By MAILA AGER
Senator Pia Cayetano. -- INQUIRERpic
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MANILA: Senator Pia Cayetano,
head of the Senate committee on youth,
women and family relations, is ready to engage in another controversial issue, the
proposed divorce bill, but only
after Congress is done with the
Reproductive Health measure.
“Hayaan nyong tapusin ko muna
ito tapos magbabaran tayo sa divorce, ok?” Cayetano told reporters
on Wednesday, referring to
the RH
bill now being tackled at the
bicameral conference committee.
But in May this year, the
senator openly expressed in a television
interview the need for Congress to start
debates on divorce.
“I really think it’s high time for the divorce bill,” she said when
asked if there is now a need to pursue discussion on the proposed divorce bill.
“I’ll tell you why. I’ve talked to lawyers and psychologists and
psychiatrists and it’s so traumatic to go through annulment because under our
Philippine laws, you have to blame someone, you have to say you’re incapacitated, you’re saying that this
marriage never existed, which is not true,” she said.
“Ask anyone, I’m sure at some point in time whether it’s one year or 10
years or 20 years, they loved each other, so why can’t you call it what it is?
We loved each other, something went wrong, it’s done. Why will you say it never
existed?”
Cayetano herself has been separated for the past eight years and is now
in the process of annulment.
She described the process of annulment as “terrible.”
“It’s terrible. It’s not true, it’s not humane,” she said.
”So for me,
it’s high time. Let’s bring it to the level where it should be and call it a
divorce and deal it that way.”
But Senator Ralph Recto, in a separate interview this Wednesday, joked about being against allowing divorce in the country for fear that
his wife, Batangas Governor Vilma
Santos, would use it against him.
“Kung papayagan ko yung divorce bill baka i-divorce ako ng asawa
ko,” Recto said in jest.
“Against ako natural na yung aswa ko idi-divore ako,” he added.
Turning serious, Recto said, he has yet to read the proposed measure before commenting on the issue.
“Alam mo, many of us, titulo pa lang, we’re judging bills.
That’s not
my job in the Senate. I don’t judge bills by its title, similarly you don’t
judge a book by its cover so kelangan basahin muna lahat…”he added. -- iNQUIRER
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