Bohol tops in Cha cha tally

BUOYED up by a homecourt advantage, the province of Bohol proved to all and sundry that can it hold its own even in the most difficult of situations. The current drive to solicit signatures to skirt a Senate-Malacañang deadlock in favor of charter change (Chacha) is a case in point.

Here, Gov. Erico Aumentado in his capacity as president of the League of Provinces and chair of the Union of Local Authorities of the Phils.(ULAP) is personally leading the way in placing Bohol on top of the heap toeing for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's proposal for a chacha. While the initial floated figures had Bohol officials being pushed to deliver a 55% turn-out for people's initiative, the recent reports said Bohol has topped 43% and is still counting.

Bohol still leads the pack of provinces in amassing the most number of signatures, thus the most support for a change from the present presidential bicameral form of government to a unicameral parliamentary federal government. The move for the people's initiative, although still set to meet legal obstacles has been the people's response to upend a Senate move to kill the constitutional assembly and skirt a costly constitutional convention.

In his Friday weekly program The Governor Reports aired live over all radio stations in Bohol , Gov. Aumentado announced that as of 1:30 p.m. of April 6, the League of Provinces of the Philippines (LPP) reported to him that the quick-count summary of the signatures gathered at the provincial level nationwide already stood at 8,266,371. “This is already 19.03 percent of the country's total voting population – overshooting the minimum 12 percent requirement,” he said. The constitution initially said a people's initiative may be convened as soon as 12% of the total voting population. Legal minds however imply that this still needs an enabling legislation for the people's initiative to sail through. Aumentado was further elated to report that in the national tally, Bohol topped them all at 267,526 signatures out of 618,899 registered voters or a good 43.22 percent. Next in the list is La Union who contributed 42.93 percent of its voting population. Being a small province, however, this translates into only 164,834 votes, the governor said.

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