People’s initiative illegal — Velarde

El Shaddai leader "Brother" Mike Velarde condemned yesterday as illegal a signature campaign pushed by the Arroyo administration to change the Constitution, but said he would not end his crucial support for her over the issue.

Velarde said the campaign for signatures was illegal and the changes amounted to a "powergrab" as they would extend the terms of unelected officials under a proposed shift from the current US-style presidency to a parliamentary form of government.

"It is illegal ... a pure and simple powergrab," Velarde told the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

At Malacañang, officials said it may be too late for Velarde to stop the people’s initiative campaign to amend the Constitution as proponents have already gathered more than the required number of signatures.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the Palace is heartened to know that Velarde is not opposed to Charter change per se and his instruction to his followers is understandable owing to his opposition to people’s initiative.

He noted that the Sigaw ng Bayan was able to gather 8.5 million signatures or more than the required minimum of five million.

"So it’s of no moment anymore whether they (El Shaddai) sign or don’t sign," Ermita said. "But we still have to watch how this thing will further prosper because we’ve heard that there are petitions in the lower courts to prevent the Comelec (Commission on Elections) from verifying signatures."

Mrs. Arroyo has said the Philippines needs to reform its flawed political system to speed the country’s economic growth and has endorsed efforts by her allies to gather signatures needed to hold a referendum on constitutional change.

The proposed political reform would also see the dissolution of the Senate, eliminating a crucial institution that checks wrongdoing and excesses of the executive branch, Velarde said.

Velarde said he met the President recently and informed her of his opposition to the campaign. Asked if he would withdraw his political support for her over the issue, Velarde replied he would not.

"I’m fully supporting her presidency. In fact, I really would like to let her go on until her term expires in 2010," he said.

Velarde’s group has legions of impoverished followers, whose votes are courted by politicians during elections, turning him into a sort of a kingmaker in a country where vote-rich religious groups acquire political importance due to their huge memberships.

Velarde’s El Shaddai, which traditionally votes as a bloc, backed Mrs. Arroyo in the 2004 elections.

The President periodically attends the group’s lively open-air gatherings, which draw huge crowds because they say their prayers through song and dance and ask for heavenly graces by raising inverted umbrellas into the sky. Some members hold up their passports as they pray for better-paying jobs abroad.

Mrs. Arroyo’s prominent opponents led by former President Corazon Aquino have launched a campaign to oppose the signature drive required to change the 1987 Constitution. Another opponent, former Vice President Teofisto Guingona, has petitioned a court to stop the petition campaign.

Under the Constitution, the signatures of three percent of total number of registered voters in each electoral district are needed for a people’s initiative to amend the Charter.

Meanwhile, three legal luminaries supported yesterday the stand of the Senate which declared the government’s move to gather signatures for a people’s initiative as illegal.

Retired justice Vicente Mendoza, Dean Salvador Carlota of the University of the Philippines College of Law, and Fr. Rhanilo Aquino of San Beda College Graduate School of Law presented their legal opinions during the first hearing of the Senate committee on constitutional amendments, revisions of codes and laws chaired by Sen. Richard Gordon.

Carlota of the UP College of Law however said that, "introducing Charter change at this time, either through a people’s initiative or through Congress acting as a constituent assembly as provided in Article XVII, Section 2, and Article II of the Constitution is an exercise in futility."

Mendoza, on the other hand, lamented that nine years since the Supreme Court ruled on the Santiago vs. Comelec case, Congress has failed to pass a law that would allow amendments to the Constitution via a people’s initiative.

Aquino, for his part, favors the constitutional convention mode of amending the charter because unlike the people’s initiative, it is "free of partisanship."

Meanwhile, one of those who wrote the present Constitution said the charter is a "useless document" because it does not meet the demands of the time.

Economist Bernardo Villegas said the 1987 Constitution was restrictive because that was what the times called for, not to mention the document was cobbled together by a commission with wildly divergent views ranging from communists to the far right.

"We debated. The resulting document was watered down. That is the nature of our Constitution now, it’s a useless document because of the result of the most divergent views," he said.

According to Villegas, there is a need to amend the Charter as the so-called "nationalist" but actually restrictive provisions in the Constitution block the creation of jobs and higher incomes.

"Once and for all we have to expose the pseudo nationalists. It’s ironic that they happen to be always taking about the masses, but on the contrary they are preserving an elitist economy," he said. — AP, Paolo Romero, Christina Mendez, Mike Frialde