Once again, on Charter change

(Blogger’s Note: Here’s an advance peek at my column tomorrow for Panorama Magazine.)

Charter change advocates continue to play with fire by pushing through a “people’s” initiative and Constituent Assembly through the most unconventional means. In their desire to win this battle, they have pushed political decorum and civil discourse out the window, thus setting off alarm bells in the minds of a largely disengaged citizenry.

I sense a re-awakening of fervor and passion, as more Filipinos are being bamboozled into taking sides on a Charter change debate that should have been the least of their worries. The decision of the House of Representatives to embark on a solitary journey towards Charter change, despite the clear bicameral character of Congress, underscores the dark motives that permeate this Cha-cha overdrive.

A shift from a presidential-bicameral form of government to a parliamentary-unicameral form of government is not an easy matter. It takes away our right to directly elect the country’s chief executive. It will fuse the executive and legislative branches of government into one monolithic source of concentrated political power. The principle of check and balance that has proven itself essential to the people’s frustrated attempts for public accountability will be greatly weakened. If we re-examine the past few years, or even the recent months, it will show with clarity how this Constitution stood in the way of threats to our civil liberties.

Why change the system now? Elections are less than a year away. This democratic exercise will help clear the air, while empowering the electorate –from the balut vendors to jeepney drivers to company executives and government functionaries – to choose their representatives. This time, I think our people will be more careful with their choices. This time, the mid-term elections will serve as an indirect referendum on today’s top political players and parties. And perhaps because of this, the idea of no elections as smuggled into the Sigaw ng Bayan’s “people’s” initiative petition or in the House resolution on Charter change, has become every incumbent politician’s daydream.

What does this all mean to the minimum-wage earner struggling to buy a plastic bag of groceries? It means bearing the brunt of endless power that can twist and turn our laws like one would a Rubic’s cube. I am amazed that a moderate labor group branded the present Constitution as a hindrance to industrialization. Investors avoid the country because we keep changing the rules, from one executive order to the next, from bid to bid, with an all-out war against insurgency that cause rural folks to scramble for their cedulas in order to stay alive. A prolix Constitution is not the reason they continue to stay away.

If we change it, will they come? Foreign investors have the option to put their money where it will earn the most because the cost of doing business is reasonable and efficient. Watching this spectacle of government pushing for constitutional reforms in the most unconventional ways can only lead them to question the stability of our democratic processes and the rationality of our policies and priorities.

The drafting of a new constitution is an act normally vested with the highest aspirations and vision of a people. It can and must not be just another numbers game. It can and must not be another way for incumbent politicians to stay in power, for a little bit more, under a different title and position. It should and must not be a product of spin and demagoguery unleashed on a people overburdened with financial pressures and dwindling hopes, like a boxer on a rope, bruised and battered from the punches of price increases and stagnant wages.

What must change? The administration must learn to relax its guard because as they’ve said, the worse is over. If they continue to act like a frigid wife, ready to jump out of its skin with the slightest touch, then political tensions will never ease. The Senate must improve its performance, with the senators coming to work each day, fully-prepared and willing to attend routine committee hearings like dutiful students eager to learn from the classroom of public life. The House, difficult as it may be, must learn to temper their enthusiasm to please the dispensers of largesse and be more tolerant and respectful of those with opposing views. And we, the citizens, must get more involved with the affairs of the state lest we lose our rights and liberties by default to the insistent, persistent, powerful few.