Twenty-eight years ago, the Marcos dictatorship was catapulted from power because of the EDSA People Power revolution. After the Marcos family went to exile in Hawaii, Pres. Cory Aquino rose to power and the 1987 Constitution was enacted by the Filipino people.
During my college years in the early 90s, I read some provisions of the 1987 Constitution and found them very interesting and pushed me to be watchful if these indeed will materialize in the coming years.
But like any Juan de la Cruz, I am very appalled by the stunts and promises of one president after another. Like how the Constitution was written, presidential speeches were crafted so to be heard like cacophony which verbosity could not quell the anger of the critical mass as nothing has been changed since we toppled the dictatorial rule of the Marcoses.
When Marcos was in power, we lived in fear because some of our freedoms were effectively clipped. But the Philippines was at that time a rising nation in Asia.
Almost three decades had past after we paved the way of Cory Aquino to Malacañang through peaceful marches, have we not substantially felt that those provisions in the post-Marcos Constitution are a failure?
The provisions on sharing of wealth of the nation, for instance, have long been lost to the monopoly of a few.
Our power industry is being run by well-known family who only thought of profit than altruistic feeling towards the consumers.
Our telecommunication companies are billing us with shocking rates, only to give us very poor service.
We have educational institutions run by religious orders that have already forgotten their religious vows of poverty, as they become busy in their corporate affairs. They collect huge matriculation but failed to level-up its capabilities, while exploiting their teachers who could not have enough to live from their pay. We have state colleges but its so-so training put their graduates at the last priority in job placements.
Corruption becomes a day-to-day story in the media. But it seems that our constitutional provisions and statutes against graft and corruption are not that powerful to bring those grafters behind bars.
There is an impending Charter change in the House of Representative to reportedly amend the "economic provisions" of the Constitution. Some experts say that this will pave the way of foreign ownership of properties. If we haven't experienced anything good to our present Constitution, the more that we will not get something good if we will allow our properties to be owned by non-Filipinos!
Digoy Tanquiamco
Bayong, Cadulawan, Cebu