Semi-presidential system will fail

Recently, I attended a forum organized by the Ateneo School of Government titled “Federalism 101.” One of the speakers was Department of Interior and Local Governments (DILG) Undersecretary Jonathan Malaya, who is also the head of the PDP-Laban committee on drafting the new constitution.

One of the features of the PDP-Laban draft constitution is the shift from presidential to semi-presidential form of government wherein the President and the Prime Minister will share certain responsibilities in running the country.

For the information of everyone, it won’t be the first time that the Philippines will use semi-presidential form of government like in France and Russia. During the Martial Law era of Ferdinand Marcos, he had a designated Prime Minister in the person of Cesar Virata.

The experience was negative because power was still in the hands of Marcos and Virata never functioned as what ought to be in a semi-presidential system.

In 1986 when Marcos called a snap election, he restored the position of Vice President for succession purposes. When Corazon Aquino took power after Edsa I, the country had to revert to pure presidential form of government.

One of the features of the proposed semi-presidential form of government is that the President will remain the Commander-in-Chief and he/she will serve as Chief Diplomat where he/she would be the representative of the country in international summits while the Prime Minister will run the day-to-day affairs of the government.

Sounds ideal for any leader who wants lesser day-to-day responsibilities while still holding executive power.

Another peculiar feature of the proposed form of government is that the President appoints his/her chosen Prime Minister and the Parliament will simply confirm or reject the appointment. I think that with the proposed setup the Prime Minister would become a beholden to the President like the last time we used the semi-presidential form of government.

There are disadvantages with the semi-presidential system, however.

First would be the emergence of a “Dual Executive” where the President might usurp the functions of the Prime Minister and vice-versa. The prime example, as Paul Hutchcroft pointed out, was in East Timor where the President had the control of the armed forces while the Prime Minister had the control of the police and the result was a chaos when the President and Prime Minister disagreed on issues.

Second would be the confusion about responsibilities where both the Parliament and the Executive would be confused as to which branch is accountable to the other and vice-versa.

I therefore say that a semi-presidential system, if applied it for the second time, would fail. The path we should take is to adopt the pure parliamentary form of government.-- Joseph Solis Alcayde