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Batas Mauricio .

THERE are messages conveyed by billboards in the Zambales metropolis which say, “What we need is a change in men, not of men.”

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If President Duterte will only give time to understand what the billboards are saying, I am sure he will not fail to realize that our country does not really need the federal system of government at this point, and that we can in fact continue under the present presidential form of government, even prospering greatly. The truth is that, good governance cannot be derived from any form of government.

Good governance, in fact, comes from the people themselves. That is the reason why I have been saying that we do not need a change in the form of our government now. What President Duterte should do, if he really wants a truly beneficial change to come to the country and leave it as his legacy, is to bring back the goodness of the heart of the Filipino, which can be made possible only if we bring back our people to God. But, does Duterte even have the will and the power to do this?

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Perhaps it is now time for both Vice President Leny Robredo and Sen. Kiko Pangilinan to study again, and make themselves understand that the basis of the Duterte government in its present campaign against loiterers and “idle hands” (“istambays,” in the local dialect) is not any infraction of any criminal law, but the power of the government known as “police power.”

As it is, Robredo and Pangilinan have been barking that being a loiterer or an idle hand is not a crime under this jurisdiction at the moment so that, they said, no policeman or any law enforcement authority has any right to arrest any such loiterer or idle hand. Robredo and Pangilinan, of course, are the current top leaders the Liberal Party, whose members are President Duterte’s certified most rabid critics.

If Robredo and Pangilinan will only try to be true to themselves, they will not fail to realize that the police arrests were not grounded on the fact that those to be arrested were loiterers or idle hands. There were arrests because there have been violations of city or municipal ordinances. What this amounts to, certainly, is the exercise of police power by the State, to assure that peace and order will reign in the country.

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I can only nod in agreement with the plan of President Duterte to give whatever oil there may be from the Liguasan Marsh in Mindanao to those whom he described as the “Moro people.” The reason is that, residents of Mindanao who are not Moros will surely also benefit from any oil production in the area. But there is a serious legal challenge against this kind of a plan.

First, we have what we call in this country as the “Regalian doctrine,” enshrined in the Constitution of 1987. This doctrine is a judicially recognized principle of law adhered to by old and new laws of the Republic, and even by decisions coming from the Supreme Court. According to this doctrine, all lands, or bodies of water, and other natural resources in the country, are owned by the Filipino people, who, as a whole, must be the one to benefit from such natural resources.

Now, if the oil from the Liguasan Marsh would solely be given to the Moro people, this would amount to depriving other Filipinos of that oil. This would surely ignite more conflicts, first in the form of court litigations, and, later on, in the form of armed and bloody conflicts or even protracted wars. I suggest that President Duterte should try to immediately issue a clarification on this matter before things get out of hand!

 

E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com

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