Largely unnoticed due to the current political noise, Executive Secretary Bingbong Medialdea informed the Senate last Thursday morning that the President had formed a 25-member advisory commission in preparation for the revision of the 1987 Constitution.
The commission, once formed, is the first step towards the long and arduous path towards revising the fundamental law of the land. Thirty years under a Constitution forged during the “revolutionary” reign of President Corazon Aquino is enough. We have to begin the process of change.
That Constitution was forged under precariously transitional times. The “revolutionary” president hand-picked 50 “wise” men and women who were still psychologically and emotionally reacting to the ecesses of the Martial Law regime. The supreme incongruity of that hastily written Constitution lies in having a multi-party system under a presidential structure. Nothing could be more stupid.
Thus, in the first presidential elections held in 1992 under the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, we had seven major candidates for the presidency: Fidel Ramos of Lakas-NUCD, Miriam Defensor Santiago of the People’s Reform Party, Eduardo Cojuangco for the Nationalist People’s Coalition, Ramon Mitra for the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino, Imelda Marcos for the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, Jovito Salonga for the Liberal Party, and Salvador Laurel for the Nacionalista Party. (Note that that two grand old parties under the two-party system of the 1935 Constitution garnered the lowest number of votes, even if their presidential candidates were arguably the most qualified to be president).
And so it has always been: from 1992 to 2016 we have had minority presidents. Only Estrada, Aquino and Duterte have had commanding leads over the second placer, but still, they failed to gain a 50-percent-plus-one majority vote.
We have had Congresses, both in its upper and lower houses, that are patchwork coalitions based on (1) “support” for whoever was the new president; (2) “support” for the new Speaker or Senate President; (3) “support” for their personal and vested interests. Speak not of ideology. But for a few party-list congressmen, the concept of ideology is totally alien.
Patchwork as they are, bound only by fleeting and transitory “support,” they crack at the first sign of political crisis. Some presidents, like Gloria Macapagal Arroyo kept the coalition support glued together by the skillful use of pork and perks, but save for Cory whose anointed squeaked through a controversial minority vote win (FVR versus the late Miriam), none of the presidents got their “anointed” to win. Continuity, therefore, became oxymoronic. Policies and programs were laid to waste, simply because their progenitors were politically different.
Erap trounced FVR’s JDV; PNoy trounced GMA’s Gibo Teodoro; Duterte shellacked PNoy’s Mar Roxas.
And so we are where we are, a boom-and-bust cycle that has become the characteristic pattern of our growth. We need to break out of it.
On top of the economic stagnation (don’t give me those GDP numbers that keep increasing marginally but for the last few years, it’s the incidence of mass poverty and the lack of inclusiveness that matters), we have been wobbled politically by the longest-running communist insurgency in the whole world, and a secessionist rebellion(s) that cannot seem to find any settlement despite efforts of practically every president since Diosdado Macapagal.
Now we wake up to realize that the drug problem has become so widespread that nothing but the most draconian of solutions from a strong-willed leader with absolute single-mindedness, can hack it.
Thus it was that in 2016, despite all the usual political “analysts” opining (I hate to use that verb, but then this is done in mockery) that the mayor from Davao’s boondocks stood no chance against well-oiled political machinery (which I have never believed in as significant enough in national elections since I learned my lessons in the doomed Mitra campaign of 1992) or against celebrity power, people from all strata of society elected Rodrigo Roa Duterte.
Why? Because he advocated Change. He personified Change.
The past five-and-a-half months of his presidency has shown what real Change can do. Some do not like it, but the majority agree. Change has come.
But for Change to become institutional, we need to have a fundamental law that makes continuing Change possible. We need a framework of governance that will not only satisfy the needs of the times, such as creating a structure that will provide lasting solutions to our political division. Thus the drive towards a federal system.
Further, we need a fundamental law that allows more flexibility in our economic policies, for in a world where capital flows are so dynamic and so movable, we need to catch what we can, and static, even iron-clad restrictions stymie quick actions and reactions.
The President has opened the debate. Shall we transform from a highly centralized, unitary system into federal? How “federal” should it be? How do we divide the unitary into autonomous parts? How economically stable, or even viable, will the federal parts be? Should ethno-linguistic differences be the basis for division, or should it be economic capability?
Remember that unlike well-known federations, such as the USA, Germany or India, these have historically began as separate states or colonies joined together, while in the Philippine situation, we are devolving from a system imposed by our colonial masters for centuries, artificially creating a nation out of diverse ethno-linguistic cultures. That unitary structure is not as easy to dismantle, as it is for parts to become a federated whole.
But we need to confront these daemons that bedevil our national being.
And only Duterte is willing to confront.
“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace,” the grand Charles de Gaulle once remarked about his transformative leadership of chaotic France into its First World status.
So let the debates begin.