Member, Con-Com 2018
(9th of a series)
Q: What is the “Democracy Fund”?
A: It is one more device tapped by the draft Constitution to strengthen the party system. It is the central repository of donations and contributions made to political parties. In the management of such donations and contributions, the Federal Commission on Elections is audited by the .
Q: Why not donate to the party directly, or to the candidate?
A: Since parties are, by the terms of the draft constitution, public institutions, then funds for their support and the enhancement of the system are funds “impressed with a public character” and must, therefore, be handled by an agency of State. Furthermore, because there are incentives attaching to donations or contributions, it is necessary that there be a proper recordation of contributions and donations.
Q: Under the Corporation Code, corporations are forbidden from making contributions to political parties or to candidates. What effect does the draft Constitution have on this provision of law?
A: A constitutional provision always prevails over a statute. Insofar therefore as a provision of the Corporation Code may prohibit what the draft Constitution now allows, the contradictory provision of the Corporation Code will be impliedly repealed upon ratification of the new Constitution. HOWEVER: because one of the basic rules of legal hermeneutics is to harmonize seemingly contradicting provisions, what corporations may do is to make contributions to the Democracy Fund for a party or candidate of its choosing. Contributions made directly to politicians or to political parties will remain disallowed.
Q: Why should severe consequences now follow turn-coatism when the Constitution itself guarantees the right to free association?
A: Turn-coatism is inimical to the formation of genuine political parties. In the Philippine experience, turn-coatism is what happens when politicians curry favor with the President and turn away from their parties to be aligned with his. When this happens, their tenacity with which candidates stand by their platforms and programs of government is absent and this degenerates into a matter of personal fealty.
Q: Why should a winning candidate be forbidden from changing political parties for two years after an election and for two years prior to the next election?
A: The purpose of the drafters in the Con-Com was to draw attention to a party’s programs and plans of government rather than simply to the candidate. Therefore when a person is elected to office, the presumption is that he was chosen as an advocate and a champion of his party’s ideals. It would not be fair to allow him to foist upon the electorate a new set of policies and programs on which he was not voted. Similarly, if, during the entire period preceding an election, she advocates certain policies and programs of government, and then, two years before the next elections, turns her back on them, chances are that she does so not out of conviction but as a strategy to win votes.
Q: Why is the draft very strong against dynasties?
A: Federalism without an effective anti-dynasty provision is a deadly mix. Then the federated regions can easily become fiefdoms of dynastic families. Dynasties close the political playing field. Others who would otherwise be capable of public office are systematically excluded because elective positions are passed on to children or to spouses.
Q: But is not the dynastic rule of one family the result of the people’s free choice?
A: In many cases, dynasties are what they are precisely because they have cornered political influence and economic affluence—and also cornered the people’s vote. When one wins because one has rendered the electorate inebriated and pampered, the playing field is not even. Furthermore, when the people’s choice has already been narrowed at the outset, then the choice is not truly free.
Q: How is the present anti-dynasty provision an improvement over that of the 1987 Constitution?
A: The 1987 Constitution laid down a policy, leaving it to Congress to enact the law—which Congress, not surprisingly, never did! The Draft lays down the prohibition: father and son, grandfather and grandson, husband and wife, husband and brother-in-law and other permutations within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity are covered by the prohibition.
