ELEVEN regional governments will be created once the proposed federal system of government is approved, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III said Friday.
“It’s like being in a family. You take care of each other even if everyone lives his own life,” Pimentel said in a speech before the general assembly of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines at the Manila Hotel.
He said federalism was the one change that the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte wanted to realize because it would foster unity amid diversity and self-determination.
Federalism would help erase the two faces of Philippine society under a unicameral government that has a highly centralized structure by allowing the neglected areas to catch up with the more affluent ones.
This dichotomy in Philippine society, he said, where there were places of wealth, comfort and modernity and places of extreme poverty happened under a unitary system with Metro Manila as the one and only center of power.
“We see it as the practical solution to the age-old problems of poverty, inequality and instability that continue to hobble the development of our nation,” Pimentel said.
If the Philippines would not change, the rich regions would only become richer, while the poor regions would become poorer because the capital, talent and infrastructure were concentrated in the rich regions.
“Not to mention that the law and order situation is better in these regions,” Pimentel said.
“They are also still the areas closest to the center of power. So these already rich areas are the ones that can take most advantage of the economic growth the Philippines is projected to enjoy.”
The movement to adopt a federal system of government with a bicameral legislature is contained in a number of bills filed both in the Lower House and the Senate that are proposing amendments to the 1987 Constitution.
Pimentel said once embedded in the revised Constitution, the federal system would empower the people in the various regions to determine the kind of development they would like to see in their own communities.
The regions would be free to invite the kind of investments they wanted to come into their respective jurisdictions and offer them incentives without needing permission from the central government.
“They would determine the overall direction of their development,” Pimentel said, adding that under the principle of subsidiarity in a federal nation, the regions would be empowered to chart their own destiny.
He said the principle of subsidiarity would be complemented by the principle of solidarity because every component unit of a federal nation was an equal part of the federation.
“Each of the component units has an equal say in the affairs of the union as partner in the development of the component units and of the federation as a whole, he said.