Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman (Facebook)

Liberal Party (LP) President and Albay 1st district Rep. Edcel Lagman has called on the House of Representatives to finally start committee hearings on the absolute divorce bill after it was recommitted supposedly without any reason.

“Millions of Filipino women have been waiting for the enactment of this bill since this is a pro-woman legislation considering that wives are the victims of toxic and destroyed marriages due to the cruelty, violence, or abandonment by their husbands,” the lawmaker said in a statement on Tuesday, Feb. 6.

“The recommitment was made to further delay, or even derail, the enactment of the divorce bill,” he underscored.

Lagman bared that the Committee on Population and Family Relations sent back to the Committee on Rules—the overseeing body that refers bill to specific committees—his pet bill without properly disclosing the justification behind it.

House Bill (HB) No. 9349 or “An Act Reinstituting Divorce as an Alternative Mode for the Dissolution of Marriage” was said to be recommitted despite having no appropriations language. Specifically, the bill doesn’t entail any talk on funding.

The veteran solon stressed that there have been precedents where bills without an appropriation language have been enacted into law, namely the law against child marriage and on prevention of adolescent pregnancies.

He pointed out that these laws were even sponsored by Isabela 3rd district Rep. Ian Paul Dy, chairperson of the Committee on Population and Family Relations.

Since the establishment of the 1987 Constitution, several bills have been filed instituting divorce. Yet, to this day, no bill on this matter has become a law. 

The Philippines is the only remaining country that has not legalized divorce--save for the Vatican, which is an ecclesiastical state with about 800 residents who are mostly nuns and priests.