Senate and House sleepwalking into war in 2025 elections
Neither chamber has the wit to see the enormous political stakes involved should they frontally clash in the hustings next year.
No legislator, be he representative or senator, seems able to comprehend the obstacles they are creating for their plans to run in the legislative elections next year.
They foolishly imagine that by engaging in a rumble now, they will become more appealing to the electorate. The hard truth is more sobering. Every senator running for reelection to the Senate will have incumbent representatives and local officials working against them in the campaign next year. And every representative running for reelection will have incumbent senators and parties looking to field candidates against incumbents in their districts or home provinces.
Our electoral politics is mindlessly mutating into a zero-sum game among our politicians, a contest in which one side’s loss becomes the other side’s gain.
The 2025 poll contest will be a midterm election like no other in the nation’s history. It will be riotous and chaotic. The nation may find itself in crisis as a result.
How did our politicians and the nation fall into this ditch? Why is no one trying to bridge the conflict between the chambers?
To understand the hullabaloo, I asked a former official of our barangay for information about the people’s initiative petition that ignited the problem.
She shared with me a piece of paper that embodies the text of the petition. It says:
“We are aware that the petition shall be filed with the Commission on Election[s] for the proposal to amend Article XVII, Section 1(1) of the 1987 Constitution, through people’s initiative. The amendment to Article XVII, Section 1(1) shall be as follows:
Section 1. Any amendment to, or revision of the Constitution may be proposed by: (1) The Congress upon a vote of three-fourths of all its members, voting jointly, at the call of the Senate president or speaker of the House of Representatives …”
There is one additional paragraph, saying: “We fully understand the petition, its rationale, its advantages, as well as its consequences and effects, as we have read the full text and contents thereof, which were explained using our dialect or in a language known to us. We know that our signatures constitute our approval of the proposed constitutional amendment and consent to the filing of the instant petition. Further, we hereby authorize Atty. Anthony A. Abad, et al. to cause the filing of the petition and perform any and all acts necessary in furtherance thereof.”
The proposed amendment looks innocent and fully constitutional. In fact, it is a firecracker calculated to shake up our system of government and political institutions.
The clause, “voting jointly” is ominous and far-reaching.
It sent me searching for Fr. Joaquin Bernas’ 2003 book, “A Living Constitution: The Abbreviated Estrada Presidency” (Ateneo de Manila University Press, Quezon City, 2003). He devotes in it a whole chapter to the subject of constitutional amendments and revisions.
Fr. Bernas covered all the bases in his discussion of the issue. Nothing escaped his scrutiny. He was himself a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission which drafted the 1987 Constitution:
First on the question whether the two houses of Congress should vote as one body or separately, his opinion is categorical: the body proposing amendments is Congress, a bicameral body. Meeting in a joint session did not mean that the two houses become a unicameral body. Meeting in joint session does not mean that the two houses lose their individual autonomy in order to be submerged into one body.
In considering constitutional amendments, Congress does not form itself into a different animal in order to propose amendments to the Constitution.
Unlike in the 1935 Constitution, the two houses of Congress under the 1987 Constitution are not commanded to meet in a joint session. In the absence of such a command, the meaning is clear, they do their thing the way they normally do their thing — separately, as two autonomous bodies.
Further, when the Constitution wants them to meet in a joint session, the Charter says so expressly or implicitly. The Constitution expressly commands them to meet in joint session when they vote to declare a state of war and when they canvass the votes for president and vice president in an election.
The Constitution also commands the two houses to meet in joint session when they listen to the president’s report on the state of the nation, and when they vote jointly to override a declaration of martial law or a suspension of the privilege.
Finally, Fr. Bernas makes final point on the reason for opting for a bicameral congress: “It is precisely to allow the two to check each other, neither house may allow itself to be gobbled up by the other — even if the other has a yawning insatiable maw, the Senate, if it is to maintain its dignity and honor and fidelity to its popular mandate, must not allow itself to be swallowed by the larger house. To do so is to betray a public trust.”
