PRESIDENT Duterte’s State of the Nation Address (Sona) will most probably tackle charter change and the federalist push. This, amidst results of recent surveys that showed the majority of Filipinos are opposed to both. Government, after all, only considers the people’s opposition to cha-cha and federalism as a matter of explanation or the proponents’ lack of it.
It missed the point, of course. Because opposition to cha-cha and federalism is deeply rooted in the people’s general perception of politicians, which is largely negative. Many Filipinos are suspicious of the motivation of politicians in general, even if they tend to patronize individual politicians in their turfs or in localities.
Thus House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez’s recent statements are not helping the cause of the cha-cha and federalism proponents. Alvarez is champion of the “no-el” scenario, or the cancellation of the 2019 elections supposedly to give priority to the cha-cha and federalism push. People hate a cha-cha that is intended to extend the terms of office of politicians.
A constitutional commission headed by former Supreme Court chief justice Reynato Puno has already submitted a draft charter to the President that includes a transitory provision that could also alienate many Filipinos. The idea of giving the President dictatorial powers if the shift to federalism is approved should be stricken out of the draft charter.
As for federalism, my favorite argument against it is that it could give rise to the ascendancy of political dynasties and even warlords in the proposed federal regions (states). There is the promise of preventing this from happening by including an anti-political dynasty provision in the draft constitution. Well and good.
Interestingly, I heard Sen. Bam Aquino talk about what he considers a suspicious exemption in the anti-political dynasty provision in the draft charter. It exempts from the said provision the president and the vice president of the federal state, whoever they may be. As an example, Sara, the daughter of President Duterte, is also mayor of Davao City.
But what should be a contentious issue once the draft charter is being presented to the people is the breaking up of the country into federal regions (states). This is actually an offshoot to our deviation from the usual process of federalization. Instead of existing states joining together to form a federal state, we are instead breaking a state into smaller federal regions. The result is an artificial division.
Probably in the hope of lessening the possibility of people squabbling over the manner the Philippine state is broken into smaller pieces, the draft charter is largely relying on mostly the existing regions as a starting point. But there will always be questions on this. For example, you have the proposal to group together the Negros provinces, which would affect Central Visayas. The proposal to have Cebu as a separate federal region (state) is also being pushed.
These and other issues would surely hound the charter-change and federalism push. Who says realizing cha-cha and federalism is as easy as President Duterte giving his minions the marching order to do it?