Nograles: House to produce Cha-cha miracle

Charter Change or Cha-cha advocates in the House of Representatives may yet produce a miracle to get their constitutional amendment initiative moving, Majority Leader Prospero Nograles said yesterday.

He told a news conference that Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. has been holding "back-channeling" talks with senators on how to resuscitate Cha-cha.

He said he and Cagayan de Oro Rep. Constantino Jaraula, chairman of the committee on constitutional amendments, are helping their House boss in such talks.

"He is the man. We are confident he can still come up with a miracle," he said.

Nograles stressed that congressmen are not abandoning their Cha-cha initiative despite the roadblocks that it has run into.

"I admit that we are now running out of time, but we are not giving up. We are still pushing for it," he said.

Senators and congressmen are at loggerheads on how to amend the Constitution. The House wants to do Cha-cha by converting Congress into a constituent assembly ("con-ass"), while the Senate favors the election of a constitutional convention to do the job.

Nograles said it is possible that the mood in the Senate could change now that Sen. Manuel Villar Jr., who is largely regarded as an administration ally, is its president.

He said for practical purposes, the two chambers have only until November to work on Cha-cha.

After that, he said senators and congressmen seeking re-election would be too busy visiting the provinces and their districts.

He pointed out that both the con-ass and the people’s initiative options are open to Cha-cha advocates in and out of Congress.

"Even the 195 option, we are still pursuing that," he added.

He was referring to their effort to convince at least 195 House members to support Cha-cha and railroad it without Senate participation.

That number represents three-fourths of the combined membership of the two chambers. Congressmen argue that all the Constitution requires is that proposed amendments be approved by a vote of three-fourths of all members of Congress. The Charter does not state that the Senate and the House should vote separately.

The senators’ collective stand on this issue is that the two chambers have to vote separately on amendments.

According to Nograles, they are about 10 short of the magic number of 195 that would enable the House to go it alone on Cha-cha.

He said they now need fewer than 195 since the total number of members of Congress has gone down with the decision of at least three congressmen to join President Arroyo’s Cabinet.

"Maybe, it’s now 192 or 193. Once we have that, we will go for Cha-cha," he said.

Growing distrust’

There is a "growing distrust" of the bicameral presidential system among Filipinos, leading to what it called a "radical mind shift" in favor of making the change to a parliamentary government with a unicameral legislature, findings of a research center indicated.

In its July survey, the Center for Issues and Advocacy (The Center) said 48.25 percent of 1,200 respondents interviewed nationwide now favor a shift to a "parliamentary government with a unicameral legislature" versus 43.75 percent not in favor of making the change. Only eight percent of survey respondents were undecided.

The survey results indicated that the proposed change to a parliamentary form of government is favored by the majority in both the Visayas, with 54 percent, and Mindanao, with 53 percent, while Metro Manila’s approval of such changes climbed to 38 percent, its highest ever.

The Center said an overwhelming majority of Filipinos or about 94 percent favor the parliamentary model with the President, elected directly by voters nationwide, as head of state with authority over the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) and a few departments, and the Prime Minister in charge of the day-to-day operations of government.

The Center survey came in the wake of the Pulse Asia survey, which showed 48 percent of Filipinos in favor of a people’s initiative to amend the 1987 Constitution. Those in favor of the constitutional convention mode of Charter change fell to 23 percent and those for converting both chambers of Congress into a constituent assembly to amend the Constitution remained at 28 percent.

The two surveys confirmed the Sigaw ng Bayan Movement’s (SBM) assertion that there is a surge of support for Charter amendments that will do away with the gridlock-prone presidential system of government and replace it with a parliamentary government with a unicameral legislature.

The Center said that, a year ago this month, the proposed Charter amendment and shift to a parliamentary system was "not given a Chinaman’s chance of success because most Filipinos were not aware of the rationale behind the proposal." — With Cecille Suerte Felipe