Charter change work

Yesterday was the starting point for what is supposed to be a groundbreaking work on amending the 1987 Constitution and changing the country’s political system from presidential to a federal form of government.

To be fair, Pres. Rodrigo Duterte chose some heavyweights to comprise a committee that will review and recommend amendments to the Constitution that will pave the way to federalize the government.

Again, amid the noise generated by tons of issues, the ongoing moves to amend the Constitution should not be relegated to the background owing first to the seeming determination of the President to change the Constitution and second, to the equally seeming determination of those elected to power to perpetuate themselves in power.

We also have to take into consideration the opposition posed by the original framers of the 1987 Constitution like former Cebuano Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr who said changing the form of government into a federal system would result in more taxes on the local governments to subsidize the federal or central government.

Then again, perhaps owing to personal bias, Davide described the 1987 Constitution as the most “perfect and suitable” for the Filipinos regardless of the fact that the bulk of the 1987 Constitution was copied from other countries notably the US which has a presidential-federal form of government.

We would not be surprised if the constitutional review committee would go the same route especially since one of its members, former Mindanaoan assemblyman Reuben Canoy, also had a proposed Constitution patterned after the US Constitution as part of his Mindanao Independence Movement.

Amending the Constitution is not like reinventing the wheel. Rather it is considering and adapting laws unique to us and our culture and taking into consideration the best laws and practices of other countries to see if they can be adapted into our own setting.

But the suspicious minded, of whom there are many, cannot disconnect from the fact that House leaders led by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez had raised the specter of extending themselves beyond 2022 to ad infinitum.

It is also not known if the constitutional review committee’s recommendations will have any bearing or weight whatsoever on the deliberations by Congress to amend the Constitution.

Only the Senate remains the stumbling block to the political ambitions of Alvarez and company to perpetuate themselves in power, and we hope that any Charter change will set limits or provisions that will prevent any caretaker capacity on the part of the incumbent.