Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez said Tuesday he remained hopeful that senators would heed the clamor for the passage of the bill on the dissolution of broken marriages.
“I know for a fact that a lot of people are trapped in failed marriages”•they have been wallowing in misery for quite some time. The government has to address that,” Alvarez said.
He made his statement after President Rodrigo Duterte defended him from allegations that his filing of the marriage dissolution bill was self-serving, saying as a member of the Manobo tribe Alvarez could legally take as many wives as he could.
Duterte also said Alvarez’s roots and advocacy had made him a target of media attacks.
On March 19, the House of Representatives approved on third and final reading House Bill 7303 or “An Act Institutionalizing Absolute Divorce and Dissolution of Marriage in the Philippines.”
But several senators have vowed not to support the bill’s passage.
Alvarez said there were persistent calls for the enactment of the marriage dissolution law, which would provide a cheaper and faster alternative to annulment that normally takes years and costs P250,000 and up to finalize.
Alvarez says the majority of the messages he receives in his social media account are appeals for the enactment of the annulment bill.
The polling group Social Weather Stations earlier conducted a survey on March 25 to 28, 2017, and Dec. 8 to 16, 2017, and both showed 53 percent of Filipinos were for legalizing divorce in the Philippines.
The results of several consultations the House has conducted abroad on the marriage dissolution bill also reveal that the majority of the Filipino workers abroad support the proposed law.
Alvarez said Senate President Vicente Sotto III, in a meeting in Malacañang on May 28, expressed hope that the Senate could act on the pending bill before the end of the 17th Congress.
But while Alvarez remained optimistic the Senate would tackle a counterpart of his marriage dissolution bill, he stopped short of openly urging them to do so out of respect for a co-equal body. “Inter-parliamentary courtesy,” Alvarez said.
