On Issues in the Charter Change Parliamentary Form of Government and Federalism Maulana M. Alonto Let me begin by stating my personal conviction. As a Muslim who belongs to the Bangsamoro, I stand on the viewpoint that the current move to amend or change the present constitution of the Philippines, or charter change (ChaCha) for short, is a political matter that is internal to the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the Filipino people. I subscribe to the principled position that the Bangsamoro as a nation has nothing to do, nor should it have anything to do, with ChaCha. For the sake of discussion, however, let me set aside this position for a moment and examine what this controversy on ChaCha is all about and look at the much-debated issues it has engendered among the Filipinos, namely, the proposed shift to parliamentary form of government and/or federalism. It would also be of much use for us to understand the political dynamics that animates this move to change the Philippine constitution. Since the 90s, a number of cause-oriented groups, each with its own advocacy, has been lobbying for changing the existing presidential form of government of the Philippines under the 1987 Constitution or what is commonly known as the ‘Cory Constitution’. There is the group that advocates a shift to parliamentary form minus federalism; there is another group that wants federalism without going into the parliamentary form with the United States as an example; and then there is this group that seeks a shift to both parliamentary form and federalism similar to what Malaysia and other countries have adopted. Early on, much as hard lobbying was made by these groups to have the present Philippine constitution changed according to their desired respective models, none of these groups, however, had really managed to seriously influence the decision-making officials of this country, particularly the sitting president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The real genesis of the current political move to go into ChaCha came in the presidential campaign of 2004. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was prevailed upon by ambitious political allies like former president Fidel V. Ramos and Speaker Jose de Venecia to include ChaCha in her campaign platform ostensibly to give luster to her program of government and make her palatable to the electorate and thus enable her to win over a more popular political adversary, the late movie actor Fernando Poe, Jr. When Arroyo, however, ‘won’ the election, ChaCha was consigned to the backburner by her regime. Arroyo was never keen on pursuing ChaCha knowing that this issue does not sit well with some sectors of society, particularly the Church. All she cared for was to win the election at all costs and cling to power for the entire duration of her sixyear term as president. If, at all, she showed a modicum of liking for ChaCha, it was because of the possibility that ChaCha just might be the way for her to stay in power beyond the 2010 mandate given to her by the Cory constitution. But the euphoria that took grip of her regime following her controversial victory at the May polls in 2004 momentarily dispelled whatever thoughts she had of staying in power beyond 2010. It was only when her regime was plagued by a gargantuan political, economic and moral crisis coming in the wake of the plethora of national scandals – particularly the Garcillano tapes election fraud expose – that threatened to cut short her presidency that as a matter of survival, she had to fall back on the Ramos-De Venecia prescription for ChaCha. It was also in the process of reviving the ChaCha issue that her thoughts on staying in power beyond 2010 became a serious obsession for her.
Number 1
The Bangsamoro Forum contributes to the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies role as a forum for discussion of issues affecting the Bangsamoro people and their homeland. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of the IBS.
