Averting disaster

Oakwood might have failed as an attempt by Erap cohorts to do a Macapagal-Arroyo operation but that is not the point. Lurking behind Oakwood is a threatening coup being talked about and feared. It is more serious. More and more people, the mlitary included, see the system as rotten. The country is in a downward spiral unless civilian government takes stock, and does something drastic. There will arise a military cabal (not necessarily the disgraced Senator Honasan) that will see themselves as saviors and will use their ability to enforce their version of reforms with guns.

That is what is behind the rumors on a second coup. Unless we change the Constitution by constituent assembly now, we must be prepared to accept the consequences of a continued deterioration of the country’s economy. It could lead to a military take over. The 1987 Constitution gives the military an extraordinary role as the ‘protector of the people and the state". With the kind of news on our newspapers’ front pages – on the failing state – we are slowly driving the military to the wall. Unless civilian government does better soon than the superficial charades in the Senate, large scale corruption exposed by lifestyle checks and a plethora of other acts of misgovernment, the military to be tempted to take up its role in the 1987 Constitution.

Such a take-over can still be avoided, but the window is getting smaller with each day. In this sense, members of the Lower House have a better vision of events than the Upper House. Members of the House have approved overwhelming the immediate shift to a parliamentary system as the answer, even if it means, that they too, will be removed from their current elected posts in the parliamentary shift. But not the senators, particularly those with presidential ambitions, who continue to resist constitutional reform now. There are even senators who think that despite their unproductivity, there is no time for constitutional change. I hear some are already making plans to travel abroad during the recess and laugh at any insinuation that their lack of action on so fundamental an issue as constitutional change now, could be catastrophic.

A second coup will not be by military rebels to restore Erap but by senior officials, invoking the 1987 Constitution on its role. The recalcitrance of senators to amend the constitution is to blame. Such a coup will have a cause and predictably more successful no matter how flawed the reasoning. It will be increasingly seen as he only way out for the country. Otherwise, under the present system, it will be a spiral downward to the pits.

People are asking why a presidential aspirant like Senator Ping Lacson with a report on alleged narco-political activities still unreleased, is being coddled by senators. Regardless of this unfinished business on the report and a Supreme Court decision hanging over his head, he invokes senatorial immunity to accuse the First Gentleman as his first salvo for presidential campaign. Is that what the Senate is for? Using senatorial privilege, he mimics what happened to his bossman, the aging actor Erap. We are being treated to political brawls with no relevance to what is good for this country.

What is the military to do with the plunging peso, the country as worst performing in the region, and a civilian government blocked at every turn by politics? Would-be presidents-senators are wearing blinders, refusing to see what is wrong with the system. They see only their ‘chances at the polls and have jumped into early ‘campaigns’ based on popularity meanwhile acquiring billions for the dole-out to voters in presidential-style elections that passes as the center of our ‘democratic’ system.

It would be foolish to presume that if all the Oakwood participants were arrested, any attempt at a coup is finished. Maybe a military mutiny by the rank and file. But now with with a military take-over be senior officials. It will have a cause. That is the danger we face unless we shift to parliamentary system that would change the role of the military. Under the 1987 Constitution, mlitary senior officers need little cajoling to take over. All those hesitating senators who claim, they will not vote for their own removal, will only have themselves to blame. They may not want to be removed by constitutional reform but unless they do, they will be forcibly removed in a military take-over.

The public, who are increasingly being made powerless to do anything about reforms, will have no sympathy for the senators. The Nationalist Leadership Council, Inc. composed of civic minded men and women who belong to the Alpha Phi Beta Fraternity; Sigma Rho Fraternity, Upsilon Sigma Phi Fraternity, Beta Sigma Fraternity, Delta Lambda Sigma Sorority and the Portia Sorority, all based in the University of the Phlippines, the Lex Talionis Fraternity and the Ceta Kappa Phi Sorrority, San Beda College of Law and the Fraternal Order of the Utopia in Ateneo School of Law have declared support for the proposed constitutent assembly to shift to a unicameral parliamentary system citing almost all the countries in the region that have adopted the system.

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They cited gridlock between the executive and legislative departments as one of the fundamental causes of the country’s problems. There are hundreds of bills, 900 at the last count, passed in the House languishing in the Senate yet Senate President Franklin Drilon wonders why we are at the tail end of Asian countries, 65th with only Bangladesh behind us despite our resources and talents:"Recent events in our nation’s history; as well as the examples we see in our more progressive neighbors such as Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand, have shown the urgent need for our own country to shift to a parliamentary form of government," the statement said.

The senators may not be listening but the military generals are. They are listening and l have the power to forcibly remove parasitical politics. Although the military may be tempted to take this course, the trouble is they will be no better in solving the ills in the country. The world is awash with failed military governments. Taking over a country is different from governing a country. Our experience with the Marcos dictatorship which was essentially a military rule should have taught us a lesson.

I am aware that many in the military would resist such a takeover. It may be successful for a while, but the long term management of a country is beyond the ken of the military. At the same time the governance system of the country has to be changed, not just by motherhood statements, but an overhaul of its system of governance. There will be no cause for coups in a unicameral parliamentary federal government. Power would be decentralized and government can be changed without coups or EDSAs within parliament.

We appeal to the Senate to seriously consider urgent constitutional change now. People will not accept excuses "there is no more time" while they regale us with political brawls. Constitutional reformists are not asking the Senate to approve civil society’s proposed amendments, that is something only the people in a referendum can do. They are asking that the proposed amendments be studied and discussed by the Senate and the House in constituent assembly at the soonest possible time to avert disaster.

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