Senate President Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri's latest tirade against the House of Representatives' Charter change (Cha-cha) efforts is "unfair" to House Speaker Martin Romualdez, Cagayan de Oro City 2nd district Rep. Rufus Rodriguez said Thursday, March 16.

In a statement, Rodriguez, chairman of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments, slammed Zubiri's claim that the delay in the enforcement of three laws could be related to the House's push for rewriting the Constitution’s economic provisions via Cha-cha.

“That’s foul, that’s pure speculation that has no basis at all. The House has no control over the executive agencies tasked to implement the three laws by issuing implementing rules and regulations (IRRs),” Rodriguez said.

“My beloved Senate president from Mindanao may be seeing ghosts where there are none. He should overcome his fear of the unknown. He should give us, his former colleagues in the House of Representatives, and executive officials some good faith,” he said.

In a television interview on Wednesday, March 15, Zubiri said the National Economic and Development Authority and other concerned agencies have yet to release IRRs to implement amendments to the Public Service Act, Retail Trade Liberalization Law and Foreign Investment Act more than a year after these were passed by the 18th Congress.

The Senate leader said these laws were already sufficient to attain the Cha-cha proponents' goal of attracting more foreign investments into the country.

Rodriguez said Zubiri’s allegation “is unfair to House members, especially our Speaker Martin Romualdez, officials of the executive branch, which is led by no less than President Bongbong Marcos Jr. to whom his underlings are ultimately answerable to him, and even to senators in favor of amending the Charter’s economic provisions,”

He added that it is the President who has administrative control over the agencies mandated to issue IRRs and implement the three laws Zubiri referred to.

Rodriguez reiterated that the House Charter amendment initiative is aimed at rewriting the basic law’s “restrictive” economic provisions so the country could entice more foreign investors.

“The restrictions that hamper investments are still there, because laws cannot amend the Constitution,” he said.

He said Zubiri and anti-Charter reform senators should give House members the benefit of the doubt on the latter’s economic reform objective.

“The best proof that we want the envisioned constitutional convention to limit itself to the economic provisions is the seven-month deadline for this assembly to finish its job,” he said.