Sigaw defends people’s initiative anew

Charter change advocates assailed critics of the people’s initiative for allegedly peddling lies and resorting to character assassination of leaders of the move to amend the Constitution.

Sigaw ng Bayan spokesman Raul Lambino said the opposition is pursuing "intellectually bankrupt" arguments against Charter change, and this only betrayed their desperate attempts to discredit the people’s initiative which he described as the fastest, least expensive and very democratic mode of making reforms.

He said the elite forces and protectors of the status quo are behind the scheme to discredit the people’s initiative through the relentless peddling of fabricated tales to hide their lack of valid and substantial arguments.

"Not only are their legal arguments weak, but their attempts at peddling lies against the people’s initiative are pathetic. Their unsubstantiated attacks against the people’s initiative only highlight the intellectual bankruptcy of their arguments," Lambino said.

Meanwhile, officials and members of the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP) will meet today at the Manila Hotel to intensify the campaign to promote the holding of a plebiscite and pave the way for the shift from a bicameral presidential system to a unicameral parliament.

ULAP president and Bohol Gov. Erico Aumentado and Manila Mayor Lito Atienza, president of the Metro Manila Mayors League, will lead the general assembly to show the solidarity of local officials in support of amendments to the 1987 Constitution.

Lambino’s statement was in response to weekend reports of an alleged lobby fund used to pay off the 6.3 million registered voters who are signatories in a petition for the people’s initiative, along with the charge that the proposed shift to a parliamentary system is part a Malacañang plot to legitimize President Arroyo’s term up to 2010.

"There is nothing to legitimize in this constitutional exercise because the presidency of Mrs. Arroyo has long been settled by her proclamation by Congress," he said.

This desperate attempt to connect certain personalities to the efforts to push constitutional reforms is part of the opposition’s efforts to cover up their weak reasons against the people’s initiative.

Lambino and Aumentado have asked the Supreme Court to uphold their petition for a people’s initiative, which the Commission on Elections (Comelec) junked last Aug. 31 due to the lack of an enabling law covering this process of changing the Constitution.

All of the 6.3 million signatories had been duly verified by city and municipal Comelec officials as registered voters throughout the country’s 213 legislative districts.

"If nine million voters have signed up for the people’s initiative, including the 6.3 million verified ones, it is simply because of the increasing number of Filipinos who are getting fed up with the ‘poisoned political culture’ and anemic growth arising from our dysfunctional bicameral presidential system," Lambino said.

This developed as Hermogenes Decano, law dean of the University of Pangasinan, said the people’s initiative is already self-executory because the framers of the 1987 Constitution were unlikely to have given the Filipino people with an "empty right" that is completely dependent on whether Congress is willing to let the citizenry exercise such a sacred constitutional power.

Decano said the new petition for people’s initiative filed by 6.3 million duly verified registered voters, points to the irrationality of the framers of the 1987 Charter as having bestowed upon the people a useless right subject to the discretion of a bicameral Congress.

"The Senate is the aggrieved party in the shift to a unicameral parliament, so it appears farfetched for the 1986 Constitutional Commission to have intended to give the people an empty right that is totally dependent on the nobility and generosity of a legislative chamber to preside over its own burial," Decano said.

The Charter Change Advocacy Commission (ad-com) said a parliamentary system will spare the Filipinos of the traditional politics.

"This country has had enough of politics, osf shouting matches and grave abuse of subpoena powers. It’s about time that we spare the Filipino people of the horrible political circus. This doesn’t help us in any way — it only shows how immature our legislators and political leaders are," said ad-com chairman Lito Lorenzana. — With Mike Frialde