Iloilo City redistricting bill hurdles House plenary

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

 

The House of Representatives approved a bill seeking to add another congressional district to Iloilo City.

Voting 207 for, zero against, and 6 abstentions, the House plenary ratified on Tuesday House Bill 3074 authored by Iloilo City lone district Rep. Julienne Baronda.

HB 3074 seeks to reapportion the districts of Jaro, La Paz and Mandurriao to one congressional district while the other legislative district would be composed of the City Proper, Molo, Arevalo and Lapuz.

The bill called the reapportioning of the composition of the City Council with 16 regular members – eight each from the two new legislative districts.

In a statement, Baronda said the additional legislative district in the city will mean another “louder voice in Congress, which lives up to the principle of proportional representation.”

“With two legislators, we can expect more projects and programs from the national government, a doubled effort to woo investors and more benefits for the people,” she added.

Baronda’s co-authors in the bill are Reps. Michael Gorriceta (2^nd district, Iloilo), Raul Tupas (5^th district, Iloilo), and Stephen Paduano (ABANG LINGKOD Partylist).

A counterpart bill in Senate is needed to complete the city’s redistricting bid.

The move to reapportion the city’s legislative district began in the terms of former congressmen Raul Gonzalez Jr. (House Bill 4256 in the 14th Congress) and Jerry Treñas, (House Bills 12919 and 3474 in the 15th and 17th Congresses).

But the city’s failure to meet the population requirement (250,000 per district) stymied earlier redistricting moves.

The 2015 census indicated that Iloilo City’s population was 447,992.

Baronda is confident that the city’s population would have ballooned to 500,000 five years after.

The lady lawmaker cited a Supreme Court decision stipulating that while “Section 5(3), Article VI of the Constitution requires a city to have a minimum population of 250,000 to be entitled to a representative, it does not have to increase its population by another 250,000 to be entitled to an additional district.”

She also cited the case of Marikina City in Metro Manila which was granted two legislative districts even though its population was only more than 420,000.