‘Many Pinoys want Cha-cha, but don’t trust GMA’

Many Filipinos believe their nation’s Constitution must be changed, but they do not trust President Arroyo to do the job, analysts say.

Mrs. Arroyo and her allies have done a bad job selling constitutional reform to the country, they argue.

Many Filipinos see the campaign as simply an attempt by the President to extend her stay in office well after her term expires in 2010.

"I don’t think anyone denies the fact we must reform our Constitution and the way our politicians are elected," Benjamin Tolosa, a political scientist with the Ateneo University, told AFP.

"The only problem is no one trusts the President to do it."

For over a year now the question of Charter change, known locally as "Cha-Cha," has dominated much of the political debate in the Philippines, a Southeast Asian nation of 84 million people.

Mrs. Arroyo has strongly defended her position saying, a parliamentary form of government with one chamber would be more effective at enacting reforms and legislative programs than the current method of governance.

The country’s existing approach involves a US-style presidential system with a House of Representatives and Senate.

The President has argued that the Constitution is no longer attuned to the globalized, market-based economy, gives too much power to the judiciary and prevents foreign participation in key sectors.

It also gives the President a single six-year term, which many see as the real reason for Mrs. Arroyo’s push.

"When the Constitution was drafted in 1987, following the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, it was done with the intention of making it difficult to have another strong, one-man rule," said Cleo Calimbahin of the political science department at the University of Asia and Pacific.

In recent months Mrs. Arroyo and her allies in the House of Representatives have been forced to make a series of embarrassing U-turns in trying to get constitutional change off the ground.

Last week she was forced to shelve plans for a Constitutional Assembly made up of House representatives due to fears of massive street protests organized by the dominant Catholic church and left-wing groups.

Some commentators have suggested the real reason for canceling the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in the central island of Cebu earlier this month had more to do with the political situation in Manila than with bad weather or threats of a terrorist attack.

Last Sunday the powerful Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) went ahead with a planned rally against Charter change.

But the CBCP turned it into a "Thanksgiving Mass," believing Mrs. Arroyo would no longer go ahead with her plans to amend the Constitution.

The rally drew between 15,000 and 50,000, well short of the 500,000 the Church had hoped to draw.

On Tuesday, Mrs. Arroyo, in a speech to the Asian Development Bank, said constitutional change was not dead but back on the agenda. Mrs. Arroyo did not elaborate what form or shape it will take.

"She says one thing and does another," Tolosa said. "But the problem we have in this country runs much deeper than trust of the President ... the people have lost faith in their political leaders right across the board."

Clarita Carlos, a political scientist with the University of the Philippines, agreed: "The people are physically and emotionally tired of politics ... hence the low turnout on Sunday." — AFP