Divorce in the Philippines
“Diverged for Divorce” The House Bill 1799, most commonly known as the Divorce Bill, has been filed on the Philippine Court since July 27, 2010 and is now a pending case in the House committee on revision of laws. For more than two years now, there has been an ongoing debate by lawyers, journalists, politicians and even religious leaders whether or not this Bill should be passed and be included in the Family Code of the Philippine Constitution. This unsettled issue has lead ta a debate in the class of E04-2013 last 11th of March 2013 with the motion, “This house believes that the Philippine Government should pass the Divorce Bill.” Both the government side and the opposition side have presented their arguments well and has defended their own stands. But before giving any verdict and concluding into a winnner, the question to ask is, “Who gave better and trustworthy arguments and has truly justified their side? Is it the Government? Or the Opposition?” To make this decision, a further examination of the debate through each speaker will be conducted in this paper. The first speaker of the debate, or more often called as the Prime Minister(PM), was Junna Obogne. She gave the aforementioned motion, stated their stand, defined the terms Philippine Government and the Divorce Bill, and set the parameters of the debate in the Philippine context and disregard arguments that include religious views. The definition of terms were explained very well in detail as the speaker was able to refer to specific laws and the terms she used were clear. As for the parameters, it is in favor to them that the arguments incorporated with religious views were removed from the debate because the the Catholic Church has been against the Divorce Bill from the beginning. Thus, this is a point to them. After the parameters, she quoted the head of Gabriela Party List talk about the history of divorce in the Philippines. This is a great source of information because the said party list has
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