Federalism? Not now

Aplank in the platform of government of President Rodrigo Duterte during the campaign for the 2016 polls was the shift from current unitary system to federal through constitutional revision. This gained a significant support from provinces that felt being left out from resource or revenue sharing with the national government.

The debate about shifting to a federal system is nothing new because the framers of the 1899 Malolos Constitution were already eager to devolve national government’s functions to the local level. Of course, the Malolos Constitution was not enforced due to American colonization but the federalism debate has not faded because of regional disparities and conflicting interests.

A federal form of government is attractive. It has been in use by several countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia, and Germany. Its proponents believe that only by shifting to federalism can we achieve better relationship between the national and local governments.

They forget, however, that the 1991 Local Government Code already provides for the devolution of some national government functions to the local level, like in the aspects of health and education. The intention of the 1991 Local Government Code is to gradually devolve national government functions to the local level over time while avoiding the immediate costs of shifting from the unitary system to federal.

Federalism proponents should also consider the experience of countries before they adopted the federal form of government. The United States, for example, was born into a federation of 13 original states. In other words, a federation is a state among states, something that we don’t have in our country right now unless we further devolve and pattern our country like Spain or Great Britain.

There is the danger that if we don’t carefully apply the federal form of government, what happened in Malaysia would happen to us. Singapore was booted out of the Malaysian Federation over Chinese-Malay ethnic differences. That could surface in our country, with the Moro people, if we recklessly go federal. The possibility of secessionism should be avoided in our country if we adopt the federal form of government.

In our country, there is always the danger that political dynasties will further proliferate under a federal form of government because state governments will now be free to legislate term limits without the national government’s oversight function.

The ironic thing about federalism is that the already rich areas like for example the National Capital Region (NCR) or Central Visayas would further enrich themselves at the expense of other regions.

These aforementioned dangers should be enough to make us wary of the motive of federal proponents like Aquilino Pimentel Jr. in pushing for a shift to a federal form of government without considering its viability to regions or states.

I have nothing against federalism but we have to be careful in rolling out a system that has not been fully tested in our context. Our country would be better if we simply just continue the process of devolving national government responsibilities to the local level under the Local Government Code.--