No to charter change

I am strongly against charter change from presidential unitary to federalism parliamentary through a Constituent Assembly (Con-Ass) as proposed by President Rodrigo Duterte during his State of the Nation Address (Sona).

Majority leader Rodolfo Fariñas says the goal is the establishment of a purely parliamentary system with a prime minister as head of state.

Fariñas said that 12 states would be established: Northern Luzon, Central Luzon, Metro Manila, Southern Tagalog, Bicol, Mimparom (Mindanao, Masbate, Palawan and Romblom), Eastern Visayas, Western Visayas, Central Visayas, Northern Mindanao, western Mindanao and Bangsamoro. The said federal states would share power with the central or national government.

Once the federal parliamentary form of government would be established, the present bicameral Congress (Senate and House) would be dissolved and replaced with a unicameral legislature known as parliament. There will be no more senators or congressmen but Members of Parliament (MP). Each federal state will elect its MPs and the latter will elect the Prime Minister who becomes the head of state.

In a parliamentary system, the MPs also become Cabinet members. To have an icing on the political cake, President Duterte in his Sona talked about the French system, which is federal parliamentary but with a President. There seems to be a confusion here because the French system is NOT a federal system, according to noted PDI columnist Solita Monsod. In any event, under a real parliamentary system, power resides in the Prime Minister and the president is only a ceremonial figure.

My stand against the federal parliamentary system has always been consistent since the time of then president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who proposed for a change to a parliamentary system to perpetuate herself in power as prime minister.

The parliamentary form of government like in England, Japan and Canada is an ideal one since those countries, aside from having rich federal states, also enjoy a stable two-party system. But here, many regions are very poor, and our politicians easily change parties as easily as they change their barong Tagalogs. The socalled “super-majority” in Congress is but a coalition of super balimbings who always flock to the winning side.

Under a parliamentary form, the Prime Minister could not be removed by impeachment but by a noconfidence vote of the MPs. Given the present state of massive turncoatism, and the rotten system of political patronage, it is almost impossible to remove the Prime Minister because there will be no more term limits. This promotes more political dynasties and strengthen the existing ones, and in more backward “federal states,” feudalism and warlordism will flourish.

The presidential unitary, with all its imperfections, is the better system than the federal parliamentary. At least, there is a fixed term of six years without reelection for the president and the people may elect candidates not of the president’s choice, as what happened during the last presidential election.

The present infirmities in the Constitution can be remedied by amendments rather than a total overhaul of the entire system by adopting a federal parliamentary form that will only perpetuate someone in power. Federal parliamentary in a dynastic, patronage-driven politics cannot solve the chronic problems of poverty, joblessness and corruption. It will only worsen our problems. Revising the Constitution drastically may just be like jumping from the frying pan to the fire.-by Democrito C. Barcenas