MikeLigalig.com

PRESI TO PARLIA?
(Part III )
By Yes Tirol Dumagan
Published on October 8, 2006 - The Bohol Standard Newspaper

For the other two weeks, I had discussed on the debate that I participated with the proposition: Resolved that Parliamentary Form of Government be Adopted.

For a recap, I had discussed the beneficiality part during the first part of this topic while necessity on its second part. I said that it is beneficial because not to push for the shift of system, from presidential to parliamentary.

I had cited four arguments on its beneficilatiy. First, the loss of systemic checks and balances in a parliamentary form as opposed to the presidential. Second, in the parliamentary form, the Prime Minister is not accountable to the people because he/she will not be elected directly by the people but rather only the selected few who do not and cannot actually represent the whole. Third, we lack strong, platform-oriented political parties. In the absence of this, such shift to parliamentary is absurd as this is the very pre-requisite to a strong parliamentary system. Fourth, the parliamentary form of government would promote regionalism or regionalistic attitude with regards to how we develop our country side since the PM would be accountable only to (1) the people who voted him directly in his congressional district and (2) to those of his fellow parliamentarians who voted him as PM and therefore he has to pay back by putting in more money on the congressman who puts him in place.

I had cited two arguments for the necessity portion. First, the question of political deadlock. Our knowledge and our observation from other parliamentarian countries now tell us that the initiators of this push for change in system is actually barking up the wrong tree. See, the question for political deadlock in the presidential form is between the executive and legislative branches. In the kind of parliamentary form we are pushing, such gridlock will be reduced since we will be adopting a unicameral form, meaning, the executive and legislative will not be divided as independent branches, rather, will be combined dependently, true. But in the empirical view with the our status quo in our country right now, such a “problem” in the presidential form between the executive and legislative branches is actually not a problem. We can see right now that the executive and the House (legislative) is in fact in unity. The fact of the matter is, the House is backing up and supporting the President to whatever her decisions are. Even the results of the impeachment against the Executive is still in favor of her. Therefore, such push is not necessary. Second, it is therefore not necessary to adopt such a kind of government in our country now because I see that given the political greed among our political figures right now, such shift will actually just promote more legitimate power to whoever our Prime Minister will be to be in power for as long as he/she wants.

Now, I say that it is even not practicable to adopt such form in our country, now. It can’t be done. How so? There are three ways on how to legitimately change our present presidential form as stated in the 1987 Constitution. First, is through People’s Initiative (PI). The PI, under the constitution requires an enabling law. In the 1997 case of Santiago vs Comelec, the Supreme Court with the vote of 12 to 3, 12 concurring and 3 dissenting judges actually threw out the supposed enabling law, now it can’t be acted because of the lack of the enabling law. However, let’s just assume that there is an enabling law and we can use PI. The constitution requires a certain percentage of all votes in all districts. How are you suppose to do that when in fact you have Benigno Aquino III and Jejomar Binay who are totally against this charter change. Second, the Constituent Assembly (ConAss) which will consist of the House of Representatives and the House of Senate which they can vote separately or together. But in any case they will not approve it, the opposition – senate, opposition congressman, party list representatives – have more than ¼ required vote to oppose any such push from any government official who merely wants to extend his or her term and merely wants to institutionalize partisan politics. Third, the Constitutional Convention (Concon). How much billions of pesos are we needing for this one? Can we instead allot all these billions of pesos to other more basic needs the Filipinos need? We couldn’t afford to make the biggest mistake just by hurriedly pushing such a shift. Therefore I remain that this such push is not practicable.

Therefore, I say that proper dissemination of information regarding this is necessary. Eight months (according to the chacha train) is not enough to allow the people to fully understand this nature. Refer to the recent Pulse Asia Survey and you’d know that 76% of Filipinos have less knowledge on our constitution, the very bible of the land. Our very constitution which we seek its familiarity for about twenty years already versus an eight-month crash course of learning the parliamentary. Would that be fair enough for all of us Filipinos?

Let’s think first before we act. Let’s consider the general welfare of the Filipinos more than any personal greedy intentions. Yes, parliamentary is a good form of a democratic government, but I’d say that it’s not applicable in our country now. Not now. As I’ve said, there are still other pushing issues that our government should face first.

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