The Senate will push through with its plan to purchase its own building within the next 18 months, Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri said Wednesday.
Zubiri said that the Senate will form a small ad hoc committee headed by Senator Franklin Drilon, as finance committee head, to look into the possibility of moving the Senate to a building of its own.
He said the ad hoc committee is expected to recommend a "new home" for the upper legislative chamber within the next 18 months.
Zubiri said the move will lessen the expenses of the government in terms of rent.
The pre-martial law Senate was housed jointly with the Lower House at the old Congress building — now the National Museum — located in the very center of Manila facing Intramuros.
After the new Congress was reconstituted in the late 1980s, however, the Lower House remained at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City while the Senate moved to the Financial Center of the GSIS Building in Pasay City, which it has been renting at P200 million a year.
Zubiri said that one of the Senate’s possible options is to purchase the Manila Film Center, a national building located at the southwest end of the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex also in Pasay City and overlooking Manila Bay.
Late last year, Zubiri had said the Senate was negotiating with the CCP for the lease of the building, ruling out the option to purchase because of the government's huge budget deficit and the calamities that hit the country. (See: Senate starts negotiations for transfer to Film Center bldg)
"Maganda naman ang edifice sa Film Center, mukha siyang Lincoln Memorial (The Film Center has a beautiful edifice, it looks like the Lincoln Memorial)," he told reporters.—Kimberly Jane Tan/JV
