Tuesday, October 31, 2006 Malilong: Real test By Frank Malilong Jr. The Other Side
IF you’re naughty, you get punished.
Proponents of People’s Initiative Part 2 should learn to accept that, instead of reacting badly to the spanking that they got from the Supreme Court. The decision penned by Justice Antonio Carpio was concededly strong-worded but Pirma 2 had it coming.
How else could you describe the entire process of gathering signatures in favor of a constitutional revision that was not fully explained to and understood by the people but a grand deception?
Instead of sulking from their debacle or reacting violently to it, as did a certain Efren de Luna who now wants Carpio’s head, People’s Initiative 2 sponsors should now work to establish their claim that they have the people’s overwhelming support.
How? Not by gathering all those who signed the petition to a rally in Manila as de Luna threatened because the strategy could explode in his face, given the sheer impossibility of hauling in 6.3 million people from all over the country for a one-day tour de force in the Big City.
The real test on the supposedly overwhelming support of the people for Charter change should come in the May 2007 elections. This is what People’s Initiative 2 backers should prepare for. Let the shift to a parliamentary from the current presidential system and the abolition of the bicameral legislature be the central issue of the election campaign next year.
The Senate has been the single biggest stumbling block to constitutional reforms. It refuses to pass a sufficient People’s Initiative enabling law. It will not join the House of Representatives in convening a constituent assembly. And I doubt if it will enact a law calling for a constitutional convention.
Fortunately, 12 Senate seats are up for grabs in May, next year. Why doesn’t the administration assemble a ticket running solely on the platform of constitutional change? Jose de Venecia, Raul Lambino and his tocayo, Justice Secretary Gonzales, Michael Defensor, Eduardo Ermita, Prospero Nograles and even Mandaue Councilor Carlo Fortuna, among others, shouldn’t have any problem convincing the people to elect them to the Senate to abolish it, if People’s Initiative 2’s claim of overwhelming support is true.
Come to think of it. We could finally have for the first time in our national existence an election that is not personality but issue oriented. Can you imagine a relatively unknown candidate like Fortuna besting the likes of JV Ejercito? Wouldn’t that be a test of our political maturity?
Stop grumbling, people. Admit that you lost in the Supreme Court, then take the battle to another arena. Weren’t you the ones who said that the people’s exercise of their sovereign will is limitless? Then prove it.
