CONSTITUTIONAL CONVULSIONS AND THE RATIONALITY OF A CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENETION

FORMER Chief Justice Hilario Davide has nothing but praises for the 1987 Constitution, a document prepared by a 50-member commission, all appointed by then President Corazon Aquino.

Yet, one has to ask if one can call as almost perfect a document that appears to have escaped serious editing, proofreading, and technical consistency review, that it did not Congress should vote jointly or separately when it convenes as a constituent assembly or Con-Ass.

But it is also not the fault of the Constitution if the attempt to revise it through the ConAss route is practically dead in the water, at least for now. It is also the fault of the bravado of some members of the House of Representatives, including its leadership, to preempt any amicable relationship with the senators when it declared its intention to abolish the Senate in the proposed Constitution. It also did not help that some of them insisted on a joint voting, and not a separate one.

It is simple rational thinking. How can one entice the Senate to join the effort when the intended outcome is its abolition? The psychological impact of that to a body whose members are used to lording it over like small independent republics on the strength of the logic that they have larger constituencies, with some members even having more votes than the President himself, would have been severe. How can one senator even accept the premise that his vote would be of equal weight to one elected by a small legislative district in some rural area in a remote province?

But on hindsight, maybe it is divine intervention that the Constitutional Commission chaired by former Associate Justice Cecilia Muñoz-Palma failed to clarify the manner of voting in a Con- Ass. At least, it has provided a speed bump on this route of changing the Constitution. A close perusal of the proposals coming from the House reveals that these are patently self- serving that one can just heave a sigh of relief for being spared a railroaded proceeding.

They speak of lifting term limits. There is even a proposal to exempt President, Vice President, and members of Congress, the judiciary and the constitutional commissions from paying taxes. It is here that you can at least thank the senators for their otherwise also self-serving acts of self-preservation for providing the inertia that stopped the Cha-cha train.

I shudder at the thought of the proposals that could emanate from a self-serving Congress that would have mangled the principle behind a Constitution. It would have been easy for them to frame it no longer as a document that limits the power of the state, and turn it into a fundamental law that expanded the state’s privileges.

There is no doubt that the 1987 Constitution requires major revision. But it should not be left in the hands of the current Congress through a Con-Ass. The current