People or system?

Do we correct the people or do we correct the system? We do both. Other countries the world over have changed systems from generation to generation in an effort to find better systems of government. That is the law of political evolution.

In fact people (and the values they live by) and a system of government are separate issues that ought to be considered on different levels. People do not necessarily become good because a system is good and the opposite is equally true, the most perfect system of government will not necessarily make people good. There are other factors concerned. Advocating Charter change is not to say that it will make Filipinos good or that we will have a utopia. Nevertheless, it is true that reform, change in systems for whatever reasons is a powerful agent for changing people.

Moral choices are made by people as individuals every day of their lives. That is the essence of freedom, not the cause or objective of Charter change.

If a constitution is a body of rules that governs the relations between government and the people, what Charter change advocates are saying is that we need to change some of those rules. It is a response to problems that almost everyone can enumerate with their fingers, even those who are against Charter change – expensive national elections, near impossibility of removing bad leaders mid term, over-centralized government that foster a dependent mentality among local authorities and outdated economic policies.

Among more academically inclined advocates they cite statistics to show studies and studies on why there are more successful countries with parliamentary governments than there are countries with presidential governments, the United States being one of them. If the most powerful country has a presidential system how can we be so wrong? There are other factors, their federalist structure, exceptional justice system among others that mitigate the defects of an unwieldy political structure. Latin America is littered with such US-exported presidential systems that failed and ended up as military regimes.

But more progressive Americans are equally restless about their Constitution. Journalist Daniel Lazare calls "this constitutional faith" a form of thoughtlessness." "Americans are prisoners in effect of one of the most subtle yet powerful systems of restraint in history, one in which it is possible to curse the president, hurl obscenities at Congress, and all but parade naked down Broadway, yet virtually impossible to alter the political structure in a fundamental way." In their book, "Why do people hate America?" Ziauddin Sardar and Merrl Wyn Davies say the same things. "The constitution far from embodying timeless wisdom is a time bound answer to 18th century problems taken as a distillation of ideas out of Europe that is in effect immutable, it amounts to a ‘terrible dictatorship by the past over the present’.

Advocating Charter change in the Philippines is a response to problems in our peculiar context. To give the most obvious example: bicameral legislation. We don’t need to look at other countries to demonstrate how dismally ill-served the country has been for having a second layer of legislators doing exactly the same thing that the other has already done. There are better ways to check and balance than this expensive, redundant political structure. Put bluntly, there are losers in Charter change and that is the real stumbling block. That is a good perspective for understanding why there is such vehemence against Charter change. It comes from losers.

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Why the anger against the People’s Initiative? It is only making a proposal. Signing up does not mean changing the Constitution. It is the exercise of a basic freedom – the freedom of speech. Those against can vote against it during the plebiscite.

Let us reflect on what Justice Reynato Puno wrote about the first People’s Initiative: "On December 19, 1996, we temporarily enjoined the Pedrosas ‘x x x from conducting a signature drive for people’s initiative to amend the Constitution.’ It is not enough for the majority to lift the temporary restraining order against the Pedrosas. It should dismiss the petition and all motions for contempt against them without equivocation.

"One need not draw a picture to impart the proposition that in soliciting signatures to start a people’s initiative to amend the Constitution the Pedrosas are not engaged in any criminal act. Their solicitation of signatures is a right guaranteed in black and white by section 2 of Article XVII of the Constitution which provides that ‘x x x amendments to this Constitution may likewise be directly proposed by the people through initiative. . .’ This right springs from the principle proclaimed in section 1, Article II of the Constitution that in a democratic and republican state ‘sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.’ The Pedrosas are part of the people and their voice is part of the voice of the people. They may constitute but a particle of our sovereignty but no power can trivialize them for sovereignty is indivisible.

"But this is not all. Section 16 of Article XIII of the Constitution provides: ‘The right of the people and their organizations to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of social, political and economic decision-making shall not be abridged. The State shall by law, facilitate the establishment of adequate consultation mechanisms.’ This is another novel provision of the 1987 Constitution strengthening the sinews of the sovereignty of our people. In soliciting signatures to amend the Constitution, the Pedrosas are participating in the political decision-making process of our people. The Constitution says their right cannot be abridged without any ifs and buts. We cannot put a question mark on their right.

"Over and above these new provisions, the Pedrosas’ campaign to amend the Constitution is an exercise of their freedom of speech and expression and their right to petition the government for redress of grievances. We have memorialized this universal right in all our fundamental laws from the Malolos Constitution to the 1987 Constitution. We have iterated and reiterated in our rulings that freedom of speech is a preferred right, the matrix of other important rights of our people. Undeniably, freedom of speech enervates the essence of the democratic creed of think and let think. For this reason, the Constitution encourages speech even if it protects the speechless.

"It is thus evident that the right of the Pedrosas to solicit signatures to start a people’s initiative to amend the Constitution does not depend on any law, much less on R.A. No. 6735 or COMELEC Resolution No. 2300. No law, no Constitution can chain the people to an undesirable status quo. To be sure, there are no irrepealable laws just as there is no irrepealable Constitution. Change is the predicate of progress and we should not fear change. Mankind has long recognized the truism that the only constant in life is change and so should the majority." To be fair, the majority did lift the TRO on the Pedrosas.

Breaking News: Monsignor Dacay, speaking on behalf of Cardinal Vidal during an interview with Bobby Nazario, GMA Super Radio, Cebu City yesterday afternoon said the cardinal did not sign or support the manifesto of the One Voice movement.

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