Clock ticking on Cha-cha

One shouldn’t be misled by the hyperbole about the prospects of Charter change. The House is kidding itself if it thinks, as some of its members still maintain, that a constituent assembly is "the way to go." The Senate is day-dreaming when many of its leading members pronounce the ongoing People’s Initiative "dead in the water."

Maybe the President knows something we don’t. She reportedly proclaimed in her Independence Day speech that the "day of reckoning" was at hand. She was referring to the people’s initiative, Executive Secretary Eddie Ermita clarified, when she said that, "Our people will soon be called upon to make a decision that can bring an end to the political deadlocks that have stalled our efforts to take our nation to the next level."

I frankly don’t know whence all this confidence about the fate of Cha-cha emanates. The evidence is to the contrary. What’s dead in the water is that fruitless "negotiation" between the House and the Senate to resolve the thorny issue of joint or separate voting in a con-ass. Any prospect of consensus was doomed from the start, optimistic but naïve announcements of "breakthroughs" notwithstanding. The two sides never achieved a breakthrough of any consequence, didn’t even come close.

Since the House has again given proof positive of its abject inutility in the chacha process, con-ass has now very clearly been discarded like stale bread by those pushing for charter change.

What’s actually gaining ground as the "way to go" is the people’s initiative. Malacanang has obviously jumped on the bandwagon. Now it’s Secretary Ermita and political adviser Gabby Claudio, no longer just Raul Lambino, who’re crowing that Sigaw ng Bayan has already garnered the requisite number of signatures and is about to file a petition with the Commission on Elections for the setting ofIt hasn’t escaped people’s attention that not too long ago, the Sigaw stalwarts were swearing that theirs was a people’s, as distinguished from a government, initiative. But with no less than the President, as amplified by her Executive Secretary and Political Adviser, singing the praises of People’s Initiative, will it still be possible, I wonder, to continue what many are convinced was a mere fiction all along?

At this point though, with the House running around in circles and being toyed with by smarter Senators who entice them with pointless "concessions" to meet in a constituent assembly, while still insisting on separate voting, the House has taken itself out of the Cha-cha calculation. Earnest but hapless Speaker Joe de Venecia’s "Cha-cha Express" is now sounding like a bad joke. Notice how that once-vaunted "Express" is now no longer mentioned in conversations of polite society.

The Palace has concluded, it appears, that the clock inexorably ticks for Charter change. Although D-Day has been pushed further and further back in monthly increments, from forlorn May to hopeful September, the fact is Cha-cha advocates will forever be waiting for Godot, if they do not take matters into their own hands. Reliance on the House has now proven unwise and unrealistic.

The congressmen have no real answer to the intransigence of a Senate which sees itself as reduced to clawing at the sides of a sheer Mt. Everest to hang on for dear life. The last card, it seems, is a Supreme Court case on the question of separate voting.

But I also happen to know that many among the House legal eagles advise against such a judicial tussle. As long as the legislature remains a bicameral body, they plausibly argue, all acts of Congress must be undertaken by each House acting separately. That offer to treat Constitutional amendments like legislation to be crafted pursuant to the rules of each chamber was an obvious legal trap which the congressmen, to their everlasting credit, rejected out of hand.

This is the context of GMA’s confident prediction that "the day of reckoning" is at hand in the matter of Charter change, pointing unmistakably to People’s Initiative as the reason for this imminent Judgment Day. The gloves are most assuredly off! All niceties of who’s pushing for Charter change, so primly and properly adopted in the recent past, have now been publicly discarded.

The objective now seems to be to put Charter change in place, sooner rather than later. If I get her drift, Cha-cha has assumed greater moment than even the 2007 elections.

Now the prospect of postponing next year’s elections may horrify or please you, depending on your convictions about the real value of elections. While some believe elections are the life blood of our democracy, there are also influential – and, I might add, serious – voices that argue that elections are the periodic poison our body politic takes to ensure our economic and political backwardness, and eventual death as a nation.

Mark something else the President said: "The choice is for us to make, whether we continue to live up to the vision of our national heroes, or continue to watch helplessly while our political system degenerates and our economy is trapped in the mire of uncertainty."

Holy Pepe Rizal and Andres Bonifacio!, as Batman’s Robin might exclaim.

Guess who’s not going to "watch helplessly" at the sidelines! Guess who won’t allow the "vision of our national heroes" to be sullied and violated! In the unique way she puts her sales pitch, is there any other choice a true nation-loving Filipino can make?

Yeah, yeah, there is the matter of that Supreme Court decision holding that the enabling law to implement people’s initiative for proposals for Constitutional amendments was "inadequate" (not, it must be noted, that there was no law). There is the argument, too, that the Constitution only allows "amendments" and not "revisions." But as we’ve argued extensively in previous columns, if there is any case that cries out for review and clarification, it’s that 1997 case of Santiago vs. Commission on Elections. We won’t restate those arguments here.

The matter is clearly coming to a head. If it’s true that Sigaw ng Bayan is poised to submit a petition to the Comelec to set the date for a plebiscite so the people can decide on certain proposed Constitutional amendments, that would be the long-awaited trigger for a "justiciable" case to reach the High Court which can then decide whether it will, or will not, review its ruling in the Santiago case.

My prayer is that the trigger isn’t to a gun that finally blows apart our collective head. Actually, I doubt it, but one can’t just dismiss such fears.