Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon expressed doubts that any attempt to override the presidential veto on the SIM Card Registration bill would be possible.
While he supports Senate President Vicente Sotto III’s initiative to find a way to save the bill by convincing Congress to overturn the veto of the President, Drilon said he cannot see it happening since it never happened in the past.
“Yes, I would agree to that (plan). I am just saying that it’s difficult to achieve that. Overriding a presidential veto has never happened in the past,” Drilon said in an interview over CNN Philippines.
“That’s how strong our Chief Executive is. I have no issue with that (proposal). We can try to override it, but it will not work,” Drilon stressed.
Sotto earlier bared plans to call Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea saying he is finding a way to save the bill which President Duterte vetoed due to the provision on social media registration.
According to Sotto, one way of going about the veto is for a lawmaker to refile a similar bill in the coming 19th Congress and removing the provision that the President objected to.
The other, Sotto said is for both the Senate and House of Representatives to overturn the veto of the President and allow naysayers to question the measure before the Supreme Court.
“And we can ask the SC to delcare it unconstitutional. But then again, the prepaid SIM Cards must be registered already because that is part of the law,” Sotto had said.
“It will become a law minus the provision that Malacañang did not like,” he stressed.
Meanwhile, Drilon said he still cannot see the logic behind the President’s decision to veto the measure.
“What does this really do? It does not change anything. You can still hit anyone with fake news. There is no change, there is no prior restraint. All that my amendment provided was a remedy to those who are libeled through the social media by troll farms,”
“I repeat, there is no prior restraint. That is why, I canot undertand, the policy issue behind the veto,” Drilon pointed out.
Drilon said the only thing he can think of is the possibility that Malacañang itself would be hit should the bill becomes a law.
“The only thing that I can think of is that Secretary (Martin) Andanar admitted that in the payroll of PTV-4 (People’s Television Network), are about a 300 project employees whose functions cannot be justified. And we suspeect that they are maintaining a troll farm,” the Senate minority leader stressed.
“That is why they do not want this bill, because this bill, I repeat will only provide for a remedy so that you cannot hide behind anonymity, and you cannot attack people,” Drilon explained.