Senate manifesto vs people’s initiative
There is therefore substantive reason for the Senate’s reaction to the proposed constitutional amendments through a people’s initiative. We can understand why our senators reacted with alarm and expressed their stand collectively.
On Jan. 9, 2024, all of the country’s 24 senators issued and signed a manifesto on rejecting the push for Charter change via a people’s initiative as they warned of a no-election scenario and amendments that are seen to “erode the nation as we know it.”
The manifesto said senators respect and recognize the people’s right to demand changes in the 1987 Constitution, but warned against “any sinister and underhanded attempt to change the Constitution by exploiting our democratic process under the guise of a people’s initiative.”
“While it seems simple, the goal is apparent — to make it easier to revise the Constitution by eliminating the Senate from the equation,” they added.
They said it would destabilize the system of checks and balances, leaving the Senate’s 24 votes insignificant against those of the 316 members of the House of Representatives.
Allowing such a movement could be a prelude to further amendments “or even an overhaul of our entire Constitution,” the senators warned.
“This singular and seemingly innocuous change in the Constitution will open the floodgates to a wave of amendments and revisions that will erode the nation as we know it. To allow joint voting will destroy the delicate balance on which our hardwon democracy rests,” they added.
The senators said the upper chamber will be left powerless to stop even the most radical proposals — they cannot protect lands from foreign ownership and stop the removal of term limits or a noelection scenario in 2025 or 2028.
“It is ridiculous that the Senate, a co-equal chamber of the House, which is needed to pass even local bills, will have a dispensable and diluted role in Charter change — the most monumental act of policymaking concerning the highest law in the land,” they said.
Will SC be asked to block PI?
Opposition leaders have also joined the move to block the people’s initiative. Sen. Ana Theresia “Risa” Hontiveros said that there are groups ready to take the issue to the Supreme Court to stop the “doubtful” signature campaign.
Hontiveros, who spoke at a press briefing in Cebu City on January 21 where she was joined by former senator Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan and human rights lawyer Chel Diokno, cited reports that social assistance programs were even used to persuade people to sign the people’s initiative petition. This will be part of the Senate inquiry that will start soon, she said.
Pirma is back
At the other end, there was intriguing news that the notorious 1987 Pirma campaign was returning to haunt the nation.
On Jan. 9, 2024, television viewers were bombarded with the repeated airing of a TV advertisement that sought to discredit the Constitution and renew a 1987 campaign during the Ramos administration for the amendment of the Constitution through a people’s initiative.
It came to light that the advertisement had been paid for by the Gana Atienza Avisado law firm on behalf of its client, the People’s Initiative for Reform Modernization and Action (Pirma), known for its unsuccessful attempt to remove constitutional term limits on elected officials, including the president and the vice president, in 1997.
Reporting on the advertisement, the Panay News said:
“Harping on the theme ‘EDSApwera’ (a play on the vernacular ‘etsapuwera,’ or excluded), the ad claimed that the Constitution had failed to deliver on its promises to improve education and agriculture,” saying any gain made was felt only by big businesses and monopolies.
The commercial had actors representing various sectors in a “frozen” state — in the classroom, in the market and in the offices — an apparent metaphor for their slow progress.
Public outrage
In an interview with the Inquirer, the law firm’s senior partner, Alex Avisado, did not give a direct answer when asked whether Pirma was also behind the current signature campaign pushing for a people’s initiative.
The original Pirma movement was founded by Jose Almonte, the former national security adviser of the Ramos administration.
Pirma proposed a shift to a parliamentary system of government and the lifting of term limits on elected officials, which would have allowed Ramos to run for a second term.
The campaign sparked public outrage with the political opposition accusing Ramos of being behind it, but he disowned the initiative.
The Supreme Court unanimously shot down the Pirma initiative, with eight justices saying there was no enabling law for it, and six others ruling that the petition was defective.
When the new people’s initiative goes to the high court for adjudication, this may very well be the ruling again. There is still no enabling law for a people’s initiative.