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Saturday, April 08, 2006
Speak out: Real federalism
By Lindy C. Morrell
Retired Neda Regional Executive Director
In their desire to create a groundswell of support for the adoption of the parliamentary form of governance, advocates of parliamentarism are taking risky shortcuts.
They are fast-tracking the information dissemination on the intricacies of a parliamentary form of government through a series of lightning-paced information campaigns that prudent social scientists and responsible academics would not dare venture to adopt.
Are they aware that the fruits of their attempts to railroad their concept of governance would have an intergenerational span of consequences?
Diagnosis
Before a doctor treat an ailing patient, he must first of all study the case history of the patient.
If a patient requires this intensive care to heal him, why should our country not be subjected to a similar exhaustive diagnostic analysis?
Why not have state universities and colleges, which are funded by taxpayer’s money, hold convocations in each region, with the help of qualified resource persons, on the mode of governance suited to our people’s ethnic and diverse culture and political mindset?
Why should a few politicians and an even fewer academicians subject the country to their biased perception of what is good for the country?
We have had enough of representative democracy. We now crave for territorial and ever-direct democracy like what Lapu-Lapu desired.
True federalism
In the words of a globally-recognized authority on federalism, Daniel J. Elazar, director of the Center for the Study of Federalism on Temple University in Jerusalem:
“Federalism, taken from the Latin word foedus (meaning a covenant between partners) is a special kind of partnership established and regulated by a covenant, whose internal relationships reflect a unique kind of sharing that prevail among the partners, based on a mutual recognition of the integrity of each partner and the attempt to foster a special unity among them.”
Elazar points out the essential attributes of real federalism are as follows:
1. A written constitution which specifies the decision of power and guarantees to both the central and regional governments that their allotted powers cannot be taken away;
2. A bicameral legislature in which one chamber represents the people at large and the other the component units of the federation;
3. Over-representation of the smaller component units in the federal chamber of the bicameral legislature.
4. The right of the component units to be involved in the process of amending the federal constitution but to change their own constitution unilaterally.
5. Decentralized government, that is, the regional government’s share of power in a federation is relatively large compared to that of the regional government in a unitary state.
Parliamentary government is only one of the several arrangements of a federalist system but is not in the true sense of the word foedus, a covenant.
Elazar further points out that, “Federalism can exist only where there is a considerable tolerance of diversity and willingness to take political action through the political area of negotiation even when the power to act unilaterally is available.”
In a parliamentary form of government only politicians have the final say in governance. In real federalism the people has the power so they won’t cower.
What do you dear readers want to adopt?
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 8, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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