Curb vested interests, so Con-Ass can work

Convening Congress as a Constituent Assembly (CA) is seen as most practical to switch to federal-parliamentary government. Senators and congressmen, already paid to legislate, would simply insert the constitutional revising in their work schedule. They’d strive to finish within three years, before half the Senate’s and all the House of Representatives’ terms lapse. In contrast, electing a constitutional convention would cost P7 billion, plus more to compensate the delegates for an indeterminate period. The delegates might not even switch at all from the present unitary-presidential type. The third method of constitutional amending, by people’s initiative, won’t work. There is no mechanism for it.

Experts resist the CA option, however. They foresee legislators to be protecting their vested interests, ultimately to ruin Charter change.

Like, the 24 senators certainly would oppose a parliament that is unicameral, and insist on the two chambers to which they’re accustomed. More fundamental, they would want any voting to be done separately from the 297 congressmen. Having been elected nationally, not by congressional district, the senators naturally would not want their voices drowned out.

Any proposal to curb political dynasties would die. Dynasts comprise more than three-fourths of Congress. They would want their spouses, offspring, parents and siblings to continue occupying positions in their locales concurrently and successively. Opportunities for public service, which the Constitution guarantees on paper, would remain in the control of the political elite.

President Rody Duterte’s desire to scrap the party-list system would be doomed. Twenty percent of the House of Representatives, 59 congressmen in all, were elected by party-list voting. Those congressmen are relatives and close political allies of the senators and district congressmen. They would oppose any constitutional amendment that will ease them out of power.

Those political issues will distract the CA from its economic objective. Duterte’s proposed shift to federal is for economic change. He wants to end the rule of “imperial Manila” by empowering the regions to execute their own projects. That for him would spur the local economies once and for all. He went around the country campaigning for “economic federalism” the entire year before he decided to run for President.

But instead of enabling that, a CA would be concerned with political powers. Understandably being mulled this early is a prolonging of the terms of parliamentary office, to five years from the present three. Only in passing is being mentioned the lifting of the Constitution’s restrictions on foreign investments.

A Constitutional Convention would not be the answer either. There is no guarantee that the delegates to be elected are federalists and parliamentarists. More likely they would be the same kinsmen of the sitting legislators, the very members of the political elite. People want change but cannot break into the political system. In the last election 558 candidates for congressmen, governors, and mayors – mostly re-electionists and all political dynasts – ran unopposed.

Yet politics is the art of the possible. To save the idea of Charter Change by CA, ideas are being broached to counter the vested interests.

One suggestion, by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, is to have a Constitutional Commission to draft the revisions for Congress to consider. It could consist of anywhere from three to 20 eminent persons, to be appointed by the President. Alvarez says they could be former Chief Justice Reynato Puno, San Beda College graduate school of law dean Fr. Ranhillo Aquino, and former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr. Puno and Pimentel have long been advocating federalism. A San Beda law grad, Duterte is seen to be comfortable with Father Aquino. Other members could come from the academe. They could draw from the work of the 2005 Constitutional Commission, which studied not only the switch to federal-parliament but also how to do it step by step. (Public disclosure: I was a member of that 2005 Con-Com.)

Complementing the Con-Com proposal is for the CA to be truly consultative. This would entail mobilizing NGOs to regularly communicate online with the committees to be formed by the CA. The NGOs would represent various social sectors.

A separate concept is for an appointive, instead of elective, Constitutional Convention. This body of 50 or so delegates would draft the Charter revisions, under strict deadlines, to be presented in a plebiscite for ratification. The plan is for the President and Congress to pick the delegates from among eminent citizens. Congress would then enact the law to organize and fund the Convention. That would be cheaper and faster than a regular Con-Con.

Public debates through the media could come up with the best options. Polls show that one-third of Filipinos support the switch to federal parliament, one-third oppose it, and one-third have yet to form an opinion.

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