NOBODY is rushing Congress into amending the Constitution but Congress itself. Okay, make that half of Congress as only the Lower House appears to be hell-bent on passing the revised charter in time to postpone the May 2019 midterm elections.
The Senate, or at least a number of senators, want a more thorough review of the draft constitution being recommended by the consultative committee that was created by President Duterte in January last year. Amending the Constitution is not as simple as passing ordinary legislation, said Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, who grumbled about the supposed attempt to stampede them into approving the draft.
The job, he says, requires extensive study and deliberation. Significantly, Drilon’s counterpart in the majority shares exactly the same view: charter change should be studied carefully. Senate Majority Leader Juan Miguel Zubiri also criticized talks of no-election because they could scare away investors.
The idea of canceling next year’s polls was floated since two years ago but the proposal seemed to have fizzled out until Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez resurrected it recently. The postponement was necessary, he claimed, so that the congressmen can focus on charter change instead of campaigning for reelection.
In fact, what he is proposing is not a postponement but a cancellation of the elections. Postponement implies that it is the same office that will be filled up when the election is finally held, which is not true in this case as the old House shall have been replaced by a new legislative body, although still called Congress, by the time the first elections are held under the new Constitution.
Between the cancellation and the first elections, the incumbent congressmen will continue to hold office in holdover capacity. Alvarez’s brainchild therefore effectively extends the term of the legislators, including the senators.
That’s not a poor incentive, by any language, for them to campaign for the ratification of the draft charter by the people through a plebiscite especially with respect to those who are no longer eligible for reelection or who would otherwise face stiff challenges in their bid for another term. The latter group, his critics claim, includes Alvarez himself, who is now locked in a bitter quarrel with former ally and alleged financier, Antonio Floirendo Jr.
An election is the closest thing an ordinary citizen gets to participating in governance. If you cancel it, you deny him his democratic right to choose his leader. Besides, being able to vote against an incompetent or corrupt politician has a cathartic effect on people who, for three years, suffered under his leadership.
Canceling or postponing the election is anti-democratic and anti-people. This, apart from the need to subject the draft charter to a thorough study and review, is reason to go slow on cha-cha.