the organizations new building at the Bulacan provincial capitol compound in this city, Roxas said pursuing economic reforms is a matter of will and not revising the basic law of the land.

In fact, one of the most difficult act of governancecrafting and passing tax lawssuch as the expanded value added tax, happened, was done, under this Constitution the administration wants revised and amended, he explained.

The Constitution is not limiting, does not prevent, the government from pursuing and implementing reforms that will improve the economy, he emphasized.

The senator from Capiz, who chairs the Senate committees on economic affairs and trade and commerce, bared that survey after survey of various chambers of commerce and industry in the country shows that investors and business people are not complaining about the Constitution.

What they cite as making doing business difficult in the country are smuggling, high power rates, lack of infrastructure, and the deteriorating quality of graduates and their skills, which are not a bit related, could not be blamed to the Constitution, he said.

Roxas branded the current peoples initiative to revise the Constitution and change the system of government destructive, saying one does not pull out all his teeth and replaced them by false teeth if only is aching.

Senate majority leader and Roxass party mate at the Liberal Party also spoke at the forum. The two stalwarts of the Liberal Party were installed as honorary members of the IBP-Bulacan chapter.

Also at the forum were IBP national president Jose Anselmo Cadiz, Congressman Magi Gunigundo, Jose De La Rama, Jr., chapter president, his father, former Supreme Court justice Jose, Sr., former judge Hermie Arceo, and other legal luminaries of the province.

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