A Bicol congressman on Sunday welcomed reports that even members of the Liberal Party in the Senate, led by Senate President Franklin Drilon, were now open to support Charter Change that would pave the way for the long-overdue shift from the unitary (presidential) to the federal system of government under the Duterte administration.
Congressman-elect LRay Villafuerte of Camarines Sur was referring to the statement made by Drilon that more senators favor constitutional reform.
“With the similar backing by presumptive House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez of Davao del Norte for both Cha-Cha and federalism, Congress seems likely to give “the big push” at the onset of the Duterte presidency for the overhaul of the national government structure that is crucial to the president-elect’s agenda for inclusive growth via job- and investor-friendly countryside development under his watch,” Villafuerte said.
“The apparent emerging consensus in both houses of Congress for constitutional reform opens wide the door to the long-overdue shift from our unitary system to the federal form of government under the Duterte presidency,” said Villafuerte, a long-time advocate of federalism and full autonomy of local government units [LGUs] to spur genuine countryside development.
Duterte is an advocate of federalism and also favors Cha-Cha to amend constitutional provisions that he said restricted the inflow of foreign investments.
Given this scenario, Villafuerte said “there is more reason for the formation of a grand coalition of parties from across the political divide in the House of Representatives and now also the Senate to finally push the switch to federalism by way of Cha-Cha in the next government.”
Villafuerte said “only the genuine devolution of powers from so-called ‘Imperial Manila’ to the provinces and cities would allow the country’s nascent economic overdrive to truly trickle down to the masses and enable incoming President Duterte to make good on his plan to create special economic zones to generate enough jobs in the countryside.”
Earlier, Villafuerte said, “A grand coalition of pro-administration and opposition political parties to spearhead the federal shift has assumed greater urgency, given Mr. Duterte’s publicly declared support for federalism and would-be Speaker Alvarez’s full backing for Cha-Cha purportedly to switch to a federal government and lift economic provisions that restrict to lure foreign investments.”
Under the Constitution, amendments to the 1987 Charter could be introduced either under these three modes: through a duly-elected Constitutional Convention (ConCon), Congress convening itself into a Constituent Assembly (ConAss) or a People’s Initiative (PI).
Villafuerte, who was chairman of the League of Provinces of the Philippines when he was Camarines Sur governor, is a stalwart of the Nacionalista Party that forged a coalition agreement after the May 9 polls with the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan that had carried Duterte to electoral victory.
“Congress must take the lead in pushing the federal shift via Charter change on the watch of would-be President Duterte, who himself champions federalism and who enjoys significant popular support,” he said.
“Now is the best time to tackle Charter Change and the switch to Federalism at the onset of the Duterte presidency minus any suspicion of a hidden political agenda,” he stressed.
He recalled that the Consultative Commission (ConCom) created by Then President Arroyo had discussed the federal shift, but this proposal along with other proposed constitutional reforms failed to gain traction in the face of public suspicion that Cha-Cha was a mere political ploy for Mrs. Arroyo to circumvent the constitutional ban on her reelection.
Villafuerte said federalism would bolster Duterte’s plan to decongest Metro Manila by creating labor-intensive economic zones in the countryside.
Currently, over half of the country’s economic zones are located in either Metro Manila or neighboring provinces like Cavite, Laguna and
Batangas, he said.
He proposed that the Duterte-planned economic zones be put up in provinces where there are coasts, like what they do in Thailand and Indonesia, in order “to spur growth and development strategically and geographically.”
With the central governing authority in a federal system having control only over national concerns like national defense and security, foreign policy, currency and monetary issues, Villafuerte said “provinces and cities will actually have more powers under a federal set-up.
These LGUs, he said, will assume primary responsibilities over development of their respective industries, education and health services, agriculture and fisheries, and local peace and order, among others, with minimal or no interference from the national government.
“Because we have a unitary form of government now, most of the administrative powers and financial resources are with the national government based in Metro Manila,” he said.
He explained that under the present unitary form of government, the so-called ‘Imperial Manila’ has exclusive say on how the country’s resources are to be distributed among the country’s provinces and cities.
This, he said, forced LGUs to often beg for resources from the national government to fund their respective development projects.
“But with provincial and city LGUs gaining full autonomy to chart their own growth paths under a federal government, there would be greater competition among LGUs to jumpstart their respective economies by crafting innovative programs to attract investments and create business opportunities that would generate jobs for their constituents,” Villafuerte said.