Jude Josue Sabio  OUR Constitution is obviously patterned after the US federal Constitution. The Constitutional Commission of 1987 merely copied, almost verbatim, the provisions of the US federal  Constitution on the executive, legislature and judiciary.  What we now find in our Constitution are similar replicas of the US Constitution provisions on the presidential and tripartite form of government. The United States is a federal state chiefly considered in political science as the primary federalist model.  But ironically, the US Constitution does not mention at all that the US  is a “federalist” state or that its political system is “federalism.” What the US federal Constitution does is that it expressly  enumerates certain powers granted to the federal state. Powers not expressly granted to the federal state are reserved to, and are to be exercised only by, the different states.  In other words, the federal state derives power  and authority only from an express enumeration of certain powers in the federal Constitution. In the US back then, the different states already existed and exercised strong and  independent powers. There was still no federal state; only a confederacy among states existed.  But the US founding fathers found the confederacy to be ineffective, thus desiring to replace it with  a federal union under a strong and energetic executive, the US President.  At first, 13 original states united to form the US federal state until other states joined to what is now the United States of America. The battleground for this political reform then was in the US constitutional convention where federalism, as espoused in the Federalist Papers published in New York under the pen name “Publius,” prevailed over the confederacy. As it turned out, the text of the US Constitution reflected the jealous intent of the independent states to protect their own powers from being swallowed up by the federal government.   This is evident from the express enumeration of powers granted to the federal state.   The resulting effect is that the federal state cannot exercise powers reserved only to the states except those expressly enumerated in the US federal Constitution. Our 1987 Constitutional Commission did not see the need to copy the express enumeration of certain powers for a federal government. This is precisely because the Commission did not intend to create a federal system patterned after the US federal system. Instead, our Constitutional Commission provided for local government units over which the national government is granted full control and supervision under the broad principle of local autonomy.  As a feature of a highly centralized state, the national government,  thru its legislature under the Local Government Code, granted certain powers to the local government units. For the first time in our political history the 1987 Constitutional Commission carved out a new political entity to address the Muslim insurgency.  It allowed for the creation of an autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao.   Again, the National Government, thru its Legislature, passed the law creating the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Then came the Bangsomoro Basic Law proposed by the national government. What was revolutionary with the BBL was that it sought to  create  a “sub-state” or a separate sovereign entity for the Bangsamoro.  Unfortunately, it runs counter to our Constitution that allows only for an autonomous region. Unlike in the US where the different independent states desired to form a federal state, there are no independent states in our country seeking to form a federal state. Rather, the recent  movement  for federalism, popularly espoused by Duterte as a campaign promise, was made and is being made merely as an obvious reaction to the BBL. It is being thought by its proponents that federalism can accommodate a sovereign entity in the Bangsamoro, precisely because federalism  allows for the sharing of sovereignty in one political system.  Federalism is proposed as a solution to the Gordian knot that is the Muslim insurgency. History is repeating itself.  In 1987, after the Edsa revolution, the Constitutional Commission allowed for the creation of the autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao under the 1987 Constitution.  This was made obviously to address the growing Muslim secessionist movement in Mindanao.  This time around, the proposed shift to federalism is being made in response to the BBL, again to put an end to Muslim discontent and to bring lasting peace to Mindanao. In our peculiar political context, one can see that federalism is a political idea whose time seems to have come. On one hand, it satisfies the long-standing political goal of the Bangsomoro for selfule and self-determination under a separate sovereign state in their own territory without necessarily establishing national independence. On the other hand, the Philippine federal state will retain Bangsomoro as part of its national territory under a federal system. But what is more important is that national political equality is achieved.  For not only the Bangsamoro is given a separate sovereign state, but also all the other states will be granted the same sovereignty as the Bangsamoro state.  The question remains as to how this momentous shift to federalism is to be achieved  under our peculiar political context.  (Jude Josue L. Sabio is a lawyer by profession.)