DAVAO CITY — As it is holding only three session days per week, Congress has only 18 session days left from August 17 for the interpellation, period of amendments, voting and bicameral conference on the substitute bills on the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) — HB 5811 in the House of Representatives and SB 2894 in the Senate – before the plenary debates on the budget begins on September 28. Cagayan de Oro Rep. Rufus Rodriguez, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on the BBL told the Metro Manila-based radio station DZBB Sunday morning that he hopes his colleagues would be present on August 17 “until we finish this bill for the second and third reading in the middle of September” because according to the calendar of the Committee on Rules, the 2016 budget will be debated in the plenary by September 28. “There will be no more debates (on) BBL, so therefore the real deadline (for the passage of the BBL) is on or before Sept. 28. Dapat tapos na sa (this should be finished in the) House,” Rodriguez said. MindaNews counted only 18 session days from Mondays to Wednesdays between August 17 and September 23, a Wednesday. Congress goes on recess from October 10 to November 2. Within the recess is the filing of certificates of candidacy on October 12 to 16, by those who are running for elective posts in the synchronized elections of May 9, 2016. If no BBL is passed before Congress goes on recess, elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the regional body that would be deemed abolished once the Bangsamoro Transition Authority takes over after the ratification of the BBL, will proceed as scheduled. At the Senate, the period of interpellation is scheduled to begin on August 17. Both substitute bills — in the House and the Senate – are being criticized for paving the way for a Bangsamoro that will be “less than the ARMM that it seeks to replace.” At the House of Representatives, the period of interpellation for HB 5811 started on June 2 and was suspended on June 10 when Congress adjourned sine die. By then only eight of 38 representatives who had signed up, had finished their interpellation. Interpellation was supposed to resume on August 4 but there was no quorum on August 4, 5, 10 and 11. (MindaNews)