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[av_heading heading=’Roque slams ‘perverted’ bill on rallies’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=’30’ subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’18’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” admin_preview_bg=”]
BY PRINCE GOLEZ
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February 13, 2018
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MANILA – Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque criticized a House bill imposing penalties on rallies held without notice as a “perverted” version of the measure he authored when he was a party-list representative.
House Bill 6834 seeks to impose a jail term of six months to six years for rallies held sans notice. It has been approved in the Lower House.
It was a revised version of HB 3023, which Roque filed on Aug. 15, 2016 as Kabayan party-list representative.
HB 3023 was “An Act Ensuring the Free Exercise by the People of Their Right Peaceable to Assemble and Petition the Government” – “vastly different” from the approved version, said Roque.
Roque said this bill was intended to “address the mass or concerted action that is narrowly directed at the household, not the public.”
The measure bans “those who do not seek to disseminate a message to the general public but to intrude upon the targeted resident, and to do so in an especially offensive way,” he said.
HB 3023 – coauthored by Roque and Rep. Carlos Zarate of Bayan Muna party-list – was turned into HB 6834 before it was passed in the House.
Roque said HB 6834 was submitted to the Committee on Rules on Dec. 12 last year, a month after he resigned as Kabayan Party-list representative to join the Cabinet.
“It was scheduled in the House Order of Business the following day, Dec. 13,” he said. “The bill entered the period of sponsorship on Jan. 23, and it was approved on second reading on the same day.”
Zarate has withdrawn as coauthorship since. Roque said he would have withdrawn, too, if he was still in the House.
“Nowhere in the draft substitute bill that Zarate and I agreed to did it say that a stiffer penalty would be imposed for holding public assemblies at a time and place other than that approved by the mayor,” said Roque.
“It is unfortunate that the bill I have filed that aims to protect the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances has been perverted to an unrecognizable form,” he said./PN
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