2 Fired by political ambition, Ramos and De Venecia, the trapos (traditional politicians) that they are, have their own respective agendas for pushing ChaCha. Under the presidential system of the present constitution, both know that their obsession for political power will never bear fruition. Ramos can no longer run for president. De Venecia, after his term in Congress lapses, is finished politically; he will also never win as president as evinced by his defeat in the hands of Joseph Estrada in the presidential contest of 1997. Even if he runs for the senate, he will have to subject himself to approbation by the national electorate through the ballot in which, because of his trapo image, his chances of winning the election are nil. Both, therefore, are conscious of the fact that only in a parliamentary form of government under a new constitution will they not only be able to hang on to power but even likely occupy the highest political position in the Philippine nation-state as Prime Minister. The debilitating political crisis that hit the Arroyo regime, thus, was godsend for the two trapos, more so for Ramos who no longer retains any footing in government although he relishes his honorific status as ‘senior statesman’. Some would even say that Ramos had a backstage hand in the making of this crisis. Whether true or not, the crisis faced by the regime in power provided the golden opportunity for the two to reimpose their ChaCha agenda on a beleaguered Arroyo, who, practically abandoned by even trusted members of her cabinet as demonstrated by the defection of the so-called Hyatt 10, was floundering in the political tempest and was about to abandon ship as clamor for her resignation had reached fever-pitch in 2005. To further compound Arroyo’s political woes, her powerful allies in the senate, like Senate President Franklin Drillon, turned against her. Former presidents Cory Aquino and Joseph Estrada have joined forces with the opposition from the Right to the Left of the political spectrum to topple her regime from power. The ambivalence of the position of the Church makes it prone to opportunism and therefore an unreliable ally. Given this situation at that moment, she felt alone and vulnerable. It was then that Ramos and De Venecia came to the rescue of the desperate Arroyo who would have clung to anyone and anything to save herself from an ignominious political end like Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada before her. This being the case, when Ramos proposed to her again to prioritize ChaCha
in exchange for his support, Arroyo grabbed this proposal with open hands as if it were a lifesaver. The political battle plan of Ramos was to have Arroyo prepare for ChaCha before the end of 2005 so that by 2006 the Constitutional Assembly or ConAss would have been convened, the new constitution ratified through a plebiscite, and by 2007 this new constitution would have been firmly in place and operational. Arroyo, who was hitherto cold to ChaCha, saw this as a welcome relief in that it would generate debates across the country, keep people busy with these debates and divert their clamor for her resignation, hence, defusing the impending ‘people power’ revolt that her political foes were hatching at that time. And by making it appear to the public that her regime was seriously bent on instituting drastic reforms even to the extent of changing the existing decrepit presidential form of government to something better through Chacha, she believed she would be able to prevent her disgracing fall from power. What she needed was time to recover, and indeed time was what she got. She survived the turbulence of 2005. For a while, as strongly ‘recommended’ by Ramos she agreed to cut short her term in 2007 – Ramos’ formula for her honorable exit from power - the year that has been earmarked for the full operationalization of the new form of government system under a new constitution. This, of course, satisfied Ramos and De Venecia who thought that they had Arroyo fully under their control and so looked forward with eager anticipation to the return of the ‘good old times’ when Ramos was president and both trapos reached the apex of their political careers. But Ramos, and De Venecia for that matter, underestimated Arroyo. In the dirty game of elitist Philippine politics, political situations change as political equations change. Arroyo proved to be an astute politician, a more cunning trapo who has evidently surpassed the skills of Ramos and De Venecia in backroom manipulation and psychological and propaganda warfare. She quickly learned how to utilize the vast powers of her office. Perhaps under the tutorship of her shrewd mobster husband, she was able to hone her skills on how to corrupt and at the same time intimidate both friends and foes. Once assured that Ramos and De Venecia were behind her, Arroyo used the respite provided by the two trapos as well as the full powers and resources of the presidency to plot her own counter-moves, strengthen her tenuous hold on the presidency, and advance her own political agenda. She maximized the time given to her not only to save
