No To Cha-Cha

As I See It : No such thing as constituent assembly in Constitution

Neal H. Cruz
Inquirer News Service

A SIGN of the fear and desperation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is that she is trying to make deals right and left with people who can help her survive politically. She is offering a deal to former President Joseph Estrada, the man she kicked out of office and from whom she stole half of his presidential term. She is also dangling an offer to the Marcoses to bury the former president Ferdinand Marcos in, of all places, the Libingan ng mga Bayani [Cemetery of Heroes]. Former President Fidel Ramos is already in her corner in exchange for her support for a shift to a parliamentary system of government to make it possible for him to return to power as prime minister. Marcos, Ramos, Estrada and Macapagal-Arroyo -- four presidents banding together for their own selfish interests and like China, we will have our own Gang of Four.

We Filipinos have a term for it: "kapit sa patalim" [literally, gripping the blade]. The desperate will do anything, even hang on to a sharp blade, to survive. Like Faustus, he or she will make a pact with the devil to get what he or she wants.

Ms Arroyo seems to be making deals with anybody willing to be bought, paying congressmen to vote against impeachment, bribing witnesses to lie, hiding witnesses who could reveal things that would damn her, and committing other illegal acts such as disbursing funds for purposes for which they were not appropriated by Congress. Has she already made bribery, cheating and lying official policies of government? I hope not, but it is beginning to look more and more like that.

Makati Rep. Teddyboy Locsin revealed that shortly before the elections, she released funds intended for the purchase of fertilizers to congressmen, including those from Metro Manila and other urban areas where there are no farms to fertilize. Those fertilizer funds, however, were really intended to fertilize not farms but pockets.

The new fund releases from the Road Users' Tax, on the other hand, are intended not for the construction or repair of roads but to run over the impeachment complaint by the administration's congressional railroad. Proof is that after anti-impeachment congressmen got their shares, Ms Arroyo suddenly stopped further releases so that pro-impeachment lawmakers won't get any.

The bankrupt government is being bankrupted even more by huge payoffs to buy Ms Arroyo's survival. Taxes from the expanded value-added tax, not yet being collected now, are already being spent. As the "Hyatt 10" group of resigned Cabinet members said, money, patronage, appointments, contracts, etc. are not spared just to insure her survival. No position on Earth is worth all that much dirt.

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An indication of what will happen to us once we have a parliamentary form of government is the abuse that the House of Representatives is already committing. Knowing that the Senate is against changing the Constitution through a constituent assembly, the House went ahead and passed a resolution by itself, minus the Senate, to form a constituent assembly to change the Constitution. This despite the fact that opinion polls show that eight out of every 10 Filipinos don't want to amend the Constitution or have a parliamentary government.

We are a representative democracy and congressmen are elected to represent their districts in the House. They are supposed to follow the wishes of their constituents who are their employers. But look at what they're doing. They are disobeying their constituents and pushing Charter change just because of the ambition of their leader who wants to become prime minister by hook or by crook because he knows he cannot be elected president.

The members of the new Parliament will be the same congressmen or their relatives. So you can see what they will do in a unitary legislature where there is no Senate to check their abuses, where they, the members of parliament and not the people, will elect the head of government, the prime minister, and where even the members of the Cabinet will come from among the MPs. Thus, there will be no balance of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches as we have now. The people will be at the mercy of the party in power. If our honorable representatives can commit these abuses in a system where there is a balance of power, imagine what they can do when there is none.

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In the first place, there is no such thing as a "constituent assembly" in the Constitution. There was one in the 1935 Constitution but none in the present one. How can the House convene a constituent assembly when it is not authorized by the Charter?

It shows that the members of the House -- not the Speaker, not the members, not even the President who also endorsed a con-ass—read the Constitution. All except Rep. Hermilando Mandanas who also told the Kapihan sa Manila forum last Monday what the other members have also not read: that any individual legislator can propose amendments to the Constitution and that he, in fact, has already filed one.

He said, however, that Charter change should be put in the back burner, as the time is not right for it. This is the worst time for Charter change, Mandanas said, because we are financially and politically unstable. The politicians are only looking out for themselves, not the people, and therefore would change the Constitution for their own benefit.

In spite of the clear opposition of the nation against Charter change, it is still possible that the present gang in the House may be able to change it. In that case, the only way to stop them, short of a revolution, is to vote against the new Charter in the plebiscite. Vote No.