Friday, December 08, 2006 Malilong: Trivializing a sacred process By Frank Malilong Jr. The Other Side
I AM for Charter change. I believe some provisions in the Constitution should be removed because they have become deadwood.
For example, the term limit for elected officials, except the president and vice president, should be lifted because it has not served its purpose. Instead of democratizing the leadership base, the ban only succeeded in expanding the number of members of families, who belong to the political elite, in government.
For the same reason, the ban on political dynasties should be removed. The framers of the Constitution may have been well intentioned but they committed a very grave mistake in granting to Congress the power to decide how and when to implement it. As a result, the ban has become the single biggest joke in our fundamental law.
The power to decide when to impose the death penalty should also be removed from Congress. I have serious misgivings on the abolition of capital punishment but if we have to do it as we have in fact done so, it should be in a manner that is clear and immune from the passing fancies of the times. The practice of imposing the death penalty now and abolishing it later is insane, to say the least.
I have no objections to starting the Cha-cha train now, either. We have been discussing charter change since the term of president Fidel V. Ramos but have not gone any closer to doing it because we’re always told that it’s not time yet. I say that now is as good as any time to initiate constitutional revision.
But let’s do it the correct and proper way. What rankles about the House-initiated move to amend the Charter is its brazenness. It seems that the congressmen or most of them, anyway, are so obsessed with Cha-cha that they have absolutely no qualms about cutting corners even if it means risking a constitutional crisis.
Look at what they have done. Employing the tyranny of numbers, they conveniently amended their rules to make it easy for a proposed constitutional amendment to pass. All the while, they’re saying that they’ll proceed with the constituent assembly with or without the participation of the Senate.
The Constitution is a revered document, the repository of the nation’s dreams and aspirations and the bible by which the powers of sovereignty are exercised. Writing it, whether for the first or succeeding time, is a sacred process.
It is therefore disturbing to see that process trivialized by the very people who, before assuming office, took an oath to uphold and defend it. Their deliberate haste and the eagerness to disregard established constitutional practice (which they attempt to justify by invoking legal mumbo-jumbo) are too obvious to ignore.
We can always go to the Supreme Court for relief, of course. But we need not have to. We have so far heard only from de Venecia and Nograles, et al. I look forward to seeing principled members of the majority like Eddie Gullas and Raul del Mar, among others, who do not fear an election, standing up and saying, hey, this madness has gone so far, let’s put an end to it.
