Principles of charter change

The saying that “youth is wasted on the young” aptly summarizes the recent antics of presidential pretender Senator Francis “Chiz” Escudero. The languid eyed (mapungay ang mata) senator who would be president could have used charter change as his rallying cry for a new beginning for the Philippines, but then he is not made of sterner stuff. He may be young, an oppositionist and able to speak intelligently at times, but he is no leader. He is no different from jaded politicians he derides but worse. He is sounding more and more like the stooge of power brokers that are at the center of our warped politics.

He says “let us wait for the next administration” for charter change. Does he really believe the next administration under him or anybody else will bring about charter change? Well, he deludes only himself, but not other Filipinos who know better. And because he presumes he will be at the helm of the next government he is not only vain but dishonest to boot.

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As a charter change advocate, I went along with the rest of my colleagues, to explain the changes envisioned through graphs, and comparisons between parliamentary and presidential systems of government and the need to evolve a federal set-up to empower local authorities.

But Bolivia, a Latin American country which has recently successfully changed its charter, had me thinking: maybe we were using the wrong approach. Bolivia changed its charter by going for the jugular. Its advocates, led by their own president, Evo Morales, said it like it is instead of pandering to half witted critics who say things like not now, but later, but that later never comes.

Charter change is best understood not by academic discussions or fine details that go above the heads of most Filipinos. We should concentrate on the great principles behind it: democratization and decolonization. It may sound a mouthful but there is no other way to change our charter but to go through the fire. These are what Filipinos have been fighting through the ages since the colonial period, first against Spain and then against America.

In a recent column I wrote about Bolivia as the country of Simon Bolivar, the legendary hero. In fact, he was more than that. He was not even Bolivian. He was actually born in Caracas, Venezuela but he took the cudgels of independence for five countries, including Bolivia. So grateful were the Bolivians they named their country after him, making it one of the few countries in the world to be named after a person. He may be an idolized hero of freedom movements in Latin America, but outside the continent, too few know about him. And that goes for us, too. We hardly know a man from whom we might have learned more about true freedom.

The Philippines, too, is named after a person, but unlike Bolivia which named their country after its liberator, our country was named after its conqueror, Philip II. Too many presume that a country’s name as a harmless, historical accident but I do not think so. Like the names of individuals, the name of a country sinks deep in the subconscious and influences the way of thinking of its inhabitants and the shaping of their identity. Naming our country after the king of the country that colonized us did not help us forge a strong and free postcolonial nation. We became a conquered nation in its many guises and has been ever since.

Of more recent vintage is a story told by 1971 Delegate Felino Neri that explains our difficulties in changing our charter. Of this distinguished group (the seven wise men we have among us) one living witness to the fact that, at that time, it was fully realized that the presentation of a Philippine constitution that departed from the American model might run the grave risk of disapproval by the American president.

The witness is none other than our distinguished colleague, Delegate Miguel Cuaderno. President Quezon, himself reminded them of the consequences of the disapproval of the constitution “Gentlemen, no Constitution, no independence. Laboring under that kind of burden it is not surprising that the Constitutional Convention of 1934 turned in a faithful model of the United States Constitution of 1787.” No discussions took place even if there delegates who would have preferred parliamentary

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The Bolivians cheered charter changes and immortalized it with words like — ”here begins the new Bolivia, here we start to reach true equality”. But Filipinos have only ambitious politicians like Chiz Escudero to tell us to wait until 2010 when he hopes to become president and make sure charter change never happens. Charter change simply means who holds power for personal interests.

More Filipinos who see charter change as an instrument for freedom and equality must be willing to fight for it as a continuation of our wars of independence.

Those who would lift the fortunes of the Filipino nation must be fit for strong democratic institutions and these will only come if there are enough of us to fight it out, work hard, even risk danger to see the cause of charter change through.

We must be prepared to tackle the issue of charter change as a decolonization process. If necessary, we will have to look back, step by painful step to retrace how we fashioned a constitutional structure that has stunted our growth as a nation.

We have to confront our colonial history for the answer. Statements coming from the likes of languid-eyed Chiz Escudero, I am afraid, will not be helpful. We need a braver, stronger model in the mold of Simon Bolivar for the task at hand.

Luckily we had them but they are now part of our history. Our memories of their heroism for a truly liberated nation have been dimmed by time. And I must add by colonial policies that discouraged us from honoring our true heroes and having models for action.

For the difficult and painful task of remembering a hero who was our Simon Bolivar, my vote goes to General Emilio Aguinaldo, whom French journalists who covered our wars of independence called the Filipino Napoleon Bonaparte.