Con-con: No takers?

Ranking right up there with President GMA’s statement that she now thought that the time was not ripe for Cha-cha was that revelation of Senator Dick Gordon on my television talk show over ANC. Both, in their own way, were shockers.

Sen. Gordon, who is the chair of the Senate constitutional amendments committee, said he was not in favor of a constitutional convention. Instead, he asserted, he was pushing for a, would you believe, constituent assembly!

The Senator added that he knows of several senators who think the same way he does. In fact, he claimed, he didn’t know any senator who was in favor of a con-con. He did not, however, venture any estimate of the number of anti con-con senators. Nor did he say whether he had spoken to Senator Frank Drilon, a known advocate of con-con.

Before the con-ass congressmen jump for joy, aside from the fact that they’ve abandoned con-ass anyway, Senator Gordon makes clear that he wants a constituent assembly where a vote of two-thirds would be required of both chambers voting separately. No "with or without the Senate" nonsense for him, he stresses.

The Gordon revelation puts a new twist on this whole argument between people’s initiative, a constituent assembly or a constitutional convention as the proper way of effecting Charter change.

All this time, House Speaker Joe de Venecia has been proclaiming that the Senate was fixated on con-con as the way to go, and his recent capitulation was a "challenge" to the Upper House to put its money where its mouth was.

Not only has the Senate rejected any notion that Speaker Joe’s ultimatum puts any time pressure on them to act – in fact, last week it nonchalantly commenced philosophical, meandering, "in-your-face" hearings which don’t look like they will terminate anytime soon – it now appears that con-con is not such a sure thing after all.

As it happens, Sen. Gordon’s position reflects the major concerns that have been expressed about con-con. Sen. Ed Angara, for one, is unembarrassed about his opinion that a convention is not the way to go. Their stance puts the issue of the advisability of a constitutional convention squarely in issue.

There is, first of all, the matter of cost. Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya puts the required amount at about P10 billion. It is not clear, however, whether this figure includes the additional budget that the Commission on Elections would need for the conduct of the election of delegates to the convention.

My understanding is that the cost reflects the election of two delegates per congressional district. It is also not too clear what period this budget covers in terms of the estimated time it will take for the convention to finish its work.

However, former Budget Secretary Ben Diokno has a radically different take on this. To start with, he believes the cost of electing the delegates may be reduced to zero if such an election is synchronized with the 2007 polls, in May for local positions and half of the senatorial slots, or later in the year for barangay officials.

As for operational expenses, Diokno projects P2.4 billion if two delegates are elected for each congressional district and the convention does its work over a period of 18 months, which in present circumstances may not be an unreasonable assumption. If only one delegate is elected per district, the total budget would drop to P1.3 billion. The gap, P10 billion vs. P2.4 or 1.3 billion, seems inordinately wide and there must be fundamental differences in the assumptions Andaya and Diokno are using in their calculations. The people are entitled to know what the real figures ought to be, using the same assumptions. At the very least, agreement on the costs would elevate the quality of the debate since we would be talking about apples and apples, not apples and oranges.

At the same time, spending some time on understanding the figures would give an excuse to the Senate to sit on the matter interminably, thus thoroughly annoying Joe de Venecia and his coterie of majority Representatives. The Speaker had needled the Senate, claiming the latter could very well act on the matter in less than the 72 hours he allowed in his ultimatum.

The other issue strikes at the very core of a constitutional convention. Some Senators wonder, quite appropriately, whether such a convention of elected members would feature the best and the brightest this nation has to offer. Would the convention be composed of the cream of the crop, as it were, that would have nothing but the national interest at heart, that would work unflaggingly, day and night, to produce an enlightened document that would finally usher the nation into a new and more competitive era.

The Senators answer their own question with hysterical laughter. Manifestly, the sneering aside, they have a point.

Oh, I’m sure that in some urban areas, one might see a smattering of the aforementioned best and brightest. But many fear that, as a rule, we are likely to get about the same quality that we now have in the legislature, whose performance in the attempted slaughter of con-ass is widely cited as a dire foreshadowing of what a parliament could inflict upon the nation. I happen to think that this view is overly simplistic, but there you have it. Con-con, in other words, has formidable opposition even in a Senate which had been advertised as lusting after it.

All this, of course, could be a smokescreen for the simple fact that Cha-cha has worn out its welcome. Note that most people still think that constitutional reform should be pursued, but there is vigorous debate over whether those pushing it are genuine agents of positive change or opportunistic trapos. Are they real reformers or ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing?

It is, in a sense, sad that Charter change has come to this. Although no one is ready to sing requiems to it just yet, it’s not about to happen anytime soon, certainly not next year. Cha-cha still lives, but barely. Whoever seeks to orchestrate it next time – and that time will definitely come – will hopefully have learned the basic truth in the old Abe Lincoln adage that you can fool some people some of the time, but…you fill in the blanks. Sunshine, it has been said, is the best disinfectant.