The wisdom of crowdsourcing a constitution

Of late, Bayanko, the crowdsourcing page for a new constitution is being asked to hurry up its work and reminded that there are pressing problems that have to be tackled as soon as possible. Moreover some critics ask they want to know how a constitution can be crowdsourced and that if we do not regulate or administer the page we have no business seeking reforms on how the Philippines can be better governed.

Crowdsourcing a constitution is a political principle and exercise more than it is about coming up quickly with a new draft of a written constitution. The political principle for crowdsourcing a constitution is to bring in the people to have a say instead of relying on a few experts.

Language is equally important as content. The panel of experts must agree to use the simple language of the crowd rather than legalese that only lawyers understand.

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As Hélène Landemore of Yale University asks in her article“We the People”:  “Who should write the constitution of a democratic country and, indeed, any country?

The answer seems obvious: its people. Yet the constitutions of existing states, including democratic ones, have usually been written by small, rather unrepresentative subsets of individuals. Solon is supposed to have single-handedly laid out the foundations of democratic Athens. The US  Constitution was penned by a few dozen white men. More recent examples of constitutional processes involve the usual elites: professional politicians and state bureaucrats. But even elected or otherwise democratically authorized constitutional drafters are at best metaphorically, “We, the People.”

Not only are typical constitutional processes rather exclusionary and elitist, but they also tend to be characterized by an utter lack of transparency. The American Founding Fathers purposefully kept their deliberations hidden from the public in an attempt to protect themselves from popular passions. Even contemporary political theorists such as Jon Elster insist that the ideal constitution process is hourglass-shaped, with widely open consultative moments upstream and downstream of the drafting, but a tiny waist, corresponding to the exclusive and closed moment of actual writing by a select few.

Iceland’s recent experiment in redrafting its constitution has challenged the assumptions that a constitutional process needs to be exclusive and opaque. In 2013 the country came close to passing into law the world’s most inclusively and transparently written constitutional text.

This experiment — sometimes dubbed the “crowdsourced constitution” — should prove inspirational for people around the globe intent on writing, or re-writing, their own social contract.

The Icelandic constitutional process included three original features. The first one was a so-called National Forum — an upstream consultation of a demographically representative mini public of 950 quasi-randomly sampled citizens. These citizens were gathered in a one-day meeting and asked to list the principles and values they would like to see embedded in the Icelandic constitution. They listed, among others, human rights, democracy, transparency, equal access to health care and education, a more strongly regulated financial sector, and public ownership of Icelandic natural resources.

Popular sovereignty need not be represented only by able-bodied, middle-aged men in suits and ties.

The second unusual feature was an assembly of constitution drafters selected from a pool of 522 citizens that purposely excluded professional politicians (the latter having been discredited in the eyes of the public during the 2008 financial crisis). The resulting council was characterized by relative gender balance — including 10 women and 15 men — and diverse professions beyond the usual doctors and lawyers, including a farmer, a pastor, an art museum director, a radio presenter, a trade union chairman, a consumer spokesperson, a student, and a filmmaker. The presence of Freyja Haraldsdóttir, a human rights activist affected by glass-bone disease, strikingly illustrated that popular sovereignty need not be represented only by able-bodied, middle-aged men in suits and ties.

The third unusual feature was the decision by these 25 constitutional drafters to use social media to open up the process to the rest of the citizenry and gather feedback on 12 successive drafts. Anyone interested in the process was able to comment on the text using social media like Facebook and Twitter, or using regular email and mail. In total, the crowdsourcing moment generated about 3,600 comments for a total of 360 suggestions. While the crowd did not ultimately “write” the constitution, it contributed valuable input. Among them was the Facebook proposal to entrench a constitutional right to the Internet, which resulted in Article 14 of the final proposal.

Finally, the inclusiveness of the process was enhanced by a limited but still unprecedented level of transparency. For example, the National Forum was streamed online for all to see. Similarly, while the work of the Constitutional Council members was mostly done in closed sessions, it included open meetings that were filmed, recorded, and disseminated as PDF files on the council’s online platform.”

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Ramon Pedrosa has written this column to state the case of the family in defense of their ancestral house in Palo.

 “The Pedrosa Family owns an old house in Palo. It is a very old house which has seen many generations of the founding Acebedos as well as of the Pedrosas. It is also a historical icon of Palo by its use and occupancy spanning the Spanish colonial period, the Katipunan Revolution, the American Occupation, the Commonwealth Period, the Second World War and the battle for Liberation, and the years of peace thereafter.

A complete historical narrative is attached.

There is a government order to slice some three meters off its front façade to make way for an alleged widening of the San Salvador Street, otherwise known as the Palo-Jaro Road. The decapitation will extend to all the houses along the entire left length of the street.

I imagine our neighbors are up in arms about this government plan. But i do not speak for them. I represent only the old house at the corner with  Pio Pedrosa Street.

There is no gainsaying the fact that it is the duty of government to provide public services including the improvement of roads and highways.

But it is a paramount duty for government to preserve its cultural and historical patrimony.

Before the present Republic to which the Department of Public Works and Highways is an instrumentality was established, the old house was already there.

Before the Commonwealth era which pre-dated the Republic was installed by the American regime, the old house was already there.

Even before the Katipunan raised their bolos in Pugad Lawin, the old house was already there.

When the Spaniards were busy teaching us their language and culture and passing on the Faith to our forefathers, the old house was already there.

Advanced civilizations of the world do everything to preserve the vestiges, relics and monuments of their past, while the decadent and the savage destroy theirs.

The old house is part and parcel of the national patrimony.

No new road should take precedence over such a glorious past.

No one should be allowed to forget it.”