Cha-cha must be via constitutional convention

With all due respect… while I’ve always batted for Charter changes from the time the 1987 Constitution was questionably ratified, people have asked me why am I not elated that finally the House of Representatives have agreed to support House Resolution No. 1 authored by our dear friend House Speaker Feliciano “Sonny” Belmonte Jr. First of all, let me point out that the 1987 Constitution was in my book incorrectly ratified because it only gave the Filipino people two choices… Yes to a Constitution or No to Cory, and then President Cory Aquino would have ruled just like the Marcos dictatorship.

The better thing that Tita Cory ought to have done was to give the Filipino people a choice… to accept the new Constitution hammered by 49 pro-Cory people or bring back the 1935 Constitution that the Marcos Dictatorship threw away. I was with Vice-President Salvador “Doy” Laurel when we lamented that this was happening to our country. But then it’s was too late for that now. But it should teach our people that there are proper ways to ratify or amend the constitution.

I submit that the Philippine Constitution Association (PhilConsa) is supporting this new Charter change initiative being peddled in Congress and I even agree with their purpose to amend the Constitution in order to remove the restrictions about foreign ownership. But my principles will never change. The amendment of our Constitution should not be left to politicians, especially our Congress today whose political ambitions or self-preservation is more than obvious. This is not to mention that this Congress has been tainted with the railroading of the impeachment of former Chief Justice Renato Corona… where the majority of Congress approved that impeachment without even reading the citation for impeachment.

The job of Congressmen is to scrutinize every single detail and if need be… go on a debate on any issue that they would find questionable. But the impeachment of CJ Corona only proved to the Filipino people that this Congress is squarely in the pockets of President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino, III. Thus the sacred separation of powers of these two branches of government has totally disappeared. The impeachment of CJ Corona and his eventual albeit historic ouster by the Philippine Senate opened the door for Pres. PNoy Aquino to appoint his own Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Democracy has taken a steep nose dive in this Aquino Presidency from which we may never ever recover unless we call for a Constitutional Convention (concon).

Meanwhile the Social Media Network was abuzz by what former Chief Justice Reynato Puno wrote that went viral last week, “Election is the life force of a representative democracy, for through the proper choice of rulers it avoids the unwieldiness of a democracy where the people rule directly. Our electoral process has failed to pass basic criteria from beginning to end, i.e. it must be free from any form of unfairness, insulated from any species of fraud and immunized from any degree of discrimination. What happened is our elections are highly driven by dirty money.”

Indeed, we all witnessed the May 2013 electronic fraud happening right before our eyes and the uneducated; computer illiterate Filipino people simply didn’t know that they participated in the biggest electronic fraud ever to happen in this country. Before the elections we wrote columns warning the Comelec that they have embarked on something very dangerous by not giving the source code long before the elections. By the time the Comelec gave out the source codes, it was too late to check them out. But Ateneo IT Professor Alex Muga discovered that the PCOS machines churned out the now infamous 60%-30%-10% voting pattern that was obviously designed to give a huge advantage to the Liberal Party (LP).

This is why when the Comelec proposed to sell those confounded PCOS machines, STAR columnist Federico Pascual wrote a feisty article warning the Comelec that they would be selling evidence that was used in a crime. Today there are many people seeking the return to the simple pencil and paper for our elections for the simple reason that this won’t cost billions of pesos just like what the Comelec paid for the PCOS.

In the meantime, we are waiting for the Office of the Ombudsman to file fraud charges against the Comelec officials because the Automatic Election System (AES) watch computer experts can prove that the results of the 2013 elections were manipulated through the use of the PCOS machines. Next week is the 28th anniversary of the EDSA People’s Power Revolt, which was triggered by the walkout of the computer programmers hired by the Comelec at the PICC. 28-years later, the Comelec hasn’t stopped cheating for their political patrons and I dare say it’s about time we stopped them on their tracks! Let’s start with a Lifestyle check for all Comelec officials!

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