Charter reform information drive launched

The advocacy campaign on constitutional reforms shifts to higher gear as the presidential commission for Charter change advocacy begins barnstorming Luzon and the Visayas to spread public awareness of the need to amend the 1987 Constitution.

Various teams of the Charter Change Advocacy Commission will be dispatched beginning today to bring the issue of constitutional reforms to the northern communities of Baguio City, Zambales, Bataan, Pangasinan and Quezon City for the rest of the week, AdCom secretary-general Rita Linda Jimeno said.

Jimeno said an AdCom team will launch the provincial sorties at the Baguio City Convention Center, where barangay officials from as far away as Nueva Ecija are expected to attend the forum on Charter change.

Similar sorties will tackle the matter of ridding the 1987 Constitution of outmoded provisions that have fostered political instability and retarded economic growth in the last two weeks of March in Metro Manila and other parts of Luzon as well as in the Visayas.

This advocacy drive is complemented by a similar information campaign spearheaded nationwide by the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), the umbrella organization of some 1.7 million local government unit (LGU) officials nationwide, and various sectoral groups.

"AdCom is mounting this information drive in keeping with the Arroyo administration’s commitment to deepen public understanding of, and marshal popular support (for) systematic changes in our flawed political and economic structures that stand in the way of rapid growth with social equity," Jimeno said.

Jimeno, a member of the presidential consultative commission on Charter change (con-com), said almost 74 percent of the drive’s participants favor a parliamentary form of government, while 18 percent support the retention of the presidential system and 72 percent want a federal structure in lieu of the existing unitary system.

Following a three-month work period, the 55-member con-com submitted to President Arroyo on Dec. 16, 2005 a package of proposed amendments to the Constitution covering the shift to a unicameral parliamentary system, provision for greater decentralization and local autonomy leading to the establishment of a federal republic and the relaxation of "protectionist" Charter provisions that hold back the entry of foreign investments.

Besides Baguio City, another AdCom team will go to the town of Iba, capital of Zambales, to explain the benefits of Charter reforms and how the people may directly effect such changes as provided for in the Charter.

A third team will be in Balanga City in Bataan on March 14 and proceed the next day to San Fernando City in Pampanga. On March 16, an AdCom team will be visiting Urdaneta City, Pangasinan. Later that afternoon, the AdCom panel will attend a forum sponsored by the Daughters of St. Paul. — Cecille Suerte Felipe, Mike Frialde