Once more, we want cha-cha via con-con

We’re back home in the salt mines, thus ending my nine-day cellphone break. Honestly, I really don’t know why the roaming feature on my (including my sister’s) Globe phone didn’t work, while my brother Rene’s cellphone did. A techno-faux pas! All the time, my cellphone was nothing but a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) where I record things that I would write later in my laptop.

The Japanese have a very vibrant domestic economy. That four-hour Shinkansen train ride to Hiroshima and back to Tokyo revealed that even if you go further away from the Japanese capital and into the other major cities, they are still vibrant and bustling with their own local economies.

In the Philippines, you will see a huge disparity in the economies of our provinces. The further you get away from the country’s urban centers, the poorer you will see our countryside. This imbalance exists also within our people. Most of those who live in cities are more prosperous than those living in the countryside. If this imbalance is addressed, then that’s the time we shall see a more prosperous nation. But will that ever happen in our lifetime?

No sir, not with the current system of governance that we are in; nor can we expect much from the crop of politicians we have elected into power; not even from our highly-politicized clergy who cannot see the root cause of our nation’s problem. On my return flight via PAL PR 433 from Narita to Cebu, I was reading the newspapers and learned that some Bishops were calling for a Bangkok type of protest against Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA). This is a sign of irresponsibility from our clergy who always bark at the wrong tree!

The whole trouble with our nation today is a system that no longer works! This Constitution that ironically was hammered by 49 people having a Martial Law hangover ended up giving more powers to the Office of the President, thus there is a serious imbalance in the supposedly three strong pillars of Democracy, the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary.

What makes it all the more unfortunate is the presence of too many anti-GMA bishops in the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), whose only goal is the removal of GMA, without realizing that there are bigger, more institutional problems that needs to be addressed or prioritized, otherwise the next President will just be as corrupt as this one.

The solution to our nation can be had if we changed this constitution. But it seems that whenever the cha-cha word is said, the pro-administration Congress suddenly goes on attempts to prolong the term of the President, while the opposition doesn’t want to dance the cha-cha for that very reason.

The best thing for us to do is to call for a Constitutional Convention (con-con) with the delegates elected during the 2010 Presidential elections. There should also be a proviso to prohibit last term House of Representatives or Senators from participating in the con-con lest it be politicized. This is the only way we can prevent any naked attempts to extend the President’s term, while assuring our people that there will be charter changes right after the 2010 elections.

Talking about charter changes, there are people like Sen. Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr. or Dr. Jose Abueva who want cha-cha in order to shift to a Parliamentary System of government. I have always been against a Parliamentary form of government because we do not have responsible politicians. Take a good look at the example we are getting from Thailand, when you have a ruling party that refuses to remove its Prime Minister.

Our Presidential form of government only needs slight changes. First is the term limit for the Office of the President. We should go back to the time tested four-year term and another four-year re-election, which we had in the 1935 Constitution that the Marcos Dictatorship threw out when he installed the one-man rule. Four-years is too short for a good President and too-long for a bad one.

Then we must go back to the two-party system that we used to have, that we all saw very recently during the Democratic vs. Republican political exercises that ended with the election of Sen. Barack Obama as the first black American President. Then let’s put in what was always missing in this country since we got our Independence from the Americans in 1946, a Federal form of government. Then let our Senators be elected on a State or Regional Basis, rather than what is happening today, where they are voted at large. Lastly, let us make the Judiciary truly independent so we can finally get the justice that the Filipino people have longed for decades. When this happens, only then can the Philippines be run better by Filipinos.