Batas Mauricio A GROUP of lawyers, academics, local officials, and other interested individuals composing the Movement for Federalism in the Philippines is now about ready to submit to President Duterte, the UP Law Center, and the Supreme Court, a comprehensive proposal on a federal system of government that will replace the current system of centralized government that we have at the moment. In its final meeting on Saturday night in Makati, the group synthesized three proposals on federalism coming from Dean Joe Santos Bisquera, lawyer Rey Princesa, and a political scientist from Samar. The synthesized version carries proposals on what the federal government would be like, which was among the campaign promises of President Duterte in May 2016. Basically, the Movement is proposing to maintain the present division of government into executive, legislative, and judiciary. There would still be president and a vice president, but who should now be elected together. The legislature however would be changed from the present two chamber-Congress into a unicameral body, elected by region or the proposed federal states. The judiciary on the other hand would basically reflect the system that is being used in the United States--there would be a federal Supreme Court, with each region or federal state having their own supreme courts and lower-level courts. The present set-up of regional trial courts and lower level courts are to be maintained. The objective of the Movement is to cascade to the regions or federal states much of the powers that are now centralized in the national government in Manila. Together with the powers that would be devolved to the regions is a bigger power of taxation, both from income tax returns and customs tariffs and duties. While the present set-up requires that internal revenue taxes and customs tariffs and duties be in the hands of the national government and then distributed later to local government units, the proposed federal system will give regions or federal states more share in the taxes, with more discretion on how to spend them to spur economic development in the countryside. While under the present system of government internal revenue taxes and customs and tariff duties are collected solely by the national government and the local government units are merely given their shares later, the proposal by the Movement is that regions or the federal states would be given bigger shares of these taxes. The regions would also be given greater power to spend these taxes on projects that would spur economic development in the countryside. The Movement is also proposing to give local government units more power to generate customs tariffs and duties on their own through the use of their shorelines which could be developed by them into regional or even provincial or municipal and city ports or piers. Each local government unit that has a shoreline would be given ample authority to pursue these development projects. There are more exciting proposals from the Movement to make federalism a successful system among Filipinos, but we unfortunately do not have the space in this column to discuss all of them today. As time goes by, however, we shall endeavor to list them down and discuss them here, for the enlightenment of everybody. E-mail: batasmauricio@yahoo.com