3 her regime but also to recover lost grounds and strengthen her hold on power. She tightened her grip on the ruling party, Lakas, with largesse and offers of juicy positions. That way, she was able to wean party members away from Ramos, one of the founding fathers of Lakas, and thus take full control of the party’s machinery. Similarly, she bribed both Congress and the leaders of the military establishment into throwing their lot with her. Following the tradition of Marcos, she saw to it that retiring generals with proven loyalty to her are rewarded lucrative positions in her regime upon their retirement. That is why the impeachment proceedings filed by the Opposition in the lower house failed and potential military coups were preempted in 2005. She was (and is) always one step ahead of her adversaries, no thanks to the vast resources at her command. But worse still for Ramos, she succeeded in buying the loyalty of the political chameleon par excellence, Speaker Jose de Venecia, and making him a primary instrument for turning ChaCha to her full advantage. Seemingly going along with the Ramos’ prescription for ChaCha, Arroyo convened the socalled Constitutional Commission (ConCom) in late 2005 and tasked it to ‘recommend’ changes in the Constitution and to even come up with a draft Constitution that would be the basis of a new charter to be crafted by ConAss composed of the Senate and Congress. Congress is dominated by her political allies so her preference for the ConAss over a Constitutional Convention (ConCon) that requires the election of delegates is a very clever political move. She justified this in public by reasoning out that the election of delegates to the ConCon would be timeconsuming and too expensive for the government. In so doing, she exuded the vibrancy of a strongly-determined leader willing to cut corners for the sake of her desperate constituents, a leader willing to go to any lengths if only to ensure that meaningful reforms can immediately be instituted in government and society. But behind this grand deception, to make sure that things worked in accordance with her secret personal agenda, Arroyo stuffed the ConCom with people she already had inside her pockets and saw to it that they controlled the flow and direction of the ConCom. Then she appointed persons of renown, like Dr. Jose Abueva, former University of the Philippines President and a leading advocate of federalism, to give credibility to an otherwise rubber-stamp body. To the chagrin of Ramos, the final ConCom output was contrary to what he expected: the
parliamentary form of government was indeed adopted and officially submitted to the president last December 2005; but, the body also made it peremptory for Arroyo to serve as president until the expiration of her term in 2010. This doused cold water on Ramos’ ambition to become prime minister in 2007 or thereabouts. And as a comeon for all government officials holding elective positions, particularly the members of the Senate who, with self-serving agendas of their own oppose the lady tenant in Malacanang, her minions in the ConCom and Congress engineered the plan to postpone the elections in 2007. This NO-EL (no election) gambit has incurred the outrage of many people and has resulted in more acrimonious debates across the country; nonetheless, it endeared Arroyo to the majority of elected officials, particularly those in the local governments, whose much-needed support for her shaky presidency was all that mattered to her anyway. In another surprising twist, federalism was totally jettisoned by the ConCom. Dr. Jose “Pepe” Abueva, a staunch advocate of federalism and who headed the ConCom, eventually turned his back on the federalist cause. Nothing in the ConCom’s draft constitution says anything about federalism and the next thing near to it is the ambiguous term “autonomous territory” which refers to local governments. This is nothing new as the Cory constitution also speaks of the ‘autonomy’ of local government units. The muchtouted ‘transition period’ for federalizing the country in the near future did not even merit any mention or hint in the proposed constitution crafted by the ConCom. During the presidential campaign, federalists supporting Arroyo used to trumpet the propaganda line that she had been recruited into their cause. But with the final output of the Arroyo-controlled ConCom now submitted into the open, the federalists today find their foot stuck into their mouth. Meanwhile, this was a terrible setback to Ramos’ political battle plan. Worse yet again for him, his junior political partner, De Venecia, openly stabbed him at the back and sided with Arroyo. De Venecia, in a startling shameless act of ingratiating himself with Arroyo, not only backed the continuance of Arroyo’s term to 2010 but even proposed an amendment, among others, to the ConCom’s draft constitution that would adopt the French-type of parliamentary form of government. Under the French type, the President shares power with or can even become more powerful than the Prime Minister. This was what Marcos adopted under his manufactured martial law
4 constitution when he was the dictator-president and Cesar Virata was his prime minister. In any event, De Venecia’s patently selfserving ‘amendments’ to the ConCom’s output has to be clothed with credibility. Clearly, the ‘amendments’ point to a conspiracy between De Venecia and Malacanang to perpetuate Arroyo in power. To obviate public outrage over this conspiracy, a drama of deception has to be played out to keep the people believing that what is being done is for the good of the country. In the scenario of this drama of deception, Congress is made to reject the ConCom’s draft constitution so that it could come out with its own draft. This time, Congress’ draft constitution will incorporate De Venecia’s ‘amendment’ to adopt the French-type of parliamentary form of government. Arroyo’s presidency then will not only stay until the end of her term in 2010 as the 1987 Constitution mandates but it can even go beyond that under a new constitution. It is not farfetched to believe that De Venecia is eying at an Arroyo-De Venecia tandem under this French-type form of parliamentary government: Arroyo stays as president and De Venecia is prime minister. It is not also farfetched to believe that this could be the price that Arroyo paid De Venecia for