Con-Com 2018 Member
(8th of a series)
Q: Suffrage is to be exercised by those domiciled in the Philippines for at least one year, and in the place wherein they propose to vote for at least six months immediately preceding the elections. How does “domicile” differ from “residence,” a term more easily understood?
A: A residence is where one happens to reside, and one can have multiple residences, because one can reside in one place at one time, and in another, at another time. A student who spends most of the year in Manila is a resident of Manila for purposes of his studies but is a resident of the city or town from which he comes. Domicile, however, means “habitual residence” and in law this requires two things: first, physical presence; second, the intention to remain there for good. So, if one is fed up with Tuguegarao City’s intolerable heat, sells all his property, bids his friends a tearful farewell and announces to all his intentions of forsaking Tuguegarao for good and moves to Bongao Island where he intends to reside until the day of his departure from the world, the two requisites of domicile shall then have been fulfilled: He will be physically present in Bongao with the intent to remain there — what the law describes as “animus manendi.”
Q: Why this requirement?
A: Someone who participates in elections must be serious at doing so and must have a stake in the result of the elections to ensure his conscientious and studied participation in the political exercise. Requiring that he be a domiciliary of the country and of the place is some form of guarantee of this degree of commitment.
Q: What is meant by requiring Congress to “ensure the right to vote of persons in need of assistance”?
A: This is the draft’s way of diminishing disenfranchisement on grounds that cannot be imputed to the voter, such as physical disability, illiteracy or even temporary deployment in fulfillment of legal and moral duties outside the place where one ought to vote. Since it is not for the Constitution to anticipate every possible form of disability or hindrance to participation in the elections, the draft has this generalized formulation.
Q: Why was there need for a section on political parties?
A: In fact, the draft devotes several sections to political parties, characterized as they are as “mechanisms of citizen representation and democratic governance.” In other words, parties are perceived as indispensable to democracy and to the maturation of the body politic, and while one cannot compel the formation of parties, one can provide incentives for them to emerge. Many of these incentives are provided for by the draft. In the end, what is desired is that Filipino voters do not choose on the basis of name recall or popularity (except when the popularity arises from competence, integrity, and intelligence). Rather what would be preferable would be for voters to examine programs and platforms of government advanced by contending parties and to vote according to their vision of what the country ought to be.
Q: Can the Communist Party of the Philippines win recognition as a political party?
A: For as long as the Community Party endeavors a change in government through violence, then it will not be allowed registration as a political party. But if it seeks the overthrow of a capitalist, entrepreneurial system through the parliamentary (electoral) route, then it should be eligible for registration as a party, but this will all depend on the policy statements as well as the praxis of the CPP-NPA.
Q: What sense is there to the declaration that political parties are to be developed as “democratic public institutions”?
A: In the past, political parties were dismissed as the coming together for convenience of “politicos” for the sole purpose of winning public office at elections. In the draft, they are given constitutional recognition as integral to our democracy and as public institutions. Once registered with the Federal Commission on Elections, a political party enjoys juridical personality, such personality as an institution being conferred by the Constitution itself.
Q: But parties in the Philippines have always been known to be “gangs of the rich and the powerful.” What about the “poor and the helpless”? How can they ever muster the funds and the force to form parties?
A: The Constitution directs the Federal Republic to take affirmative action so that the marginalized may organize themselves into genuine political parties. Affirmative action refers to an entire gamut of supportive, helpful and favorable measures leading to the formation of political parties composed of the underrepresented. This can include government social workers training fisherfolk, farmer peasants, the urban poor in self-organization and party-formation, and so many other forms of assistance.
(To be continued)