That formula makes federalism a possibility but not a constitutionally-dictated certainty. True to the spirit of self-determination, the formula the Consultative Commission will submit involves an evolutionary process initiated from the grassroots and confirmed only when two-thirds of our communities eventually decide a federal state is viable.
Last Sunday, however, Chit Pedrosa, a friend, a colleague in this paper and a fellow commissioner, put out a column that unfairly characterizes the debate. That unfair characterization makes this rebuttal necessary.
In that column, Chit characterized the debate as one between the "federalists" and the "traditionalists". She further suggested that "fear of change" was the reason the "traditionalists" were reluctant to adopt the constitutional provisions proposed principally by the bloc of commissioners affiliated with the Movement for a Federal Philippines (MFP).
That is simply not true. The characterization is propagandistic and inaccurate. On a contentious matter that involves the future of the Republic, there should be no room for name-calling and propagandistic rendition of an intricate debate.
As one of those who most strongly opposed the MFP-instigated provisions, I am deeply offended by the characterization of our side as "traditionalists."
Among Chit’s most lovable traits is her capacity to be very passionate about the causes she adopts. In this case, she is very passionate about instant federalism. But her passion, in this case, overwhelms the facts and does injustice to those of us (by this time, the majority of the Consultative Commission) who think the matter of federalism should be approached with much more deliberateness.
Once before, during a ConCom plenary session, Chit was taken to task for heavily editorializing a simple report of one public consultation. She described as a "dark day" that instance when federalism was voted down during the PCCI/TUCP consultations on charter change.
It happens that this was the only public consultation I attended and where I strongly argued against the proposal for instant federalism. When the vote was about to be taken, partisans of the MFP ran across the hall from the other breakout groups in a vain attempt to outvote the actual participants in the public consultation.
I thought that was a pretty immature thing to do. But I let it pass. The incident nevertheless impressed in me the intellectual dishonesty of the federalism advocates. They did not fully represent the debates and then used the outcomes of those "consultations" to convince the rest of us that the majority wanted federalism.
The major reason I lacked enthusiasm to participate in these "consultations" was that I was always assigned to the panel on the economic provisions (where there is great unanimity at the ConCom) and not on the panel on federalism (where I had serious objections and even as I was co-chair of the Committee on the Structure of the Republic). Considering that the leadership of the ConCom was controlled by the MFP bloc, I found this a bit underhanded.
When the committee proposal was first submitted to the plenary of the ConCom, the report was returned to the committee for further study. At that time, I delivered the contra speech, summing up the concerns we had.
Principal among these concerns were the lack of study about the fiscal implications of the shift to a federal structure, the economic viability of the proposed sub-national units, the willingness of local governments to be part of the pre-defined federal units, the additional layer of bureaucracy and the requirement for additional taxes this would imply, and the political perils of imposing federalism from above.
None of these vital and prejudicial concerns were thoroughly presented during the so-called "consultations." Instead, there was a surfeit of demagoguery about "Imperial Manila" and a tendency to blur the lines between decentralization and federalism. The essential difference between the two is that federalism precisely requires a radical reconfiguration of the fiscal structure with the federal states having first crack at the revenues and surrendering to the national government what the states consider its share. That, I maintain, presents us with the peril of a fiscal meltdown, credit tightening and gross uncertainty about the management of the national debt.
The committee on the structure of the Republic, instead of addressing the vital and prejudicial concerns that caused the first report to be returned to it in the first place, worked instead on further detailing the original MFP proposal. The product was a detailed section of the proposed new Constitution that sets a hard and fast timetable for the shift, minute details about the regional parliaments and even the oath of office of the officials of the federated state.
I quietly walked out of the committee sessions.
Last Friday, I formally resigned as co-chair of the committee to dissociate myself from the report and free myself to interrogate the proposal. After a whole day of interrogation, the MFP group failed to satisfy the concerns of the plenary. In my second contra speech, I pointed out that the proposal has not been fully studied by its advocates. The process was not satisfactorily thought through. If we went through with this proposal, we would be irresponsible, reckless and expose our final report to public ridicule.
By late Friday, it was clear the MFP group did not have the votes to get the ConCom’s imprimatur on their proposal. The Concom leadership, in order to avoid a vote, called for a smaller committee to be convened to reconcile the opposed positions.
At that point, my instinct was to force a vote and kill this badly conceived proposal for good. But I yielded to pleas from colleagues to allow reconciliation to happen.
For the record, we opposed the MFP-inspired provisions not because we were "traditionalists" or were "afraid of change" but because these proposals were not fully worked out. We want the Concom report to be able to withstand the most ruthless public scrutiny and win the debate for charter change.
We want change as desperately as everyone else – but it must be change that is well thought through and pursued with patriotic deliberateness.