The chance of the Philippines to finally have a divorce law is getting dimmer each passing day.
With barely four weeks before the 19th Congress ends the year, the Senate continues to sit on the absolute divorce bill that was approved by the House of Representatives last June. The Senate has also not listed the pending divorce bills in the Upper Chamber as its priority as of November 19.
Next year will be election season and the 19th Congress will end its term in June.
Senate’s looming failure to pass a counterpart law would be a letdown for the House and divorce law advocates.
Five months ago, the Lower Chamber raised hopes that the Philippines could address growing clamor for a divorce law when it passed House Bill 9349 or the Absolute Divorce Bill on third and final reading with 131 affirmative votes, 109 negative votes and 20 abstentions.
The proposed law would allow couples to file for divorce if they have been separated for at least five years and reconciliation is deemed impossible or if they have been legally separated for more than two years.
Either husband or wife could initiate divorce. Custody of minor children would be for the court’s sound judgment.
The House bill, moreover, would not introduce no-fault divorce and, except in cases where a spouse or child is in danger, it would require a 60-day cooling-off period to give couples a last chance to reconcile.
A survey by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) early this year showed that 50 percent of Filipino adults were in favor of an absolute divorce while only 31 percent were against the idea.
The Philippines is one of the only two countries in the world that ban divorce. The other is Vatican City, the world’s smallest city-state considered as the center of Christianity.
Church data claim that as much as 78.8 percent of Filipinos are Roman Catholics.
The influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) is fiercely against a divorce law in the Philippines, saying it will have a negative impact on children and families.
When the House approved the divorce bill, CBCP openly warned senators about the dangers of “jumping onto the divorce bandwagon.”
The Senate, which received the House approved bill on June 11, could simplify the process by having its majority adopt the output by the Lower House.
Senators could also choose to come up with its own version of the divorce law which may be done through the passage of Senate Bill 2443 jointly authored by senators Risa Hontiveros, Raffy Tulfo, Robinhood Padilla, Pia Cayetano, and Imee Marcos.
But the Senate leadership appears lukewarm to the idea of absolute divorce.
Senate President Francis Escudero openly criticized the House-approved bill, saying it was “anti-poor” because the Public Attorney’s Office (PAO) was not given the authority to handle divorce petitions. Escudero said that instead of a divorce law, he would favor a legislation that would make annulment of marriage “more accessible and affordable.”
Senate president pro tempore Jinggoy Estrada shares the sentiment of Escudero. “We should look at how to make marriage annulments more accessible and their processes less taxing,” he said in a statement.Sen. Joel Villanueve, a former majority leader of the Senate, is also against divorce. “Siyempre ibang usapan yung nagbubugbugan, ibang usapan yung mala impyerno na yungtahananan. Meron pong legal na pamamaraan. Ang tawag po doon annulment… Para po saakin ang annulment dapat maging accessible to the poor, that’s all I can say,” Villanueva has said. (Of course, it’s another story if there’s domestic violence, if the house is like hell. But there are legal ways available [other than divorce]. The term is annulment… for me, annulment should just be made accessible to the poor.) —VER BERMUDEZ (Contributing Editor)
