Height of inconsistency

PNoy’s adamant stance against amending the charter is a clear indication that after more than three years in office, he has been heavily intoxicated with the tremendous powers lodged in the Executive Department which he heads. Therefore would not like to give them up any more for the rest of his term. Indeed, under the existing Presidential system, too much power is given to the Chief Executive as to enable him/her to control the other branches which are supposed to be co-equal and independent.

Thus, for the past three and a half years under PNoy’s watch, we have seen how he has held sway over the members of Congress to do his bidding especially in the enactment or non-enactment of laws and in the removal or impeachment of other public officials not under his supervision and control as they belong to separate and independent branch of government like the Supreme Court, or to other Constitutional body, like the Office of the Ombudsman.

To be sure, a President as leader of a democratic Republic like ours should really be able to push through with his plans and programs of government. PNoy’s main plan in this connection is to allegedly clean our government of graft and corruption or at least minimize them. But as it is now turning out, he has used and even increased the biggest source of corruption which is the “pork barrel” also known as the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), to “convince” the legislators to help him achieve his agenda. The worse part here is he has even authorized the concoction of a bigger source of corruption which is the lump sum fund for Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as another tool to get the cooperation of our legislators.

Of course with the Supreme Court’s declaration that the PDAF is unconstitutional, and with PNoy’s discontinuance of the DAP which is an implied admission that the disbursements of such lump sum public funds are also of doubtful constitutionality, it would appear that these sources of corruption, or of “buying” the support of the legislators are no longer available to him. But as we have again seen, Senator Jinggoy Estrada was still able to insert a bastardized PDAF in the 2014 budget particularly the P100 million allocations for Manila where his father Erap sits as Mayor.

Obviously PNoy has proven to us, more than any other President since we attained independence, that all these corrupt practices thrive best under the existing Presidential form of government; and that the principle of checks and balances among the three independent and separate branches of government enshrined in our Constitution simply does not work and can be violated with impunity.

These are really enough reasons for us to study and consider the amendment of our Constitution in order to replace the existing Presidential system with a Parliamentary form of government. Under this form of government, the Executive and Legislative Departments are already merged with the head of State elected by the members of the Parliament called the Prime Minister. Thus there is no more need for a pork barrel to buy the support of the legislators. Besides, there will only be unicameral body instead of a bicameral Congress thus saving billions of pesos now allocated to the two chambers.

But the more urgent reason for amending the charter is the recent signing of the Framework Agreement for Bangsamoro between the Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Admittedly the signing of this Agreement is an important milestone in the attainment of the elusive, just and lasting peace in Mindanao. Under this Peace Pact however, Malacanang and the MILF agreed to set up a federal-type state in the Bangsamoro region in Mindanao. Obviously, under the existing Constitution, this is not feasible because it provides for a Unitary and not a Federal form of government. So, to implement the Peace Agreement, the Constitution must really have to be amended.

In fact, Article VII of said Agreement calls for the formation of a Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) tasked not only to draft the Bangsamoro Basic Law to be submitted to Congress but also “to work on proposals to amend the Philippine Constitution for the purpose of accommodating and entrenching in the Constitution, the Agreements of the Parties whenever necessary without derogating from any prior peace agreement”.

With our experience on the unitary form of government from the very beginning, where too much power is centralized and concentrated in the Chief Executive as head of state, we have seen how political and economic powers have been controlled mainly by the few groups of politicians and business elites out to promote only their partisan political and business interests. Time and again complaints have been aired by local officials in remote areas, how their towns and provinces have been neglected by “Imperial Manila”. Thus we can see that under the present Unitary and Presidential system of government, many areas in our country have been neglected and remain poor, even as the Central Government claims economic progress and prosperity in the country. The best example here is the Bangsamoro region.

It is about time therefore that we try the Federal Form of Government where each province or region is considered as a “State” with more freedom and independence to chart its own course and run the governmental affairs in their respective areas, with minimum of interference from the National seat of power. In fact this may be the best way to prevent the few ruling business elite from controlling and placing the leaders of this country under their thumbs and inside their pockets.

PNoy should not therefore stop this move to change our charter. In fact by his own actuations and moves, he has made such change more imperative and necessary. Stopping the cha-cha at this time is the height of inconsistency.

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