No-elections

A number of legislators have expressed preference for postponing the midterm elections in order to hasten the transition to a new constitutional framework. Elections for half the Senate, all the congressional seats and local government positions are scheduled for May next year.

These legislators should review recent history.

In previous attempts at constitutional renovation, the postponement of elections proved to be the deal-breaker. It struck most as a self-serving move by sitting politicians to perpetuate themselves in power. Every proposal to reschedule elections has been roundly rejected.

Constitutional change has never been top-of-mind for our citizens. For some reason, our people see the argument for undertaking it rather esoteric or contrived. Conservatives usually resort to political intrigue to block the effort, attributing Charter change as a ploy to retain the incumbent in power.

Then you have the crude arguments tailored to score populist points. Those in the opposition today, as others have done in the past, argue that there are more important things to do than craft a new constitution. One senator, for instance, says government should address inflation before Charter change. That is nonsensical but surprisingly appealing.

Therefore, a large number of Filipinos greet every Charter change effort with a large dose of suspiciousness.

The current effort to change the Constitution centers on shifting the entire government arrangement to federalism. If this effort succeeds, we will be the first nation to shift from a unitary government to a federal one. That seems like backward movement.

Shifting to federalism will involve a complex and comprehensive process that might take a generation to fully complete. Many components of this process have not been fully studied.

Will federalism further entrench local elites? Will it lead us to fiscal meltdown? Will it make the bureaucracy even more unwieldy? Will it further deepen regional disparities? Will it make our nation even more ungovernable? Will it make parts of the nation even more vulnerable to secessionist impulses?

These were exactly the questions I raised when I served on the Consultative Commission on Charter Change in 2005. I felt those questions were not satisfactorily answered then. In the intervening period, very little research has been done to answer them.

In a very real way, the proposed shift to federalism requires redefining our vision of nationhood. Will our people progress better by disaggregating the apparatuses of the nation-state? That will surely be a novel idea.

Last year, I participated in a program to study the practice of federalism in Germany. My key take-away from all the discussions is this: the federal arrangement was encouraged by the US after the Great War as a method to prevent Germany’s resurgence as a strong power in Europe.

The intense debates during the sessions of the 2005 Consultative Commission convinced me that the most important factor underpinning the demand for federalism is money. The federalists want the “estados” to have first crack at revenue collected. Whatever is left will go to the national government.

This basically reverses current practice. Presently, national government collects all the taxes and decides on spending priorities. Servicing the national debt goes without question. Spending for strategic infra projects, for the security services and the educational system enjoy priority. The Internal Revenue Allocation comes last, in most cases.

Current practice fostered some discontent in the disadvantaged regions. They feel Imperial Manila gets most of the goods and the poor provinces get only crumbs.

That is not true, of course. The richer regions – the NCR, Central Luzon and Calabarzon – have historically subsidized the poorer regions. Those subsidies were never enough to bring the poorer regions to par. But producing absolute equality among the regions will have to be the labor of a century. It will require more than allocating the revenues with a bias for the poorer provinces. It will require strategic investments in modernizing our infra backbone, for instance, to make economic dispersal possible.

There is an important lesson from the “devolution” that happened since the enactment of the Local Government Code. With much of the budget distributed to smaller political units, our infrastructure backbone deteriorated. Instead of building new expressways, ports and industrial centers, the money distributed through the IRA encouraged dispersal of the money and their use for smaller infra projects such as waiting sheds and basketball courts.

My fear about “federalism” is that the nation suffers a fiscal meltdown. Our credit ratings will collapse because national government revenues become uncertain.

Also, the infrastructure we might be able to build will be determined by priorities in the localities rather than a coherent nationwide plan. In a federal set-up, for instance, we cannot undertake the Build, Build, Build program which brings so much promise for rapid, sustainable and inclusive national growth.

The surveys show that very few of our people fully understand what federalism is. I am sure than many among those who advocate this do not fully grasp its long-term consequences for the nation. They are simply seduced by the idea of localities getting first crack at the revenues collected.  

If the shift to federalism is such a nebulous idea for most of our people, will it compel citizens to accept postponement of elections?

I doubt it will. What most will see are incumbents extending their terms for free.

Then again, federalism might prove to be a good idea after all. But it must be given the time to gestate, for the gains to be clarified so that our people are fully convinced. We need a much longer timeline.