The federal railroad
Apart from choosing local officials and 12 senators, voters in 2019 may have to decide in a plebiscite if proposed changes in the 1987 Constitution are acceptable or not.
Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, in a CNN Philippines report, said he hoped the plebiscite would be held separately from the midterm elections “so the public can focus on its merits.” Puno heads the 22-member committee that studied possible revisions to the Constitution, all of whom voted yesterday for the draft charter. They’ll present this to President Rodrigo Duterte next week.
There’s little doubt that the proposed changes will gain support among Duterte’s allies who have the upper hand in the House of Representatives. Remember how swiftly they approved last January a resolution convening Congress into a constituent assembly? A more sensible Senate stalled those shenanigans, but the Senate is under different leadership now.
How many legislators would bother to bring these proposed changes to their districts for a meaningful discussion? Most of our lawmakers do not have a habit of consulting their constituents; most do not even take the time to explain how they voted on important bills and why.
Yet on the matter of constitutional change, we must press our legislators and other informed sources for more detailed information. Three in four Filipinos did not know about the federal system of government, the Social Weather Stations (SWS) found out in a survey last March. As many as 34 percent said they were undecided on whether a federal government would work for the country. That’s almost as large a group as the 37 percent who agree with the shift to federal.
So many questions need to be raised on the proposed amendments that it would be foolhardy for the Lower House to rush the process. For instance, wouldn’t it be more prudent to amend the Local Government Code and give provinces, cities, and towns a larger share of tax resources, for now, rather than create another layer of government by forming regional states? Another question raised in a forum in Cebu hosted last month by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. had to do with the “overwhelming appointive powers” the Puno-led committee proposed to give the President.
President Duterte’s most avid supporters might not question such overwhelming powers, but recent history should give us pause. With the 1973 Constitution, Ferdinand Marcos demolished term limits on the presidency that had been set in the 1935 Constitution. That, among other factors, made possible the disaster of the constitutional dictatorship that followed.
Charter change may be necessary, but rushing it would be the utmost recklessness.