I don’t want to experience more frustration. My odometer has just breached the “80” mark and my octogenarian physical and mental frames are too weak to absorb even a minor shock. I am too vulnerable to stress. There were attempts before and all went pfft. I refer, dear readers, to the recent adoption by the House of Representatives of Resolution of Both Houses 6 calling for Charter change through a hybrid mode — the election of 251 delegates to coincide with the October barangay elections and the appointment of 63 others.
I am all for Charter change. There is that lingering flicker of hope that it will change things for the better. But my reluctance to celebrate as yet is the lukewarm, if not lackadaisical reaction, if not the nonaction, of Malacañang to the proposal. Its silence is deafening and unsettling. In fact, the President was quoted earlier as denying Cha-cha as a priority of his administration. That should dampen any celebratory mode. It is a truism that proposed major policy will not see the light of day without the stamp of imprimatur from the President.
We have heard before a broken record of promises of past administrations for a Cha-cha. They are the main menu and hot items every electoral campaign period. Some won because they adopted it as their mantra. But after the election and the effluxion of time, it was somehow removed from the priority agenda and relegated to the back burner. Among the spirited campaigns for Cha-cha which gave hope to many were the ones waged by the Ramos and Duterte presidencies. There was too much expectation then. But its proponents failed.
It was not so much because of the opposition launched by the progressive groups which mouthed ad nauseam the shibboleth of food and job security as the be-all and end-all essence of governance. Not the huge budget with an estimated cost of P8 to 10 billion and the manpower needed for the process.
Somehow, major events and concerns, and other priorities of government got in the way and stymied the dream of a new system that hopefully would finally liberate the country from the morass of poverty and other social and political ills.
Congressman Rufus Rodriguez, the rising political star of Mindanao, has to do more to keep the locomotive of change running. He has to inspire the interest of more public and, most especially, of the executive branch of government.
This early, some senators have publicly made known their reservations about Cha-cha. And that poses a problem that is hard to hurdle. Under our system of government, any change, amendment, or revision to our Constitution needs the concurrence of the Senate. Cha-cha is a 2-person dance. If one does not dance to the tune, it will flop.
According to published reports, there will be only the revision of the restrictive economic provisions of the Constitution “to attract more foreign investments.” The rationale is the alleged entanglement of the country in poverty because of outdated provisions like the foreign ownership of land and other properties. In other words, the changes will dump the decades-old stand of our nationalists who were advocating against the odds and foreign pressures for “Filipinism” or Filipino First Policy as the bedrock of our national policy.
But what will prevent the constitutional convention delegates from navigating to the other provisions of the Constitution? They could try to tweak the political and administrative provisions that will open the gate to a change of government from the presidential to a parliamentary form. They could manipulate the provisions that will lead to the extension of the terms of office of the incumbents. Once we tinker with the provisions of the Constitution, there will be no stopping messing with the other provisions. The parameters of the areas that could be amended should be defined in black and white to leave no room for manipulation to serve the interests of lobbyists.
But think about it. Is it the locomotive that derails progress or is it the drivers?
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