June

By June, we should be ready to submit a new Constitution to a plebiscite.

That is the timetable set by the President. It is a timetable accepted by the dominant party Lakas-CMD. The party decision was unanimously supported during its national directorate meeting over the weekend.

From all indications, too, it is a timetable acceptable to former president Fidel Ramos. That is an important factor, considering how the former president has expressed great impatience over the charter change process.

A consensus was reached around a formula prepared by House Speaker Jose de Venecia. In this formula, parliamentary elections will be called in May 2007, after a new Constitution has been approved. In the transition arrangement, from 2007 to 2010, President Arroyo will continue to wield substantial powers following the French parliamentary model.

It is understood that some degree of operational control over the running of government will be ceded to the prime minister elected by the Interim Parliament installed after the 2007 elections. In the "French model" arrangement, the interim prime minister will act as the chief operating officer or government head of the full integration of the executive and legislative branches of government.

That formula appears to be acceptable to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Although she will be required to cede some control over government to the interim prime minister, she will effectively remain chief executive until the end of her term. She will continue to be the principal architect of the policy of this government and will remain in a good position to leave a clear legacy to the nation.

The arrangement is, understandably, quite unacceptable to those who want nothing less than the pre-termination of the President’s term. The most rabidly anti-Arroyo personalities have accused the charter change process as nothing more than a ploy to "extend" the President’s stay in power.

There is a certain injustice in that position. The unelected have unabashedly tried to dictate on the elected their preferred tenure.

I do not care so much about how power will be shared by those elected to govern. What I do care about is that the present constitutional configuration be reformed at the earliest possible time and in the most feasible way possible.

We cannot do without a transition of some sort. The three-year transition parliament envisioned in the de Venecia formula appears to be the most practicable.

Unless we begin moving into that transition formula, we will lose the rare political conjuncture we have at the moment to begin moving out of the dysfunctional constitutional order we find ourselves in.

For as long as we hold elections at large, the costs of getting elected to national office will remain exorbitantly high. Elections will remain the principal means by which an oligarchy will continue dictating how this nation will be led and how it will be governed. Expensive elections will continue to inhibit the accession of better-qualified leaders to positions of power and leave the leadership structure vulnerable to populist choices.

For as long as we continue in the same constitutional mold we find ourselves in today, our political party system will remain weak and the politics of popularity will continue to keep our electoral democracy vulnerable. Our political system will continue on unable to produce the statesmen we need. Political contestation will continue to be poisoned, embittered and unsteady.

Our electoral system, we all agree, is weak. But that will not be cured simply by selecting better people to manage our elections. It will be radically improved by altering the electoral format itself. Elections at large has become an unsustainable proposition.

That, I think, is the principal urgency for reforming our constitutional format. Unless we undertake those reforms, we will continue to elect movie stars and sports heroes to posts that require a high degree of statesmanship – thereby condemning our governance to the limbo of a constant carnival.

There might, conceivably, be a more ideal way of getting the constitutional transition done. But early on, I learned that all politics is the art of the possible.

The transition formula adopted by the Lakas directorate is the most practicable. It might not seem ideal to those who are inclined to imagine other formulas. But it is something that can be done. It is something that will be done by those who are in a position to do something about what ails our political system.

Those who have the time and the energy to spare imagining other formulas have that luxury precisely because they are in no position to do anything about our political system. They might have the sound bites and might be able to wangle some media space, but the bottom line is that they do not have the power nor the organization to do anything about their imagined alternatives.

Lakas, by contrast, has the organization, the elected base, the logistics, the plan and the audacity to undertake the urgent constitutional reform the nation needs. It is the only party in a position to do anything about a situation that most of us can only whine about.

Of course, the vision Lakas espouses has been clarified through the prism of party interest and the political survival of some of its leading members. Of course, the plan Lakas espouses is something that does not endanger the political agenda of its elected constituency. These are not matters worth arguing about.

Altruism is something that, by nature, the powerless demand of the power wielders. Altruism is a virtue to those who can do nothing to shape the way history transforms.

Political practicality, on the other hand, is the adhesive by which coalitions are formed. It is practical men who get things done.

If we want to reform the constitutional framework that governs our lives, we have to deal with the practical men who can do something about the reform agenda. The impractical dreamers might help us keep our bearings. But they cannot be relied upon to get things done.

And so it is that we now have a June deadline. It is a deadline that can be met only by accepting some imperfection in the ideal democracy we hold. But it brings us closer to a more workable democracy, not away from it.