It is regrettable that because there were two differing positions it often seemed like it was a contest and prone to the regrettable use of such words as winning or losing. Let me say using the words was unfortunate. I think this is what Gerry Espina meant by the difficulty of nomenclature. In a way, we were all prisoners of nomenclature. It forced us to use combative terms to articulate our ideas often clouding the serious duty before us to recommend reforms in our political system.
Recommending parliamentary government is very much like recommending a new arrangement of the furniture in a house that has become too small and needs to make room for its growing number of occupants. It is a response to specific problems at the same time that it does not pretend that human nature and its capacity for evil will cease once the furniture has been rearranged. It is the same with the shift to parliamentary form of government. We are making a blueprint to improve governance, not to solve the iniquities of human nature. But come to think of it, even a seemingly harmless act of re-arranging furniture is not immune from conflict.
It helps to recall that democracy was invented in sixth century B.C. in Athens (Attica, in ancient Greece) through a series of reforms that were proposed by Cleisthenes, a Greek solon (a congressman, in other words). He so passionately believed in these reforms and he persisted against virulent opposition. He offered to his countrymen an invention, a creation if you wish.
Cleisthenes proposed a set of reforms, a constitution, to destroy these patterns. His solution was to redefine the phylae and transform them from narrow tribal, geographic and economic interests into collations that included a broad cross section of the interests of the citizens of Attica. A modern day political analyst would call these encompassing organizations. Instead of narrow interests, the newly defined phylae were organized to make them more concerned about the common interests of all citizens in Attica. In revamping the political structure, Cleistheness constitution reached out to all the elements of society and guaranteed concord and welfare of the community. Rules that were set up on how to select the assembly of all citizens played an important role.
That question can also be asked of the President and her allies, politicians all who have come forward to give their support to charter change. In effect changing our form of government would open government to more players, certainly to those less moneyed and less popular but eminently qualified. It may not happen immediately but in time, it will happen in a parliamentary system.
But to go back to the Athenians who made such a success of their democratic experiments. They did so because they gambled. They gambled on an entirely new set of proposals to depart from old ways of thinking. In our consultations we are often asked if we can give a guarantee that life would be better for our people if we did make the shift. I say to them that like the Greeks, we will gamble on a new set of proposals. There are beautiful Tagalog words for this: Makikipagsapalaran tayo.
That is the difference between theory and practice. We can debate endlessly on the theories but in the end, we will have to make up our minds, leap to reality and put our ideas into practice as the Greeks did centuries ago. I think we should ask ourselves the same question. Given our present predicament are we better off just having more of the same or should we make the bold shift to parliamentary government and at the earliest practicable time adopt a federal structure? That is the question before us.