Now it's cha-cha via ConCom

THE weekend saw two headlinegrabbing pronouncements by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez. I fully support one. I am bewildered by the other.

Let's examine the easy one first. Alvarez wants the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) and the position of barangay kagawad abolished. I like that. It is long overdue.

The SK is a failed experiment. It was supposed to prepare a young corps of dedicated, incorruptible and passionate leaders for the future. It only succeeded in robbing the youth of their idealism.

It was not their fault, make no mistake about that. Their elders, whose wheeling-dealing and unprincipled politics they were supposed to supplant with their own refreshingly selfless brand, never gave them a chance. I even doubt if the SK was conceived without sin. It was never intended to train any other young children for future leadership but theirs.

Alvarez is right. Leave the children to their studies.

He is also on target about doing away with the barangay kagawad. They're as useless as an appendix. Pray tell, what significant function does a kagawad perform that makes him indispensable in barangay governance?

I have misgivings about postponing the barangay elections because it unjustly grants the incumbents longer leash to inflict their incompetence on the people. I have looked forward to transferring my voter's registration to Cebu City so I can vote for a new and hopefully better performing Sambag 1 village head. But I'm willing to wait if that is what it takes to cleanse the local government structure of all unnecessary appendages.

And now to Alvarez's second declaration. In Cebu where he presided over the defection of hundreds of Cebuano politicians to the PDP-Laban, the speaker told the Cebu Daily News that an executive order (EO) is being readied for signature by Presudent Rodrigo Duterte to create a constitutional commission (ConCom) that would study and amend the constitution.

I am perplexed because the constitutional provision on revisions and amendments recognizes only the following three modes of amending the constitution: through a constitutional convention or a constituent assembly or by people's initiative. There is no mention of a ConCom. It is unheard of throughout Sections 1 to 4 of Article XVII of the 1987 constitution.

To his credit, Duterte wanted a convention. His political allies, however, managed to persuade him to let Congress do the job instead since a convention would be expensive.

Now Alvarez is saying that they have no time to study (they do not even have time to pass a law creating the ConCom, thus the resort to the EO) so they want a learned group of individuals to draft the revisions themselves and submit it to Congress for imprimatur before it is submitted to a plebiscite.

What I see is a Congress unwilling (scared?) to entrust to an independent body composed of duly-elected delegates the function of proposing amendments and revisions to the constitution but is too lazy to do it themselves. So they propose to engage the services of another group to do the hard work for them while retaining control of the amendment process by requiring the submission of the draft to them instead of directly to the voters.

The constitution does not expressly prohibit Congress from hiring people to work for them. But since this particular engagement does not relate to the performance of a regular function of the legislature but of a special one, shouldn't they meet as a constitutional assembly first and then hire the ConCom as consultants?

But why resort to this convoluted process when the constitution provides for a simple one? Is there something that worries them which they are reluctant to tell us?