Slippery slope towards total domination
THE continued play-acting of our national leaders to push for Charter change (Cha-cha) serves only to confirm people’s suspicion they are up to something they badly need to do to cement their political and economic domination of Philippine society. Or else, why are they heedless of the growing genuine people’s opposition to their flagrantly fake People’s Initiative (PI)?
If they have pure intentions, why are they shunning the genuinely democratic process of conducting a plebiscite and of electing sectoral delegates to a constitutional convention? Why did they buy signatures to make it appear like it’s the people’s will that they do the Cha-cha themselves as a constituent assembly?
We know everything moves slowly in this country, justice, poverty reduction, universal education, comprehensive health system… everything. Why not another slow process of changing the nation’s charter? Why the rush? Why does Cha-cha have to be done before the next elections?
Their overweening insistence on changing only economic provisions is a dead giveaway of their dark motives. They insist we should make ownership of property/business open to foreigners. But why does Vietnam, a communist state that owns everything and does not recognize private ownership, get more foreign investments than the Philippines?
In Vietnam foreign investors have to deal with only one agency which applies laws governing business contracts consistently, that’s why. What holds back foreign investors is not that they cannot own a business here. They are hesitant to make more than minimal investment here for the plain and simple truth that their stay and the returns on their investment depend on the fluctuating rate of official greed and corruption. So many agency heads need to sign contracts and God only knows how much their signatures cost.
Their insistence on foreign ownership is nothing more than a ploy to head us off their true intention, that of changing the form of government. Yet, in the event of that, the country will get even less investments as officials become more arrogant and greedier in the exercise of their unlimited terms of office.
Cha-cha is the least of a poor people’s worries today. Cha-cha initiated by the elite and meant to improve the situation of only the elite is even less of a concern. The only Cha-cha that should happen is one that people ask through a plebiscite and is done by a constitutional convention of duly elected sectoral delegates. Above all, it should be one that makes us a true democracy and rejects the elitist one we are groaning under.
Leaving Cha-cha to the elite is a slippery slope towards total domination of ordinary folks by the elite. If prevention is better than cure, then what we need now is people power to prevent that from happening. People power to oust the elite from their entrenched positions of power after their kind of Cha-cha will be a lot harder to do. /