EDITORIAL - Back to Cha-cha

After a Christmas ceasefire with the Senate and the opposition, administration allies in the House of Representatives are resuming today their push to rewrite the 1987 Constitution. The lawmakers have made no secret of their game plan in case the Senate refuses to go along with Charter change before the end of President Arroyo’s term next year: they will forge ahead with Cha-cha anyway, and then dump the result into the lap of the Supreme Court.

That game plan has raised public concern over how independent the Supreme Court can be from Malacañang as six more members of the tribunal retire within the year. Although Malacañang has heatedly denied that President Arroyo wants to stay in power beyond 2010 through Cha-cha, her congressional allies have openly said that this was possible under their game plan. All it needs is the nod of the Supreme Court – a possibility that has put the tribunal under the closest public scrutiny since the martial law years.

The Cha-cha train has also raised concern about how much work Congress can accomplish in a year when key legislation is needed to speed up the country’s recovery from the global economic crisis and improve national competitiveness. There is precious little time left for Cha-cha to take off before 2010, with senators preferring a constitutional convention whose delegates will be elected together with a new president and other officials in May next year.

Speaker Prospero Nograles had announced the Cha-cha ceasefire last month amid reports that members of the President’s original party, the Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino or KAMPI, were planning to kick him out for supporting a Cha-cha mode other than the one preferred by the administration, which would do away with an uncooperative Senate. Distracted by the battle over Cha-cha and high-profile inquiries, Congress failed to pass even the proposed national budget for 2009 before the Christmas break. There is still no budget for full automation of the 2010 elections.

It’s a new year, and one resolution of lawmakers should be to do what they are paid to do: pass laws, especially those that would speed up the country’s recovery from the global economic downturn. They can engage in the usual political warfare but it must not distract them from urgent tasks.