President-Elect Rody Duterte will have 100 days of a honeymoon period starting July 1 before the mass media begin to be critical with his administration, as is always the tendency in this country.
Immediately crucial will be what Pres. Rody will order on his first day in office. Fortunately, he has past presidents to look back to and see what they proclaimed on Day 1 of their six-year reign.
He should not follow Pres. Benigno Aquino III, who failed to seize the opportunity given him during this honeymoon period to dramatically order the distribution of his family’s landed estate, the Hacienda Luisita, which would have really made him a hero to all. In fact, what we remember vividly is how he was smiling at the tour bus where Hong Kong tourists had been killed hours earlier at the Quirino Grandstand during his honeymoon period.
I understand the need to file cases against all those party mates of Aquino on the so-called second and third list of those who received and misspent their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) who were sinisterly spared the courts due to the alleged protection given them as members of the ruling party.
I can also understand the need to answer the clamor during the elections to send even Aquino and his Budget Secretary Florencio Abad to jail for their significant role in the illegal Development Assistance Program (DAP) disbursements. Ditto also, the Metro Rail Transit fiasco involving another Aquino cabinet member, Antonio Abaya and the alleged midnight signature of defeated presidential candidate Mar Roxas regarding the MRT bidding before he moved out as secretary of the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) in favor of Abaya.
Hey, the list of people in the present administration that Duterte voters expect President-Elect Rody to go after, I am sure, was long ready and prepared even before the first voter entered the polling place last Monday.
But I do not think that should be what Pres. Rody should immediately work on as his first act on his first day in office. The first hour of Day 1 is a most crucial one that will set the tone of the presidency. And running after crooks, which every president should actually do, makes the president appear vindictive. There will be the second hour to do that.
So my unsolicited advice to President-Elect Rody is simple to do but very challenging. His first act on the first hour of Day 1 of his presidency should be to immediately call for a Constitutional Convention to change the 1987 Constitution and usher in a federal government with a parliamentary system along the Malaysian or British model.
This was one of his promises that moved people like me in the academia to support him early on. Our family stood united for the fist time on a candidate not only because he came from our homeland Mindanao but more so because someone like him grew up under the shadow of Imperial Manila and the centralization of power — and corruption — there.
Calling for charter change will only be acceptable during this honeymoon period, when the Filipino people will still give the new president the benefit of the doubt: that he has no personal agenda to forward.
In fact, by calling for a change in this moribund unitary-presidential system that we have now, President-Elect Rody is actually sacrificing himself and his position in Malacañang, the ultimate proof that he has no personal interests.
This is because after a new constitution with new form of government headed by a prime minister is hopefully passed in a plebiscite, say two or three years from now, it will mean new elections for members of the single-body or unicameral parliament with a new head of government, the Prime Minister, to occupy Malacañang. This will effectively cut down Duterte’s term by three years. What greater self-sacrifice can there be than this?
Of course, he can run for parliament and once there, be elected prime minister. Alternatively, we might have a constitution that will call for direct elections of the prime minister to which he can also aim for. But who would want to head a country now comprised of powerful federal states? Under a federal government, only 20 percent of the budget will go to operating the entire country, while the rest, 80 percent, will be retained by the different federated states or regions for their own development.
The political battle will be shifted to the federated regions, which will be the power bases of development, no longer Imperial Manila. Each of these federated regions or states will also be guided by its own basic law, and will be autonomous, not just the Bangasmoro as in the much-ballyhooed BBL.
The day has come. It’s your turn to make history, President-Elect Rody. Seize the hour! Seize the day!