After President Corazon Aquino relinquished power in 1992, some of the presidents who came after her made tacit attempts to amend the 1987 Constitution. Their efforts were nipped in the bud by an electorate suspicious that the proponents of the amendments wanted charter change only to perpetuate themselves in power by eliminating term limits enshrined in the fundamental law.
The existing Constitution is, admittedly, an imperfect document. It is a disappointing blue print for a government that was born out of the high expectations of the Filipino people after the 1986 Edsa Revolution. For instance, the Aquino charter allows a multi-party electoral system but fails to mandate a run-off election. That omission allows a president to be elected on a mere plurality. Consequently, political division among the people ensues for years following the election. There are many other disturbing oversights in the charter.
Despite the imperfection of the current constitution, the people have repeatedly demonstrated their collective reluctance to charter amendments initiated in the past. Their reluctance emanates mainly from the way many government officials of past administrations have either brazenly abused power, or have haughtily reneged on their campaign pledge to work for the public interest.
In other words, unless a president and his political allies are really determined to seek serious charter change, amending or revising the existing constitution will remain a pipe dream.
From all current indications, however, it looks like President Rodrigo Duterte and House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez are determined to give the 1987 Constitution not only a revision but a complete overhaul. Duterte and Alvarez have openly expressed their intention to replace the existing unitary government with a federal set-up, and with some features of a parliamentary system thrown in. More specifically, the grand plan is to reorganize the different provinces in the country into at least 12 states based on, more or less, the existing regional templates.
Under a unitary government, every aspect of running the nation needs the approval of the central government in the national capital. This is expected since local government units, despite their autonomy, still spend public money disbursed and audited by the national government. In a federal system, however, each state government decides matters for itself, which means leaving only the public concerns that are truly of national character (like national defense, common currency, international relations) to the attention of the federal government. This distinction, of course, is a simplistic one because, as any expert in Constitutional Law knows, there are other considerations which go beyond mere form.
Another important distinction lies between a presidential system of government and a parliamentary one. In the former, each of the three branches of government—executive, legislative and judicial —is expected to provide a system of checks and balances against the other two and, as pointed out by the original American federalists, to make sure that no single branch becomes too powerful to the prejudice of the other two.
In a parliamentary set-up, however, there is a merger of the executive and legislative branches. Again, this is a simplistic distinction because there are other considerations dealing with substance and not form. For instance, in a parliamentary set-up, an independent judiciary will be needed to check against an abusive parliament led by an abusive prime minister.
The speaker minces no words in assailing “imperial Manila” and the presidential system. He contends that under the existing system, regional growth remains stagnant because every aspect in the disbursement of public money is controlled by the central government. Alvarez also attributes the saddening economic status of the Philippines, as compared to other Asian countries, to the existing unitary system.
Alvarez cites Davao City’s past experience in infrastructure development. He says that five years ago, the city government made plans for a city railway system in anticipation of traffic congestion problems in the predictable future. Alvarez laments that the project bogged down because government bureaucrats in Manila demanded a nearly infinite volume of documentary requirements at every stage of the approval process.
From Alvarez’ perspective, a federal system allows the state government to ascertain what is best for its constituents, and to raise the funds for its projects without the obstacles often thrown in the way by Manila. This way, Alvarez optimistically asserts, local development master plans will be easier to implement, and will result in economic prosperity. For him, federalism has the effect of emancipating existing local government units from the meddling intrusion of the national government.
As to the parliamentary set-up contemplated by Alvarez, he admits that he is for a “hybrid type” where a prime minister and a president run the government. Specifically, the Alvarez model calls for a president in charge of national defense, foreign affairs, monetary policies, and the police establishment, and a prime minister who will attend to the rest of the concerns of the executive department, and who will ensure that the parliament enacts the legislation needed for the effective enforcement of the law.
There is, of course, the complexity of matching a federal system patterned after the American model of presidential government (which local proponents of federalism cite) with parliamentary government, which is essentially an unfinished political experiment in Philippine constitutional history.
Supporters of the move towards federalism ought to welcome the opposition registered by constitutional experts like Father Joaquin Bernas because opposing views inevitably provide the average Filipino a holistic picture of an issue which, admittedly, will not be easy for the average Filipino to comprehend, much less resolve. Opinion leaders in favor of or against the contemplated charter amendments have their respective versions of what is good and right, Ultimately, however, the burden will still be on the voter who will decide, through a plebiscite, how the government ought to be run for the next half-century or so.
