Charter change oiling election machinery, Palace says

Despite its focus on the now-shelved Charter change, the administration’s preparations for next year’s senatorial and local elections have not been hampered, Malacañang said yesterday.

Presidential chief of staff Michael Defensor said the nationwide effort for Charter change among lawmakers and local officials in the past several months had improved the administration’s communications with its political machinery down to the grassroots.

"The Charter change exercise could be seen as a practice for oiling our machinery for the coming elections now that we are now on the election mode," he said in a telephone interview.

"Our past exercises will serve us well in the elections, especially with all those coordinations."

Since President Arroyo called for Charter change in her State of the Nation Address last year, the administration has poured its political energies to plans to amend the Constitution.

However, the administration suffered successive setbacks after the Supreme Court dismissed the petition for a people’s initiative to amend the Constitution, and the House of Representatives backtracked on its plan to convene itself as a constituent assembly.

Mrs. Arroyo herself shelved Charter change efforts following pressure from various church groups.

Defensor, who belongs to the Liberal Party (LP) and is reportedly among the administration’s senatorial candidates next year, believes there is enough time for the majority coalition to come up with line-ups for 12 seats in the senate as well as for local posts.

Apart from 12 senators, elective posts up for grabs are over 1,600 slots for municipal and city mayors as well as over 230 seats in the House of Representatives.

Presidential political adviser Gabriel Claudio said after Mrs. Arroyo placed her constitutional reform campaign on the back burner. "All roads now lead to the elections of May," and he expected the opposition to be on "a gloating mode" and make Charter change an issue against the administration.

He predicted that Charter change would become a non-issue by next year when the election fever has set in.

"The administration will campaign on a platform of accomplishment and rising optimism, domestically as well as internationally, about the country’s prospects for an economic take-off while the opposition will campaign on a platform of hate," he said.

He said the administration coalition, which includes the ruling Lakas Christian and Muslim Democrats, the LP, the Nacionalista Party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition and the Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas, remain united and cohesive.

"Its (majority coalition) and determination as well as the vast superiority of its nationwide political machinery in every province, city, municipality and barangay are intact and eager to give the opposition a terrible nightmare," he said. — Paolo Romero