“It is time to shape a political system that is truly Filipino, not one copied from the West”
OUR Monday article about the cat-clawing in the Senate of the 24 “republics” received several comments from friends.
Most of these questioned the relevance of the institution, exasperated at the seeming endlessness of leadership fights and the lack of coherence in our senators “grandstanding” and “investigations that amount to nothing.”
Someone sent me a radical suggestion supposedly coming from a former Anti Red Tape Authority (ARTA) to “abolish legislative bodies” and save a trillion pesos in salaries and perks annually .
In this space, I have consistently advocated a revision of the 1987 Constitution to address our flawed government structure.
While I favor retention of the presidential form instead of reverting to a parliamentary system, at least until such time that genuine political parties have taken root and the electorate has become more mature, I have been proposing:
One, that we abolish the party-list system, and instead define what are the truly “marginalized” sectors, their representatives to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the duly-elected members of Congress;
Two, though not averse to a unicameral legislature, I have been proposing meanwhile that we elect senators by regional representation. Since we have 18 administrative regions including BARMM, then we elect two per region for a total of 36 senators.
Three, that we have the duly elected vice-president sit as presiding officer of the Senate, instead of our present system where the president may or may not appoint the vice-president as a member of the Cabinet;
Four, that we adopt bloc voting for all executive positions, thus, a president and his vice-president, a governor and his vice-governor, a mayor and his vice-mayor, doing away with crossing party lines, with the “vice’s” automatically presiding over the national or local legislative bodies;
Five, that we do away with having to elect provincial board members and city or municipal councilors, and, in their place, all the component municipal or city mayors will constitute the provincial board, and the duly elected barangay chairmen to comprise the city or municipal council.
This would require a rationalization of the number of barangays nationwide, to do away with the anomaly of cities with so many barangays not proportionate to population and territorial jurisdiction (the City of Manila with 897 barangays is an anomaly);
Six, that we hold synchronized elections for a term of six years with one re-election for all elective positions, since three-year election cycles are too short for effective planning and program implementation.
With the previously cited five propositions, we will thus cast one vote for president and his vice-president, two votes for our region’s senators, one for the district’s representative, one for the governor and his vice-governor, and one for the town mayor and his vice-mayor.
That will mean writing down or choosing six names or tandems in the ballots, only five in the case of non-component cities such as Manila, Cebu, Davao, etc.
A Manileno voter thus elects his choice for president, with his VP team-mate, two senators for Metro Manila, his district representative, and the mayor-vice mayor tandem, just five.
We need not even hire uber-expensive vote-counting machines with just a few names to write. Comelec can even deputize bank ATMs for the elections.
Seven, the barangay chair and council members will be elected separately in mid-term elections, and that nonsense about not being “partisan” done away with. Let them be bona-fide members of a political party, and abolish the Sangguniang Kabataan;
Eight, we prefer a two-party presidential system, without prejudice to having “independent” parties, where the two major parties receive campaign and election-day and campaign funding from the government instead of having to receive contributions from business and vested-interest groups;
With regional voting for senators, candidate’s expenses will be quite limited, and celebrity status will have less vote advantage. Comelec should sponsor public debates so that candidates can be wisely vetted by the electorate.
Our system is copied from that of the US of A, even if ours is a unitary form compared to their federation of 50 states where powers are well-defined.
Then in 1986, an appointive commission of 48 members drafted the present fundamental law with reactive provisions to the excesses of martial rule.
It is time to shape a political system that is truly Filipino, not one copied from the West.
It is also time to do away with less important local and provincial legislatures when these are better done by the elected executives of local government units.
It is time to simplify the system, making it more informed and less expensive to maintain.
