Class bias in 'amendment vs. revision'

A class bias permeates the entire debate on Charter change – elite vs. yagit, plebiscite vs. elections and amendment vs. revision, among others. It is a subtle struggle and not immediately recognizable. Constitutional experts use legalisms and technicalities, constitutional experts protect the turf of the few but in the end the question remains – who is sovereign in this country? If thousands were able to end a dictatorship in EDSA only to re-install the pre-martial law elite, we now have millions to pursue that initial political awakening to push and continue the still unfinished business of how to democratize this country.

The all-encompassing principle was brilliantly expressed by Justice Reynato Puno in his dissenting opinion quoting American Chief Justice John Marshall – "we are expounding a Constitution". That Constitution must be faithful to the spirit of a nation that ended a dictatorship with people power. Anything less would be a mockery of that spirit which upheld the people’s sovereignty. Yet that is exactly what is being put into question by the Panganiban-led Supreme Court majority. By rejecting a people’s initiative despite an enabling law, it demonstrated the true motive of its decision: the sovereign people can only propose an amendment (meaning insignificant changes), not a revision (significant changes). That can only be done by the people’s representatives or convention delegates. Hold on a minute.

In 1997, Justice Panganiban wrote that if we went along with this kind of thinking that decides when or what the people can propose, it would violate free speech. If free speech is at the very heart of a democratic nation, it must be defended and fought for, not shoved aside by arbitrary definitions put forward by constitutionalists.

True we are also a republic. But if there is a conflict of interest between the two imperatives that govern our nation, democracy supersedes republicanism. It is my opinion and I think many Filipinos will agree with me – the people’s sovereignty takes precedence to the mandate they have given to their representatives. So too with Congress which is empowered to amend the Constitution. The people merely empower their representatives and all those who govern them, including the Supreme Court, to act on their behalf. It is always instructive when trying to understand difficult concepts expressed in words to look at its root and how it developed to become part of our daily language. So is it with the word "republic" which is now being invoked by some of those who have turned down the people’s initiative.

Some blame must go to the French when they adopted the word republique in their struggle against the monarchy. It resulted into an impure use of its meaning. The word "republic" did not begin there. It was not just a dismantling of a monarchy. It comes from Latin res publica which means "public matter". All that is public means the commonweal which derives its reason for being to the people.

In times earlier than the French revolution, the Greek philosopher, Plato wrote a political treatise he called ‘The Republic’ It begins with a discussion of the nature of justice that leads in turn to an attempt to define the ideal society. For Plato, this would consist of an aristocracy run by a class of legislators groomed for leadership by a state education system.

Our republic hardly comes up to Plato’s definition of an ideal society. Indeed, the EDSA People Power revolution highlighted the defects of our republic when our ‘representatives’ are given a free rein in government without corresponding sanction from the people except through flawed elections That was what led to the massing in EDSA – the people asserting their sovereignty. This column has said we are in a race with those who claim to be our ‘representatives’ who want to get on and have an election to reinforce their supremacy in a plutocracy even before the people have decided just what elections they want to have. Here, too is another class bias – that between a plebiscite or an election?

So why do some members of the Supreme Court want us to accept with finality their decision to curtail the people’s sovereignty?. They are not allowed according to these justices to revise only to amendments. It is, I am, afraid, another way of saying that they can only do insignificant proposals for minor things but not major ones. And what pray is major or minor? Who decides what is major and what is minor?

No matter all the definitions and the legalities, the fact is the distinction between amendment and revision is a form of class bias. There is something basically undemocratic about giving a group of men and women the absolute power to decide what the people can or cannot do in deciding what is good for the country. Yet that is exactly what is happening to us today when the Supreme Court decided not once, not twice but four times to knock down a people’s initiative under the guise of protecting the Constitution. Twice in 1997 and twice today.

In 1997 the same unelected group of men and women said that although there was an enabling law R.A. 6735 it was inadequate because it lacked a subheading on initiatives for Charter change. On the motion for reconsideration, the vote was a tie with one justice expected to upset the earlier vote suddenly left for the US. He could have left instructions to cast his vote which was the honorable thing to do. Being a tie, it was no decision. Yet again and again, this decision is being invoked as the reason why a people’s initiative cannot be done. Why? Because the Establishment of this plutocracy is not prepared to disturb the status quo. The media made that clear enough. When the Supreme Court says something is final, it better be final, never mind if the vote being tie could not have been final.

Once again, the plutocrats want us to accept the Supreme Court’s final word. According to Justices Panganiban, Carpio and the rest of his ilk, there was no need to revisit R.A. 6735 even if 10 judges accepted it was an adequate law. Basta. We may have an enabling law which effectively reversed the 1997 ruling, some other excuse must be found to frustrate a people’s initiative. That is the raison d’etre of the distinction between amendment and revision. The petition anyway violated the Constitution because what is being proposed is a revision, not an amendment and, the Constitution, the justices claim forbids the people to make any such proposal.

There may be a law but if the justices decide the people cannot resort to that law, they cannot. So there. And that is final. Well, the fight is not over nor should it be. If we are expounding a Constitution that gives sovereignty to the people then we must fight on. We must never lose sight of what our forefathers sacrificed for what nation ought to be. We should not allow sophisms about the finality of any judgment that purports to usurp the sovereignty of the people. Although the Supreme Court is respected as an institution, the power given to its members has been misused. Our nation is first a democracy before it is a republic.

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Time to say goodbye. A few hours ago, my friend, Onie Nakpil called to say that our publisher, Max Soliven has died in Tokyo. Max was both a mentor and a friend to me. If we had differences, our friendship remained firm and sealed – he was godfather to my second son, Ricardo. It was a friendship which went back to martial law days when we were both in the vanguard of the fight for our freedom and democracy. I will always cherish the many columns he wrote to defend my book The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos. He and his wife, Precious were often guests in our London house at 49 Connaught Street. He loved that house because he could walk to Oxford Street and Hyde Park. Once he crossed the entire park just to reach Hatchards which is arguably the best bookstore in London.

Happily, I met him by accident in Greenbelt just a day before he left for Tokyo. I did not know then that it would be the last time I would bid him good-bye. Farewell my friend, a human being of successes and failures and virtues and vices.

My email is [email protected]