Can the senators repeat the 1991 vote of epic defiance?

IN today’s political sphere, the most challenged political leader right now is definitely Senate President Juan Miguel “Migs” Zubiri, whose early ambition was to be a Bukidnon-based agriculturist but was pushed by favorable political circumstances to the power perch he now occupies. I will explain the tight political situation where he is in right now.

Mr. Zubiri sensed very early on that the so-called people’s initiative (PI) of the House of Representatives is a political scam with two agendas: short-cut the process of constitutional amendments and make the Senate an unwilling accomplice in the Charter change (Cha-cha) effort, even if that entails dragging the senators into the Chacha muck until they drop all resistance. It was in this context that Zubiri deftly moved to initiate the Senate’s version of Cha-cha: Resolution of Both Houses 6 (RBH 6). The RBH 6 limited the proposed changes to a few economic restrictions still in the Constitution but vowed to make its political provisions off-limits. Despite its full name, the resolution was Mr. Zubiri’s way of telling the House that the PI won’t wash and Cha-cha has to be done the Senate’s way.

The House, on paper, is likewise committed to sticking to the promised limited economic amendments, but nobody trusts the chamber. There is this real fear that once the amendment process starts, the House will proceed to tackle term limits and change the form of government and other political provisions. Remember that key House leaders have pending resolutions on scrapping the current term limits set by the Constitution.

Public hearings are now being held in the Senate to hear expert views on RBH 6. Senators have heard testimonies from former Supreme Court justices, former delegates to the Constitutional Commission of 1987 who were later named to the high court, and economic and legal experts. The public hearings are expected to close at the end of this month, and the drift and direction of the experts’ views is what gives Mr. Zubiri, who is deeply committed to limited Cha-cha, many sleepless nights. The reason? Most of the experts, except for the economic libertarians who want to open up everything and anything to foreign investments, either oppose the legislative intervention turning into a nonlegislative affair or are, in principle, opposed to opening up the Charter’s economic provisions.

Expert opinion is definitely not for Cha-cha.

At this stage, Zubiri’s worries are heightened by public declarations by fellow senators that a threefourths vote to pass RBH 6 is not even attainable. One of the senators least expected to oppose RBH 6, Cynthia Villar, said reining in corruption and doing more in the “ease of doing business” department were preferred by investors than Constitutional change. She worries that once the Constitution is opened up to amendments, nothing can stop the shadowy forces out to change the Charter’s political provisions. Ms. Villar is the wife of former Senate president Manuel Villar, ranked by global wealth tracker Forbes as the richest Filipino, and her statements on investor sentiments carry major weight.

By her reckoning, there are at least seven senators who will vote “No” to RBH 6, which is enough to sink it. Sen. Aquilino Pimentel 3rd has a more worrisome take: instead of a “Magnificent Seven” of “No” voters, there are actually eight senators — a “Magic Eight,” if you will — who will definitely oppose the resolution in a plenary vote. Seven or eight votes would be enough to junk RBH 6 and stop the Cha-cha steamroller for good. And Mr. Zubiri’s commitment to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to pass a limited resolution on the Constitution’s economic provisions would go down in flames.

At this point, however, everything is still fluid. Sentiments can shift. Hard-core positions against changing the economic provisions can still soften. Votes can change from nay to aye, which is normal in a political context of ever-shifting positions on the core issues of the day. The Senate leadership can nudge just two No voters to change their stand, and Mr. Zubiri can get his three-fourths vote to pass RBH 6.

The transactional nature of Philippine politics still gives Mr. Zubiri a glimmer of hope that, somehow, ways can be found to pass RBH 6.

But what if the current crop of senators wants to repeat history, vote No, and then send RBH 6 into the chamber’s archives?

On Sept. 16, 1991, the Senate made history when it rejected the 10-year extension of the Philippines-United States Military Bases Agreement by a 12-11 vote, a totally unexpected verdict in a nation where pro-US sentiment ran — and still runs — deep. “The treaty is defeated,” said then-Senate president Jovito Salonga, a Yale University-trained lawyer and leader of the anti-treaty Senate caucus, as he banged the gavel signifying a new era in Philippines-US ties. “We are out of a crippling adolescence,” said then-senator Agapito “Butz” Aquino, a brother-in-law of then-president Corazon Aquino and one of the staunchest anti-treaty senators.

The media would later call the dozen senators who voted the US military bases out as “The Magnificent 12.”

Would the RBH 6 vote turn out a “Magnificent Seven”? Or a “Magic 8”? There will be a moment of reckoning later this month.