Finally, a good chance for charter changes

For our special presentation on our tv talkshow Straight from the Sky we present you a serious discussion on demography and the myth of overpopulation. Our guest tonight is Fr. Gregory Ramon D. Gaston, SThd. He is a Doctor in Sacred Theology and he is one of the very few Filipino priests who was ordained by no less than the late Great Pope John Paul II on June 12, 1993 in Seville, Spain. I first met Fr. Gaston two years ago via the Internet when he emailed me a response to my column. We exchanged cellphone numbers and arranged a meeting in Manila a year ago. We have been textmates since.

Last Jan.3, 2010, he wrote a full page article in a national daily dubbed, “Population Trends: Lessons for RP.” What is remarkable in his presentation is that, despite his being a priest and a close confidant of Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the Archbishop of Manila, he did not use any Catholic document or analysis in his presentation. He used a lot of facts and figures collated by the United Nations. Somehow our minds met because I too do not believe in the myth of overpopulation, including the Philippines.

Fr. Gaston’s talk about demography is the right weapon to use against those who in this country who insist on enacting a law called Reproductive Health (RH) Bill in order to control our supposed runaway population. Hence, I requested Fr. Gaston to be on our show tonight in order to get into the basics of our current population growth and demography. So watch this very interesting show on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00 pm tonight and get educated!

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That the first thing that Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) did when she joined the 15th Congress was to file a bill calling for a Constitutional Convention (concon). I‘m not at all surprised that filing a resolution proposing charter changes was the very first thing that the former President did as a member of the House of Representatives. Rep. Arroyo should have done this during her first term when she got elected in the year 2004. Unfortunately, she put a very low priority on cha-cha until last year; it was too late because people suspect her motives in doing so.

If we supported then Pres. Arroyo in the elections of 2004, it was because she was the only Presidential candidate who supported a genuine political reform via a charter change. But when she was elected President, she no longer pushed for this. Her allies instead tried to push cha-cha via a constituent assembly (con-ass) which then gave cha-cha a bad name. Only in the last year of her term was GMA again pushing cha-cha via a con-con, but it was too late. People already suspected her motives in pushing for cha-cha.

Now whether this new resolution would blossom into a con-con, that remains to be seen. What caught me by surprise is that, Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III did not outright reject this proposal when I thought he would. In the past, anything that was remotely linked to then Pres. Arroyo, Noynoy would most certainly oppose it. But instead of rejecting the former President’s resolution, Pres. Noynoy proposed to create a commission to study the possible changes to the constitution.

This Presidential response is truly surprising. During many Presidential Forums at the height of the election campaign, including here in Cebu when the Cebu Business groups sponsored the Choices and Voices forum at the Cebu International Convention Center (CICC) last Jan. 22, whenever the issue of charter changes came up, the usual response by then Presidential candidate Noynoy Aquino was “I would first ask the people if they want charter changes.”

We gathered that Rep. Neptali Gonzales II also filed a similar proposal to amend the constitution, but there should be a referendum on this that would done during the Barangay Elections this coming October. This was something we already wrote and fully concur with. What’s very important here is that, this new cha-cha proposal comes at the very beginning of the Aquino administration, hence no one can say or accuse him that he is doing this to perpetuate himself in power.

So the next question is whether the Filipino people know what are the issues that should be discussed on whether we should have cha-cha or not. Well, in my book, the first thing to come to mind is that our present political system is a Presidential system, which was copied after the United States Constitution. However, we did not copy the American Federal system, which I believe we should. What we have is a Presidential form, but with a multi-party system that is better suited for a Parliamentary system. We either shift to a Parliamentary one or totally copy the American Presidential-Federal system of government. My readers know that I’m totally against a Parliamentary system because we already had it during the Marcos years and it didn’t work! So at least, you already know which side I will be on.