"It's a simpler, more effective, alternative."
"It's a simpler, more effective, alternative."
The period between July 22 up to the congressional sine die of 2021 will be most important for establishing the Duterte administration’s legacy. Needless to say, what the President says in his State of the Nation Address on July 22 should define that legacy.
Due to the results of the last elections, speculation is rife that the President will push for shifting to a federalized government. But his most trusted Senator-elect Bong Go has already primed the public mind when he said that the “public may not be prepared for” such a radical shift. Indeed.
Not only the public mind, but the economy, even the local government units are not ready for such a shift. Not yet.
Still, this writer proposes that we need to revise the 1987 Constitution, and the window for such opportunity is a narrow two years. Whatever good intentions the framers of the present constitution may have had, our nation’s experience in the past three decades clearly points to the need for revision, for systemic change in fact.
We need to retain the presidential form. The Filipino people will always want to elect their head of state and head of government, and denying them that will meet rejection.
And let us go back to the two-party system, which is best suited to a presidential form. This multiplicity of flags of personal or cabal convenience masquerading as political parties has not contributed a whit to the political maturity of the electorate.
With a two-party system, the national budget should provide for the cost of party inspectors and watchers, rather than give the entire responsibility to our public school teachers.
Let us implement a bloc-vote for our executives, national and local. That means a vote for the presidential candidate automatically credits his vice presidential candidate as well. The same should go for the city mayor, the provincial governor and the municipal mayor. They should work as a team from Day One of their term, not be at cross-purposes.
Let all elected public officials serve for a period of six years, with reelection. And fix term limits to two for the national and local executives. I propose no term limits for legislators. The longer they serve, the more seasoned they become. Look at our pre-martial law experience, where good legislators were re elected over and over again, which gave us the legendary political names that our people have now forgotten.
The probability that a bad executive, whether president or mayor will rule at the sufferance of the public for six years or 12 can be negated by impeachment or recall.
Let us elect senators by administrative region, at an equal proportion of two per region.
We now have 17, with 4-B separated from 4-A. That means 34 senators. The elected vice president shall automatically be the Senate President, similar to the US practice. And since the VP is the president’s team-mate in their political party, the president should be comfortable with such an arrangement. The 34 senators will choose their majority floor leader among themselves.
Thus, every region will have two senators to look after their interest while viewing the bigger picture which is the whole country. Under our present system of nationally elected senators, some regions are totally un-represented, and have been so for a long long time, such as the Muslim and Cordillera minorities, even the Warays, while Metro Manila is over-represented.
Even as I empathize with the “marginalized sectors,” our party-list system has become an aberration given our present party-list representatives, which has been allocated 20 percent of congressional seats under the 1987 Constitution. I suggest that we take a serious rethinking of (1) the definition of marginalized; and (2) whether an advocacy, such as that being used by groups to accredit themselves with Comelec cannot be better served by legalizing professional lobby groups.
Further I propose something that I have written about in previous columns despite knowing that it would be very radical to politicians and budding politicians aspiring for “public office.”
Let us reduce drastically the number of locally elected officials.
Let us abolish the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, and make the municipal mayors comprise the provincial board. Where there are too many municipalities, let us proportionately divide their term in the Sanggunian within their six-year term. Just as a board of directors determines policy in a corporate setting, the de facto stockholders of a province, as elected by the people, are their mayors.
Similar reasoning goes for the city and municipal councils. Where there are a dozen or so barangays, let the elected barangay chairmen sit as the local legislators as well. Where there are more, let them take turns at two or three years out of their six-year term.
The local sanggunians are after all mandated to approve ordinances and policies that are basically parochial in nature, aside from passing the budget. Who would know the parochial needs of constituents more than the barangay chairman?
This would, however, require a rationalization of the number of barangays per city or town. Take Manila with 897 barangays, an aberration where some barangays (like where I reside) have less than 300 voters, while Payatas in Quezon City probably has tens of thousands.
In the May 13 elections we just held, apart from 12 senators (half the Senate composition), we were called upon to elect a congressman, a party under the party-list system, a governor and vice
governor, a component city mayor and his vice, or a municipal mayor and his vice, plus local legislators such as board members and councilors.
All told, that is a total of 1,444 city councilors, 11,916 municipal councilors, and close to 800 provincial board members. Think of the cost, in terms of salaries and allowances that taxpayers have to subsidize. Think of the campaign expenses that are spent for these positions.
Would these resources not be better spent at hiring more teachers, more health workers, more relevant government front-line services?
With the abolition of these local councils and their substitution by barangay chieftains, we need write only the names, or tick off the boxes corresponding to 1 presidential team, 2 senators, 1 congressman, 1 provincial governor or city mayor, 1 town mayor—no more. A total of six, and we do not even have to use Smartmatic or some such contraption. Even a manual canvass would be quick.
Mid-term, we have our barangay elections, electing a chairman and four or six councilmen. And no more Sanggunaing Kabataan either.
A case of the less elective posts, the better. Simpler and more effective. Think about it.