JDV: It’s RP’s final chance to shift to parliamentary system

Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. declared yesterday that this year is the "final chance" for the nation to shift to a parliamentary unicameral form of government.

Speaking before a joint session of Congress for President Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address, De Venecia said efforts to amend the Constitution must now be resumed "in high gear" because this is the "best time" for the Philippines to give up the bicameral presidential system.

"This year I believe we have reached a point where Charter reform has become inevitable on the historic and strategic scale," he said. "We have awakened a national consensus for constitutional reform."

De Venecia said lawmakers, as representatives of the 84 million Filipinos, would cross party lines to decide on "the great issues of constitutional change."

"We are already running out of time - and many of our independent-thinking citizens have said time and again that constitutional change is the last remaining hope of our people," he said.

"More than anything, this last session gives us the final chance to replace through charter reform an inefficient and inflexible system that, by its weakness, breeds extremist plots to seize power," the Speaker added.

De Venecia said the shift to a parliamentary form of government could be done through a people’s initiative and by Congress convened as a constituent assembly.

"If our country is to end its endemic crises, we must renew — we must reinvigorate — our political institutions," he said. "Charter reform is the key to all these beneficent changes essential to our political life as a nation."

De Venecia said shifting from the bicameral presidential system to a unicameral parliamentary form is "a cause greater than ourselves and our ambitions."

"In these parlous times, politics must become what the Czech intellectual Vaclav Havel calls the art of the impossible — the art of transcending partisan interests in a collective and cooperative effort to make both our country and ourselves better," he said.

De Venecia, an ally of Mrs. Arroyo, took a swipe at the opposition-dominated Senate, which has rejected proposals to merge with the House to form a unicameral legislature.

"The Senate, regrettably, did not share this House’s sense of urgency in dealing with this great reform initiative," he said. "It is tragic that the two Houses should be working at cross-purposes — when they should be cooperating in harmony to advance the national purpose."

Early this year, the House and the Senate suffered a deadlock on what mode the government has to take to effect changes in the Constitution.

Senators rejected proposals for Congress to convene as a constituent assembly in favor of a constitutional convention, which the House finds to be too expensive.

Allies of Mrs. Arroyo in the House want the Constitution amended by way of constituent assembly, although the government is also open to the idea of people’s initiative, which has so far gathered almost nine million signatures.

If Congress is convened as a constituent assembly, senators want the Senate and the House to vote separately on proposed amendments to the Constitution, and for each house to muster a vote of three-fourths of its members.