Cha-cha via con-con means change for RP!

There’s no doubt that Charter change has become a major battleground among our politicians. My readers have always known that this was a topic close to my heart simply because from the time the 1987 or Cory Constitution was ratified when I was still a neophyte columnist, doing thrice-weekly columns in The Freeman and a year later, once a week in The Philippine STAR, we were already harping on the defects of the Cory Constitution, defects that have already magnified into major problems today.

A case in point is the term limit for our elected officials, starting with the term of office for the President, which is a single six-year period. Twenty years ago, we’ve always said six years are too long for a bad President and just too short for a good one. Today, anti-Arroyo politicos cannot seem to wait for the 2010 presidential elections, some of them trying to call for snap elections. These are symptoms of desperation, which could have been prevented if we did make a new constitution and instead returned to the tried-and-tested four-year term for the President with a chance for reelection for another four-year term. We had this in the 1935 Constitution, which is why the Philippines was very politically stable in the years prior to Martial Rule.

It’s about time that we acknowledge this problem, which is also connected to the problems with our local elected officials who have to go through a very short three-year term. If we got a new city or municipal mayor, it would take at least a year for the elected official to orient himself or herself in the office of the mayor. That gives the mayors only one year to implement whatever plans or programs they have in mind because surely on the last year of their term, it is already the campaign period. This is not to mention that the Cory Constitution allowed for a recall system where an elected mayor can be recalled after one year in office.

We saw this happening even in Cebu City, after the comeback of Mayor Tomas Osmeña in 2000 when then former mayor Alvin Garcia, who controlled most of the barangay officials, tried to have Osmeña recalled. Obviously this proviso was placed in the Cory Constitution in order to remove mayors who refuse to vacate their posts, even if they have done a grave injustice against their constituents. But not one of the framers of the Cory Constitution predicted that this proviso would be used by “sore losers” to get back at the winners. Remember in this country, there are no losers in our political exercises… only winners and those who were cheated!

Once more the 1935 Constitution was correct in giving our local government officials a four-year term with reelection for another four years. In short, if we do have a constitutional convention (con-con) we must urge the con-con delegates to find ways to “depoliticize” the Philippine government, so that politicians would look at a career in politics as truly a public service, not as a family heirloom that is passed on from father to son or daughter or from husband to wife like what is happening in this country today, thanks to the Cory Constitution.

But will we really come up with a constitutional convention? It depends because certain political quarters like Sen. Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel Jr. want to cut short the process, saying that a con-con is expensive and takes too long. I can understand that Sen. Nene Pimentel is aging fast and doesn’t have the luxury of time, but we’ve seen the results of having the present Constitution virtually “fast-tracked” by 49 Cory-appointed people and look at what kind of Constitution that we got? Sen. Pimentel wants to put a federal system in place and I fully support this idea. However, I totally disagree with him on changing to a parliamentary system for the simple reason that Filipinos are still politically immature. Just look at what recently happened in Thailand, which has a parliamentary system, and you’ll see what I mean.

Then this week, Senators Manuel “Mar” Roxas and Richard Gordon are suddenly pushing for something that I have long been advocating, calling for a con-con where delegates are to be elected simultaneously during the May 2010 presidential elections. This is one issue that I talked about with Sen. Roxas during a dinner we had when he was in Cebu and he agreed that this would save time and ensure that there would be no extension for GMA’s term and most importantly, it assures us that even if there’s a newly elected President, we would still have a con-con.

I also intimated this to former University of the Philippines (UP) president and 1971 Con-con secretary-general Jose Abueva who is also the adviser for Charter change of the Arroyo administration. Finally, Cha-cha has now become a political issue, where the pros and cons can take sides and debate on why we should change the Charter or why we should keep it as it is. What we need today is change and we can do it via a con-con!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.