Suffrage, federalism
Filipinos must at all price prevent the present batch of congressmen from amending the Charter. The senators want this beneficial and most sublime form of government to fail for they sense that under a federal setup they are superfluous.
Two hundred thirty-four district representatives want to railroad federalism for then they can run for office as personalities under the unchanged inefficient election law. “Article V: Suffrage” of the Cory Constitution has only four lines. It leaves to a Commission on Elections (Comelec) to guarantee the sanctity of the ballot. But the election commissioners are powerless or unwilling to enforce their well-meant rules and the severe fines they provide.
I cannot find among the tidbits that leaked out from the Consultative Committee any attempt to formulate a suffrage neither for the federal parliament nor for the 18 regional parliaments. When will that draft be released in its entirety to the public?
Elections are the centerpiece of democracy. It must therefore be anchored in the constitution. In a country with a history of election fraud the new constitution must remedy this arch-evil of democracy. As long as names of personalities are on the ballot, dynasties will rule the nation be it unitary or federal alike and with or without an anti-dynasty provision.
Names of political parties with a program for the nation’s respective regions must be written on the ballot. Genuine parties must be barangay-based mass parties so that common citizens will also have a chance to contribute to nation building and climb up the echelon of a party organization with chapters on city, province and regional levels.
Consequently, a party law must be part of the constitution. The only attempt to bring in a party law is Professor Abueva’s CMFP draft constitution. Article IX “Political Parties” comprises one page, by far not explicit enough to institute a viable parliamentary system.
The chance to shift to a viable style of federalism among the “panoramic range of federal styles” (Mar Roxas) lies in the hands of the electorate in May 2019. They must reject the Con-Ass proposal in the plebiscite and vote for unknown names on the ballot. If they vote for reelectionists, they can forget a future in prosperity and social peace. That applies as well to the four supposed provinces around the National Capital Region that can stand on their own. Look at the millions of shanties, drug lords, dealers and loiterers there. Prosperity? Peace?
In 2014, then chief justice Reynato Puno said: “If democracy has not fully flowered in the Philippines it is because the people have been betrayed by some of their so-called representatives time and time again.”
I say: The people have accepted to be betrayed by that “small but powerful cabal of political and economic elite” (Puno). That is all the more astonishing for the people have the constitutional right to choose their leaders: All power emanates from the sovereign people. A dream as long as elections are decided by vote selling.
It is to be seen if the constitution proposal that bears his name contains a viable party law and a democratic election law. --Erich Wannemacher, German expat, Lapu-Lapu City