betraying his old senior partner in politics, Ramos. If and when this ‘new’ political arrangement resulting from the consolidation of ConCom’s output, De Venecia’s ‘amendments’ and Congress’ draft constitution materializes, nothing really new is achieved by ChaCha in the event it is held. The status quo remains. Under the existing presidential system, people have to contend with one over-all tyrant, the president. But under the ConCom-De Venecia-Congress version of parliamentary form of government, people may have to contend with two tyrants – the president and the prime minister. The least that can happen under this scheme is perennial political instability in a scenario where the president and prime minister, if they share equal power but do not see eye to eye, will always be at each other’s throat. Given the dog-eats-dog characteristic of elitist Philippine politics, this is not only possible but inevitable. This is happening in Pakistan. That is why the military establishment there is able to stage successful coups, overthrow the civilian authority with ease, and install military dictatorships. But what about federalism? If my honest opinion were to be asked, I would say forget about federalism. It has already been consigned to the trashcan by the future ‘framers’
of the new constitution. But then again for the sake of discussion, let us discuss federalism. Federalism, even assuming that the present powers-that-be reconsider it - which is very unlikely now that it has been taken out of the government’s agenda - can never be achieved under the present set-up of the Philippine nationstate. Federalism presupposes the existence of independent nations or states that have agreed among themselves to enter into a federated union and give up their independent status. This was the case with the original thirteen colonies of the United States. When they fought for their independence from Great Britain, these thirteen American colonies formed the Continental Congress which served as the nerve center that managed and ran the colonies’ revolutionary war of independence in 1776. Its establishment was the genesis of the American Union. After they gained their independence, the thirteen American colonies became states and initially formed a confederation governed by the Continental Congress. The confederation, however, failed to establish a strong government. The Continental Congress proved inadequate as a governing body of the Union after independence as it was incapable of exercising effective control over the states which were functioning practically fully independent of each other, thus threatening the break-up of the Union. So, in 1787 the Constitution of the United States was drawn up. This accelerated the long political process that eventually resulted in the strengthening of the Union through the adoption of federalism of the presidential type in 1789 in order to institutionalize more efficient and effective control and governance at the national level as more territories were acquired either through wholesale land-grabbing or purchase and were converted into states of the Union. Under the federalized Union, the states had to voluntarily surrender many of their powers to the federal government. This is now the United States of America, the bastion of capitalism and the remaining imperialist superpower of the West that we know today. In the case of the Federation of Malaysia, there existed the independent sultanates even prior to British colonization which formed the states constituting the federation after independence. Just like Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy and parliamentary form of government, Malaysia’s federalism evolved from of its long, entrenched political tradition. This entrenched Malay political tradition revolves around the institution of kerajaan (governance) in the form of the Muslim sultanates, which were the sources of authority for
5 the indigenous Malays of the peninsula who are Muslims, and which existed and functioned as veritable governments with defined territories and constituencies even before the coming of the British imperialists. When the British finally withdrew from the Malay Peninsula in 1957, these sultanates, which were left virtually untouched by the British, became the states (except for the states of Sarawak and Sabah which are not currently governed by sultanates) that comprise the Federation of Malaya, or Malaysia as it is known to us now. In the defunct Soviet Union, although highly controlled by a Moscow-based monolithic Communist Party, a federal set-up was established during the Stalinist era in the 1920s composed of myriad nationalities with defined homelands. This federation of the nationalities into a larger socialist state was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR. Many of these nationalities, particularly those in Central Asia, were once constituencies of the Ottoman Empire or the Uthmaniyya khilafat. Under Soviet rule, though they were Soviet citizens, they retained their national identities and were allowed to function as soviet republics and exercise autonomy over their territories under their respective communist parties but strictly within the larger framework of the socialist federation. After the demise of soviet communism and the subsequent collapse of the USSR, they reverted to their independent status, with some even federating with other republics. Many other countries like Canada, Mexico, India, Switzerland, Germany, etc, that have adopted federalism as their form of government share more or less similar historical experiences and political characteristics. In the case of the Philippines, however, although myriad ethno-linguistic groups and indigenous communities exist, these groups do not consider themselves nations much less states. At best, they are merely referred to as tribes, ‘cultural communities’, or ethno-linguistic groups by Filipino nation-state builders. In the absence of nations or states which should normally comprise a federated union, what exist are administrative or geographic regions all controlled by a monopolist central government in Manila fanatically bent on gradually eradicating diversity and imposing a colonially-manufactured national identity pursuant to the Filipino nation-state’s philosophy of ‘one people, one nation’. Simply put, in the Philippine setting no independent nations or states that could constitute themselves into a federation yet exist. Admittedly, separatist/partitionist
