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Manny Valdehuesa .

SHIFTING from the present unitary-presidential form of government to the proposed federal-parliamentary system is no small matter. It demands probity and statesmanship of the highest order in those who advocate it.

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Radical change in our mode of governance cannot, should not, be dictated by the preference of a few powerful people. No individual or group can speak unilaterally, let alone decide this issue, for all Filipinos. Not even if they are hand-picked by the president. And not especially by today’s president.

A societal issue, at the least, demands the widest discussion and debate possible, plus a referendum where all aspects and viewpoints are considered openly and thoroughly. Short of that, one cannot speak of due process and democratic decision making.

Some advocates of federalism sound as if all it takes to establish and institutionalize the new system is gravity—i.e. enact it at the top and let it trickle-down to the different layers of the bureaucracy and society.

Not only that, they want federalism adopted through a simple and uncomplicated route: convert Congress into a constitutional assembly and get it done pronto. Would that they were just kidding! In fact, their preference for a constituent assembly should raise alarms up and down the Philippine archipelago.

So delicate a task as constitution-making should not be entrusted to traditional politicians with deep dynastic roots in politics as a livelihood. Filipinos shouldn’t take their cue from the same politicos who manipulate them today and dominate politics on all layers and corners of our system.

To let the trapos have their way on this issue is to kiss goodbye to term limits, accountability, free elections, and even free speech and press freedom. The latter are already under attack today and are already weakened by expletives and imperious authoritarianism.

To let the system be coopted and dominated by such people will guarantee that the proposed federal territories will remain firmly under their control. We would only end up with a rewritten Constitution tailor made for their interests, political and economic.

How do we know this? They are the same generation of trapos who appropriated the yellow banner of EDSA and ushered President Cory into power, spouting the fairly simple concepts of decentralization, devolution, and autonomy and later enacted the Local Government Code.

But instead of enforcing and institutionalizing the Code’s mandate to empower the Filipino and the community, they bastardized it by making it impossible for deserving and qualified but poor candidates to win in their districts.

First, they made election campaigns prohibitively expensive by flooding their bailiwicks with money, pork barrel favors, and flying voters. Second, they fielded their family members and cronies to run for all available positions, crowding out other candidates.

Where none of this worked, they brought in the usual combination of guns, goons, and gold to soften up or intimidate voters.

And so the promise of autonomy or self-government among the grassroots withered before it could bloom.

Not only that, what was supposed to be the “home” of people power—the community’s Barangay Assembly (it’s parliament with an all-inclusive membership)—became a redundancy, or so it seemed to the elite of the community who even today belittle it by ignoring its existence, not bothering to participate in its proceedings.

Thus, no sooner than the oligarchs who enacted the Local Government Code (R.A. 7160) in 1991 than they proceeded to emasculate it by stuffing politics and the bureaucracy with their family members and cronies, defying the non-partisan nature of barangay elections.

If that’s how they treat reform legislations, will they behave differently under a federal system?

 

(Manny Valdehuesa Jr. is a former Unesco regional director for Asia-Pacific; secretary-general, Southeast Asia Publishers Association; director, development academy of Philippines; member, Philippine Mission to the UN;  vice chair, Local Government Academy; member, government peace panel during the administration of Corazon Aquino; awardee, PPI-Unicef outstanding columnist. An author of books on governance, he is chairman/convenor of Gising Barangay Movement Inc..)

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