Sometimes words fail to describe the brazen attempts of some elected public officials to cling to power and the latest disclosure of Sen. Franklin Drilon that some congressmen want to postpone the barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) elections in May this year to October this year is yet another example of their desperation.
The chief architect, at least according to Drilon, was Oriental Mindoro Second District Rep. Reynaldo Umali, who chairs the congressional justice committee, which was spearheading the impeachment complaint against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno.
Apparently Umali called on some party allies based in Manila to launch today their campaign to court public support for a plebiscite on Charter change to be scheduled also in October this year in tandem with the barangay and SK elections.
That way, the government won’t spend if they piggyback the plebiscite onto the twin elections and if the public votes will favor Charter change, they won’t have to spend for the 2019 midterm elections since the incumbent officials will hold onto their posts in a carryover capacity.
Under their favored scenario, there will be a transition period between the approval of the new Constitution and the next elections under the new federal system being targeted by the administration party.
It’s that transition period that is one of many alarming aspects of the Charter change moves being instigated by the Lower House, which is dominated by lawmakers on their last terms of office.
The transition period can be as brief as four years — and we’re not even talking about the President, who supposedly promised to step down once a federal system is in place — to as long as one decade, to probably even never. As in they will be in power indefinitely, to only be replaced by their family members.
What is doubly alarming about the push for an October plebiscite is that Umali himself admitted that the initiative didn’t have the blessing of President Rodrigo Duterte.
After Duterte, there is only one other official influential enough to mastermind this initiative and he recently had a clash with the President’s daughter.
A Palace-created committee tasked to review the 1987 Constitution and issue recommendations may or may not meet its self-imposed deadline sometime this year and the October plebisicite is just one way of expediting the process based on the terms set by Congress.
The lone stumbling block to this latest brazen, craven initiative by administration allies to perpetuate themselves in power is the Senate whose leadership had publicly said that the SK and barangay elections will push through.
But is Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III’s statement that it is too late in the day for Congress to delay the elections enough assurance that it won’t happen? Charter change opponents cannot hold their breath for that scenario to come to pass.
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