While there have been copious assurances from some members of the Concom that they discussed this subject thoroughly, we have not been favored with a record of their proceedings to decide for ourselves whether that representation is accurate or is, shall we say, somewhat exaggerated, as members of the dissenting minority might say.
There are several other worthy bones to pick, among them the murder of Pasay City Regional Trial Court Judge Henrick Gingoyon and its implications on the justice system, and the bombshell of Air Force Colonel Efren Daquil on alleged illegal and fat monthly allowances of certain Generals. Col. Daquil also claimed that the "time-honored" practice of "conversion" is still prevalent, in the Air Force at least, if not in the other military services as well.
But we’ll have to leave that to another time and stick to this effort to bring to light certain aspects of the debate on the proposed change in our form of government. One of my urgent reasons is this: For the first time in a long while, I am really concerned that the tide for charter change may have been reversed, and that there is now a developing, and rapidly growing, consensus against any form of tinkering with the Constitution.
Obviously, a great part of the opposition is a result of the realization of Concom Commissioner Vicente Paterno’s fear that the proposed scrapping of the 2007 elections will "discredit" the entire Concom report on the recommended changes. That, in fact, has already happened. The lumping together of No-El with these changes, by the simple expedient of including it in the Transitory Provisions, has led many people who were initially for chacha to vow to vote "no" in a plebiscite.
That I deem particularly unfortunate since, as I’ve said many times in this space, I believe that the current system is fundamentally flawed. We need to put a new one in place. However, the majorities in the House of Representatives and the Concom, the Concom in particular, have managed to throw the "Great Debate" off the track. Now people are talking about "real" and "sinister" motives having been uncovered, of alleged control by the Palace of the directions the Concom took, of "bribery" and "immorality."
No amount of full-page ads, whose financiers remain a mystery, by some members of the Concom, or accusations of ‘grandstanding" hurled at certain congressmen, can remove the stain that’s adhered to the Concom recommendations, which are now denigrated as mirroring Malacañang’s own agenda.
Still, we must persevere. We must try to get public discourse back on track. We should not squander this opportunity to effect fundamental and far-reaching changes in our system of governance, changes which hopefully will also lead to a radical shift in our attitudes towards public service and, dare we say it, even politics.
So, where were we? In our last installment, we ended on the issue of the alleged inherent instability of a parliamentary system. We were saying that those who oppose a parliamentary system do not concede that a principal advantage of the parliamentary system is the ability to change governments through a no-confidence vote.
This flexibility actually prevents instability, as compared with the present impeachment by Congress, by allowing a legal transfer of power without need of revolutions or extra-constitutional means whenever the impeachment process is deemed to have failed or to have been exploited by the incumbents to prevent their ouster.
Twice in the last six years the impeachment route has been tried, and twice the people found it unsatisfactory for one reason or another. In the case of President Estrada, the impeachment segued to EDSA II, the propriety of which is still being debated despite a Supreme Court decision which upheld the legality of GMA’s accession. In GMA’s own impeachment ordeal, the argument is over technical legal procedures which were allegedly exploited to get the incumbent off the hook.
But already, the opposing forces are girding for a replay of the battle once the one-year inhibition against further impeachment attempts lapses. Moreover, during the pendency of the impeachment process, there is great concern about the stability of government and the adverse impact on economic growth.
The present system also provides an opportunity to various institutions of government – primarily the military, including retired officers, and the usual suspects such as civil society, retired Presidents, former government officials and religious groups – to "withdraw support" from the leader or assert an alleged duty to serve the people by rejecting any further allegiance to the duly constituted, but embattled, authority. These sectors of society, not the people speaking through the ballot, are then able to influence, if not control, the trajectory of events.
In contrast, a parliamentary system tends to allow peaceful changes in government without Constitutional crises or armed uprisings by the discontented sectors of society. A parliamentary system, of course, is no guarantee that aberrations will not occur. Parliaments can be exploited too, and we’ve been reminded more than once that dictators and supreme leaders-for-life have also sprung from parliamentary systems.
In addition, there can be no absolute assurances that we will not enter a period of revolving-door Prime Ministers, as has happened in many other countries. Nor does a parliamentary system signal an end to coups d' etat. Golpes are endemic in any system which allows its military to ignore civilian supremacy, and where possession of firepower gives men in uniform overblown opinions of themselves and, worse, the means to impose those opinions on the people.
On balance, though, the relative stability a parliamentary system offers seems to outweigh the instability and constant Constitutional experimentation which has plagued our current system.
Next time, we consider an important question: Does a parliamentary system really reduce the costs of elections? Do lower costs of election reduce graft and corruption? I thought the answers had to be obvious. But there is a school of thought that asserts a contrary view. A parliamentary system, the argument goes, will not necessarily lower the costs of elections, and it certainly won’t reduce systemic graft and corruption.