Let’s start the ball rolling for federalism

As expected, only a few thousand yellow supporters (they were mostly wearing black, including former president Aquino III) showed up at the EDSA Shrine for the 31st anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolt and we expected this to happen. What we didn’t expect to happen this year was a parallel rally held to support President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte. From some mainstream news report, I gathered that more than 200,000 people graced that rally. This is how celebrating the EDSA Revolt has change 31 years later. Why is this so?

What this country needed in the last 31 years is political change, a change from personality politics to real political parties that live on their ideology. 31-years ago, I was a staunched anti-Marcos advocate and therefore pro-Cory Aquino. But that changed when the late President Cory Aquino enacted the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), while exempting her family’s Hacienda Luisita, through the Stock Distribution Option (SDO), which the Supreme Court later declared as “unconstitutional.”

My mother’s family lost much of land in our farm in Bohol and my mother complained to me that this is what we got for supporting the Aquino family. While this was personal to my family, this situation had families believing that the EDSA Revolt didn’t bring change to our nation… worse, what president Cory did was the worse case of conflict of interest done by a President of the land. This situation was aggravated when then P-Noy took office and had the late SC Chief Justice Renato Corona impeached and convicted for shooting down the SDO. That was an Aquino family conflict which when the Aquinos were in power, used their vast political influence to remove a sitting Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

That in a nutshell turned off many Filipinos who woke up from their pro-EDSA Revolt slumber and realized that what was happening to our nation was a political fight between the Aquinos and the Marcoses, which had been going on since the 1970s. Many Filipinos I talked to felt that it was time to move on… get out of the kind of politics that came out of the EDSA Revolt, which stagnated with our current political system of patronage.

During the presidential campaign in 2016, the Filipino voter only had limited choices to vote for the usual patronage politicians represented by former DILG Sec. Manuel “Mar” Roxas, Sen. Grace Poe, Vice-Pres. Jejomar Binay and Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago. The odd-man out was that small town Mayor from Davao City, Mayor Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte, who talked with a foul mouth and therefore did not have any political finesse, and had no political machinery and was considered by many as not Presidentiable.

Well, you already know who is the President today and it’s Duterte who won by one of the largest margins despite the use or misuse of the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) or the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) which today remains uninvestigated. So in the end, the victory of President Duterte was a protest vote against 31 years of political patronage that failed to address the needs of the ordinary Filipino people, like solving our decades old poverty, corruption and worse, something that we ordinary folks did not realize that was happening to the Philippines, that today we have three million Filipinos hooked on illegal drugs and the nation have become a narco state.

A month before the May Election, Presidential candidate Duterte spoke at the National Convention of Motorcycle Clubs at the Plaza Independencia in Cebu City and I could sense that the more foul his speech, the more people regarded him as a rock star. I ambushed interviewed him backstage and I asked him about his views on Federalism and he told me that he was dead serious in changing the Constitution and changing our political system into a Federal form of government and I was totally sold to support him.

So in short, DU-30 brings a fresh hope that most Filipinos my age thought the EDSA Revolt would have given us 31 years ago. But the road to Federalism will be littered with stumbling blocks and one I didn’t expect came from no less than Vice-President Leni Robredo who said,

“Perhaps to many, federalism may be a plausible solution to our country’s problems. But what form? Which model? There seems to be confusion. But there is something more important to consider, a successful federal government is dependent on certain factors – local government units should have the capacity and competence to handle much authority and that systems of patronage do not dominate local politics. Practical experience tells us that we enjoy neither. Many of our LGUs are poorly positioned for greater responsibility. And patronage politics continues to hold sway, influencing the outcomes of elections, making public office the business of dynasties.” The battle lines have been drawn and it now seems that the fight against federalism is led by the Liberal Party (LP) thru VP Robredo’s opposition. Those of us who want federalism… let’s start the ball rolling! * * *