Let's resist any tinkering with the Bill of Rights

To tinker with what is right and to experiment with what may be wrong would be too high a risk for our nation to take at this stage in our history.

While we are all for charter change, we strongly oppose any attempt to tinker with the Bill of Rights. If it ain't broken, why fix it? We are only supporting an amendment of the fundamental law for two reasons. First, to adopt a federal parliamentary government, with a unicameral legislature and which shall accommodate a Bangsamoro autonomy without compromising the national integrity of our sovereignty as one state. Second, to modify certain economic provisions of the charter to give impetus to Philippine competitive edge in a global economy, but not surrender control over our national patrimony.

We object to diluting, diminishing, and abridging our individual human rights and liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights. We shall resist any move to deprive us of basic rights to due process and equal protection of the laws. We should safeguard our rights to privacy, freedoms of speech and expression, of the press, of association, of peaceful assembly, and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. We should oppose any move to strip us of our free exercise of religion and be ready to fight for our right to abode, to travel, to information on matters of public concern, and access to courts.

We should defend our fundamental freedoms, including the Miranda rights, the right against unreasonable search, seizures, and arrests, the right to remain silent, the right to counsel, the right to bail, the right to habeas corpus, to speedy trial, our right against selfincrimination, and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty by evidence beyond reasonable doubt. No policeman or soldier can barge into our homes and plant evidence to make us own crimes that we did not commit. Above all, we cannot be subjected to summary executions and extra-judicial killings, because we cannot be deprived of our life, liberty and property without due process. We cannot be subjected to cruel and inhumane punishment.

Con-ass or Con-con should not be used as an alibi to tinker with the basic human rights of the masses that our forefathers earned for us, by long and painful struggles when they fought and died in Mactan, Balintawak, Tirad Pass, and in Bataan and Corregidor. We should be prepared to shed blood or to die like our heroes in defense of our freedom and democracy, liberties, and human rights. The trapos in Congress cannot just delete the dictum that sovereignty resides in the people and all authority emanates from them. No leader however popular, no party even if they claim to be the super majority, can override the power of the sovereign Filipino people.

Charter change should be a clarion call for the liberation of the people, and never a sword to slay our hopes and aspirations. We should stand as one in defense of our rights. No one else will do that for us. Not even those who claim to be our representatives but are now poised to rob us of our freedom. We shall not allow them that. We shall defend every inch of our democracy. No ifs and no buts.