Change

Along with two other columnists from this paper, I have accepted the invitation to be a member of the Consultative Commission for Charter Change. I believe this to be the patriotic thing to do.

I hope my training as a political scientist, my experience in government and my many years as an advocate of economic policy reform will be of some value to the great work the Commission must do within a short time frame.

The surveys show that there is relative public disinterest in the charter change project. But this is due in the main to a lack of understanding about the issues that make charter change compelling.

This despite the campaign mounted by Pirma in the latter part of the Ramos presidency as well as the excellent but largely unexposed work of the Preparatory Commission on Constitutional Reforms convened by Estrada in 1999. The efforts to introduce reforms in the 1987 Constitution have been, unfortunately, treated in the media more in terms of hidden political agendas rather than the substantive merits of undertaking such reforms.

It has always been a challenge to explain to the broad public the critical importance of having the right constitutional framework to achieve the goals of national progress. It will, in this new century, continue to be a challenge.

Like many loyal supporters of the anti-dictatorship movement, I campaigned for the ratification of the 1987 Charter with many reservations. The need to quickly restore a functioning democratic government to replace the besieged revolutionary government organized after the 1986 uprising overwhelmed many of the reservations we had about the Constitution submitted for ratification that year.

Nevertheless, I articulated my reservations in several essays and columns I published during that period – taking great care not to undermine the campaign to bring a new Constitution into effect.

The 1987 Constitution was crafted in the heady days that followed the victorious popular uprising. It was crafted in the midst of great insecurity about the sustainability of the new democratic order we wanted to evolve.

My first disappointment with the work of the Constitutional Commission was its decision – by one swing vote – to revert back to the presidential form of government. Our previous experience demonstrates that this form of government led to wild swings between an overly empowered presidency and the politics of paralysis built into the contentious coexistence between co-equal "branches" of government.

But I understood then that the considerations to bring back the presidential form were compelling, although these considerations were of limited historical value.

There was, at that time, great suspicion about the parliamentary form.

The nation was just emerging from a period of dictatorship that used, among others, a distorted form of parliamentary government to clothe itself with some trappings of democratic legitimacy. The "parliamentary" form adopted by the Marcos dictatorship was called "French-style" – although the French objected to the comparison. It had a rubber-stamp Batasang Pambansa presided over by a decorative Prime Minister. Real power remained vested in the presidency.

The restoration of the presidential form was also a concession to the contingencies of that time.

Corazon Aquino, the martyr’s widow, was the only unifying personality available to the ideologically and politically diverse coalition that toppled the dictatorship. Her rule was challenged by several military conspiracies and by political groups that wanted Marcos rule, in one or the other variant, restored.

It did not seem politically wise at that time to immediately dislodge Corazon Aquino from the presidency as an effect of an early switch to the parliamentary form. Thus there was great appetite to restore the presidential form even if this had already failed us in the past.

And so it happened that even those convinced that the presidential form would again fail us nevertheless voted for the immediate ratification of a seriously flawed Charter. It was urgent to bring a democratic government into play to resist the antidemocratic challenge to the new political order. It was a recognition of short-term political necessity.

Even as we campaigned for the ratification of what we held to be a flawed document, we reserved the right to alter it once the democratic order had taken firmer roots.

History did not prove us wrong. The presidential form proved to be barely functioning the last two decades. It encouraged the destructive politicking that now threatens the stability of the political order itself and the capacity of our nation to evolve a mature electorate and civic culture.

Advocates of the presidential form during that time trapped us all in a futile chicken-and-egg analogy. They said we could not have an immediately functioning parliamentary government because our political parties were weak. But today we see that the so-called multi-party system produced a no-party system. Our political parties are weaker than they ever have been, undermined by the political economy of presidential elections.

The 1987 Constitution tried to preempt policy-making by including policy prescriptions in its text. That has proven to be counter-productive. It wrapped our policy-making in an ideological straitjacket and denied us the flexibility to adopt those policies most functional for the nation as the rest of the world evolved around us.

We do not need to settle the economic policy debates in drafting a new Constitution. My own thinking is that the Charter ought to be trimmer, less detailed and therefore more hospitable to creative policy-making over time.

The new Charter should not entrap policy-making in one orthodoxy or the other. It should specify the essential foundations of a democratic order and allow that order the space to evolve.

There are other vital issues that need to be discussed with our citizens. I suppose this space, over the next three or four months will be a channel for airing the debate on those issues.

I look forward to the work ahead.