From the news, we learn that the Palace is allotting 90 million pesos for an information drive to get people to understand, and hopefully support, the move to change the Constitution and with it, the unitary system into a federal one.
While this comes as welcome news for the consultative committee and the supporters of federalism, it may be a tad too late if we want to fit into the originally proposed timeline for change.
Ideally, an information campaign should have begun the process leading to constitutional change. While the campaign was ongoing, periodic qualitative and quantitative research should have been done to gauge public interest and opinion towards such a systemic change.
Then we could have determined which mode of amending the fundamental law would curry public favor. As had happened, a meeting between leaders of the House and the President regarding the push for change resulted in a declaration that they favored convening a constituent assembly rather than a convention.
Just like that. The people, or representative publics, were excluded from the decision.
Without knowing what federalism was all about, the people were simply told that their elected representatives would by themselves amend the Constitution. Such an earth-shaking decision that would change the entire government system would be done by a body which, while elected, is not held in high esteem by the people, as shown in numerous surveys.
Immediately, the subject of debate was the mode, the manner, rather than the meaning of the proposed systemic change. Form rather than substance.
The senators quarreled with the House leadership on the issue of how the Con-Ass was to be constituted, on whether the two distinct bodies of the legislature would vote on amendments jointly or separately. After months of noise, they decided to put the issue of form on the back burner, and focus instead on the amendment proposals.
Thus the consultative committee of the erudite led by retired CJ Puno. Even that took some time to be constituted—it was only by the start of 2018 that they began work in earnest.
To be fair to the group, they did their job with purposeful speed. But there was, up to this point, no communications plan with which to inform the citizenry on the merits of federalism versus the present government set-up. And the distrust of a constituent assembly of elected representatives lingered.
Thus, both first and second quarter public opinion surveys showed that people did not appreciate change, much less federalism.
And the proposal to postpone mid-term elections to give primacy to constitutional amendments, while reasonable under the timeline circumstances, made the public even more suspicious, and thus, hesitant to change the system.
It now boils down to a failure to communicate.
Now, would the information blitz, using even the social “genius” of Mocha, turn the tide, and time?
Remember that by the start of October when would-be candidates file their certificates of candidacy, only two months away, election fever will have begun.
Serious talk about constitutional amendments will thus take a backseat to electoral politics.
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But constitutional change is needed, especially in the economic provisions that have served as a dis-incentive for foreign investments through the last three decades since the present Constitution took effect.
And if the change from unitary to federal should still be unacceptable to many despite the efforts of both the consultative committee and government itself to persuade the public, then at the very least, let us review our incomprehensible system of having a presidential form with a multiplicity of political parties that are no more than flags of convenience of personal or group interests.
If we retain the presidential system with the head of state and government elected at large by the people, then we might as well impose a two-party system similar to the United States and what we had from Commonwealth days to the 1935 Constitution until martial law wrote finis to democracy.
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What happened at the House of Representatives Monday last week, along with its continuing side-effects, is reason enough to go back to a two-party system.
Dump this crazy system of farcical political parties.
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Media has not made enough research on the “new” president of PDP, Rogelio “Bec-bec” Garcia. He is often simply relegated to being “a certain Rogelio Garcia.”
As stated in our previous column, he was one of 59 opposition assemblymen elected in 1983 to the Batasang Pambansa, representing South Cotabato.
President Duterte appointed him as a member of the Board of Directors of the Development Bank of the Philippines. Now, if he is such an “unknown” party stalwart, or for that matter just “a certain…” person as far as the chief executive is concerned, how could he have been appointed to a plum position in a very important government financial institution?
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Another cause for concern is the prevailing buying price of palay ex-farm, which the PSA has reported as P21.40 per kilo. My sources in Nueva Ecija and Isabela, the top two palay producers in the country say that buying prices are upwards of P23.
That would translate into a kilogram of milled rice going for P46, minimum, when it reaches the market.
Meanwhile, as we await rice tariffication pending in Congress, and with rice prices in the world market still acting up, along with the devaluation of the peso which means we pay more pesos this year for every ton of rice imported as compared to last year, then the cost-push from rice will persist in the short term.
And we are entering the dreaded months of strong typhoons. The recent floods in Central Luzon have already exacted their toll and will mean delayed harvests in some parts due to the need to replant crops destroyed.
Inflation is really worrisome.