Report

With remarkable punctuality, the Citizen’s Consultative Commission on Charter Change submitted its report to the President yesterday.

For over two months, the 55-member Commission labored with incredible endurance. The daily sessions were long and, during the final two-week stretch, consisted of plenary sessions that began in the morning and often ended close to midnight.

The public consultations took the commissioners through the entire length of the archipelago. Hearings with resource persons were conducted as well.

Over the last few days, fatigue and the pressure of an impending deadline, resulted in a number of temper flare-ups. There were several provisions in the final report that I thought required much further and more careful study. But the window given the Commission and the scarce resources at its disposal made further study virtually impossible.

In the end, nearly all the commissioners assessed their experience at the Consultative Commission to be both edifying and exhilarating. Here was an opportunity to look in great detail at the character of our constitutional order. Here was an opportunity to exchange ideas, contest positions, review ideological underpinnings and explore possible constitutional solutions to the nation’s problems.

There were, to be sure, many issues that remain contentious. There was hardly any consensus on any point. On scores of occasions, votes had to be called to resolve irreconcilable positions. On several instances, votes already taken yielded to motions for reconsideration. The prior results were reversed on nearly every instance.

When the President convened the Commission, she asked that the consultative body primarily consider three major issues: the possible shift from presidential to a parliamentary form of government; the possible shift from a unitary to a federal structure of the Republic; and, review the restrictive economic provisions in the existing charter.

The Commission did focus on those three concerns. But the Commission also went beyond these concerns to propose a wide-ranging menu of alternative constitutional provisions covering the statement of general principles, those provisions governing the judiciary and a number of reformist provisions on the constitutional commissions as well as electoral reforms with the view of strengthening the political party system.

Of the three primary concerns, the greatest degree of unanimity among the commissioners may be found on the proposal to liberalize the economic provisions in the Constitution.

That should not be surprising. Economic reality and our nation’s economic predicament educated us well on the error of protectionism.

The committee tasked with reviewing the existing provisions on national patrimony and the economy was ably chaired by former senator Vicente Paterno. His wisdom, tact and prestige helped forge a consensus on the proposed revisions.

Shifting from the presidential to a parliamentary form of government proved a little more contentious. In the end, however, the arguments in favor of such a shift in the form of government won a stable majority.

Of the three principal concerns, the proposal to shift to a federal structure proved to be immensely more contentious.

The committee working on the structure of the Republic initially proposed a constitutionally-mandated shift to federalism within a ten-year period. After intense debate at the plenary, that proposal appeared doomed.

A compromise formula was eventually agreed upon. In this formula, a shift to federalism was left open as a possibility although without a set timetable.

Decentralization would continue to be consolidated. The proposed provisions allowed autonomous regions to be established in the interim – although such autonomous regions could be organized only on the basis of popular initiatives. The majority of commissioners opposed the idea of imposing federalism from above, on regions that may grouped against their will and without regard to the capacities of these regions to support themselves with internally-generated revenues.

It was to the task of opposing a quick and haphazard shift to federalism, almost purely on the basis of constitutional dictate, that I devoted much of my energies at the Consultative Commission. Had the original formula been allowed to prosper, the nation could have been rushed to build artificial sub-national units, produced fiscal chaos and induced a lot of in-fighting.

The most divisive issue, it turned out, was the proposal to cancel the 2007 elections as a means for transitioning into a full-fledged parliamentary government.

On the first vote, the proposal was defeated, after intense debate, by a vote of 18-16. The next day, on a motion for reconsideration, a second vote was taken. On the second instance, the no-elections formula won 22-19.

However, the day after that, the last day of the Commission’s sessions, at least 22 commissioners signed a position paper expressing their disagreement with the no-election formula. That formula, the 22 felt, would compromise the chances of changing the charter because of the controversy it would generate.

The no-elections proposal was advanced by the various local government leagues and will likely be favored by most incumbent congressmen.

In the end, the final Commission report was supported by 34 commissioners. Five voted against the report. One, this writer, abstained.

Many of those who cast an affirmative vote for the report expressed reservations over one thing or the other, mostly about the controversial formula in the transitory provisions that proposes cancellation of the 2007 elections.

I wanted desperately to support the Commission’s report. We worked very hard to prepare it. There were many reforms proposed in the Report I so wholeheartedly support.

But there were also enough provisions, I thought, that had not been thought out thoroughly, including that no-elections formula. I could not get myself to cast a "yes" vote, even if I qualified it with an inventory of reservations. It was a matter of conscience in the end.