Protracted

Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo correctly insists the two chambers of Congress vote separately should the legislature decide to convene itself into a constituent assembly for Charter change. The consequence of that, however, is the process could take years to complete.

Following the logical course of that position on separate voting, Arroyo insists that no substantive discussions could be held in the House until both chambers have properly convened as a constituent assembly. It would be an uneconomical exercise, she says.

Therefore, until the two chambers agree to become a constituent assembly, there is nothing on the table yet. All talk of mounting a public information campaign to generate support for federalism is premature. The legislators will serve the country better using their time and energy discussing tariffs on rice imports and the rationalization of corporate incentives that created an uneven playing field for businesses.

Senator Koko Pimentel takes the matter a step further. He says that even if the two chambers agree to constitute themselves into a constituent assembly, they do not necessarily have to physically convene to discuss Charter change. They can discuss separately and, as it happens with ordinary legislation, reconcile differences in their respective versions by way of a bicameral committee.

Both Arroyo and Pimentel are advocates of federalism. But they are both also respectful of institutional propriety.

The 1987 Constitution makes it very difficult to introduce alterations in the basic law of the land. Constitutionalism, however, dictates we accept those difficulties and work with them.

Distrust

Speaker Arroyo’s position on the process of realizing Charter change departs radically from that of her predecessor.

When he led the House, Pantaleon Alvarez basically wanted to railroad the process. He wanted a draft charter prepared at the House and rammed down the throats of the senators by means of the two chambers voting as one. In that scenario, the vastly superior number of congressmen overwhelms the votes of the senators.

Alvarez even proposed the cancellation of next year’s elections. This is the way of a bully. It is a patently unconstitutional proposal. The strong political backlash this provoked led to his ouster.

The Senate reacted to Alvarez by basically shutting down the hatches and vowing to defeat his tactics. When the possibility was raised that the erstwhile House Speaker could commandeer Congress while it was convened in joint session to listen to the President’s State of the Nation Address, the senators threatened to walk out.

Such was the level of distrust Alvarez fostered between the two chambers. The distrust affected all aspects of legislative work.

Consequently, the Senate’s attitude toward Charter change moved from cool to hostile. Some senators would not even listen to proposals to change our form of government. At least one of them declared the effort to introduce constitutional reform was all but ready for the crematorium.

The attitude of most senators is understandable. Not only did Alvarez and his gang threaten to overrun the Upper Chamber by way of joint voting, the constituent assembly could possibly abolish the Senate as an institution. The senators began digging the appropriate trenches to frustrate the effort.

Alvarez’ strategy, if one may call it that, was futile. Worse than that, it was counterproductive.

Now we will have to devote time and effort to healing the poisoned relations between the House of Representatives and the Senate. Speaker Arroyo has taken the initiative toward such healing.

The Senate may be far fewer in the number of its members. But the institution occupied a hallowed place in our political history. Alvarez’ effort to effectively exclude the Senate from the process of Charter change was simply uncouth.

Journey

I like the perspective Rep. Joey Salceda contributes to the whole federalism question. He described it as a “journey.”

That is the best way to imagine this process. It might take years, even generations, to accomplish this goal. But it is, indeed, unseemly to want federalism imposed from above.

Federalism is about empowering the regions. Those regions require the institutional capacity to make empowerment work. If we empower them without first building up local capacity, this will be tantamount to putting the cart before the horse. It can only result in grief.

Consider federalism the last step of a long journey. To get there, we have to strengthen institutions of local governance, prepare our revenue system to accommodate a larger share for the regions and reform the way we do politics to prevent the regions from being overrun by local political lords.

Our own economic managers are worried over the consequences federalism might bring to our fiscal position. We should not jump into the pool without first training to swim. To do so will be suicidal.

Nothing, not even the existing Constitution, prevents us from taking the first steps toward the goal of federalism. The objective should inspire all the complex institutional reforms to prepare for that eventuality.

The federal arrangement is completely unfamiliar to us. The panoply of local and national institutions of governance we evolved over the decades was not geared toward a federated arrangement. There is a real possibility that the gap between the poorer and the richer regions could actually widen if we rush headlong into this experiment in regional self-government.

There is really no hurry. The life of the Republic is not immediately threatened by the current unitary format.

On the other hand, a badly thought-out and hurriedly executed experiment, undertaken with methods that disrupt governance, could make us a cauldron of squabbling quasi-states.