Tingog Party-list Rep. Jude Acidre (Ellson Quismorio/ MANILA BULLETIN)

Where's the outrage from the Senate?

House Deputy Majority Leader Tingog Party-list Rep. Jude Acidre is expecting senators to tear apart the latest Pulse Asia survey on Filipinos' stance on Charter change (Cha-cha) over its malicious depiction of Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) Nos. 7 and 6.

"The latest Pulse Asia survey utterly failed to highlight what the heart and soul of our discussions in the House of Representatives regarding the bid to amend the 1987 Constitution; that is, to have a laser-focus on just economic-themed amendments," Acidre said in a statement Sunday, March 31.

"This Pulse Asia survey is riddled with questions and scenarios that spread fear among Filipinos about Cha-cha. By this reason alone, the survey results are invalid, unfair, and inapplicable to the current situation," he underscored.

It was only last March 20 when the House of Representatives approved RBH No.7 on third and final reading. The economic Cha-cha effort is spelled out in detail within RBH No.7.

The Senate's RBH No.6, which is nearly an exact copy of RBH No.7, was still pending at the subcommittee level when Congress went its Lenten break the following days.

"Senate President Juan Miguel "Migz" Zubiri and his fellow authors of RBH No.6 should be similarly enraged by Pulse Asia's framing of the questions since it also made a mockery of their measure," Acidre said.

RBH No.6 was filed on Jan. 15, over a month before the House filed its counterpart measure. Zubiri had rather proudly said beforehand that President Marcos himself asked the Senate to take the lead in the bid to revise the existing Charter.

The results of Pulse Asia's March poll showed that 74 percent of respondents believe that the 1987 Constitution "should not be amended now nor any other time".

Acidre said that the 1,200 survey respondents were asked on their stand on extending the terms of office for national and local elective officials, shifting from a bicameral to a unicameral legislature, changing the presidential system of government to a parliamentary one, and changing the present unitary system of government to a federal system, to name a few.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the respondents were opposed to these individual scenarios.

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Acidre cited as a big question mark Pulse Asia's April 2023 survey results, which showed that 41 percent of Filipinos favored constitutional revision.

"This doesn't make sense since, quite frankly, the discussions in the House in the weeks leading to RBH No.7's passage were even more exhaustive than last year, when we approved a similar measure. Unless, of course, one takes into account the malicious questions of this year's survey," he said.

Also casting a cloud of doubt on the Pulse Asia poll was the results of the latest Tangere survey, which indicated that 52 percent or over half of the population favored amending the Constitution, Acidre said.

"The Tangere survey shows that most Filipinos do understand the need to lift the economic restrictions in 37-year-old Constitution and allow the influx of more foreign direct investments," he said.