movements, such as the ‘One People Mindanao’ movement, are beginning to rear their heads but all of these are yet in their infant stage of development and still in search of their lost original identities. To digress a little bit, it needs to be stressed here that it is only the Bangsamoro people from the very start of colonialist and imperialist invasions who consider themselves a nation and, by virtue of this fact, have struggled and fought wars of resistance and liberation for almost five centuries to preserve this sense of nationhood based on a common faith (Islam), a well-defined ancestral domain under the stewardship of the Muslim sultanates, cultural kinship, blood ties and shared historical experiences; in short, a sense of nationhood separate, distinct, and far removed from that alien colonial construct called “Filipino”. Going back to the discussion, under the concept of federalism it is the independent nations that, after agreeing to federate, would form the component states of the federation and would determine the powers that they would surrender to the federal government. In contrast thereto, in the proposed establishment of Philippine-style federalism supposedly through ChaCha it is the central government in Manila and the political elites who run it that would determine what states are to be created and what powers are to be given to them. Dr. Jose Abueva, running out of arguments in defense of this convoluted process, calls this “reverse federalism”. Obviously, “reverse federalism” did not prove feasible because Abueva abandoned it when he headed the ConCom. This process more often than not never works as in the case of Pakistan, for example, where the process of “reverse federalism” was applied according to Dr. Abueva. Although Pakistan is a multi-ethnic Muslim nation-state that was originally founded on the ideals of Islam and thus claims to be an “Islamic Republic”, the Pakistan that the world knows today is in perpetual political and social turmoil bordering on anarchy, its masses groaning under extreme poverty, and ruled by an unabashedly secular, corrupt and repressive military dictatorship that wantonly allows foreign powers to interfere in and manipulate, exploit and control the country’s affairs. The greatest tragedy of Pakistan though is that its oppressed Muslim people cannot even transform Pakistan into a genuine Islamic state or effectively aid neighboring Muslim Kashmir occupied illegally by India because its powerful secular ruling elites are either exceedingly beholden to or afraid of the West. Be that as it may, if Pakistan were indeed a classic
6 example of a nation-state that has undergone the process of “reverse federalism”; as Dr. Abueva used to point out, I do not think that a similar process when applied to the Philippine nationstate will ever solve the problems of this country. Far from it, it would even hasten the doom of the Philippine nation-state. The point is that federalism does not guarantee a problem-free form of government more so when it is artificially manufactured or imposed from ‘above’. Yugoslavia was a communist-controlled imposed federation, and like the Philippines a synthetic nation-state. It immediately disintegrated after the end of communist rule spawning, in the process, a bloody civil war among its former component states. So was the erstwhile superpower, the USSR. The Russian-led federation called the Commonwealth of Independent Nations (CIN) that emerged in the post-Soviet era failed to prevent and stop the continuing war in Chechnya, a breakaway Muslim republic in the Caucasus still under Russian colonialism despite the federated political set-up. Amid this fuss about ChaCha and the shift to parliamentary form or federalism, the question of where we stand comes to the fore. As I have elaborated at the start of this discourse, this whole thing on ChaCha is part of the dynamics of the power struggle between and among the Filipino ruling elites wherein the impoverished masses themselves are but mere unfortunate pawns subject to manipulation and exploitation by them. As it is, the ruling elites are engaged in a deadly political warfare among themselves over and through the ChaCha. Reforming the country’s political system has nothing to do whatsoever with ChaCha. It is all about strengthening and perpetuating the dominance of one faction or the other of the
decadent ruling elites of the Philippine nationstate. We should now be wise enough to realize that what the politicians say about ChaCha generating reforms once the shift is accomplished from one system of government to the other is a blatant prevarication. There can never be significant changes and reforms in a colonially-manufactured synthetic nation-state governed and perpetually plundered by greedy, corrupt and profligate Filipino elites whose oppressive and exploitative domination of and stranglehold on practically every aspect of life in this country, in subservient collusion with foreign imperialist powers, can only be dismantled if the Philippine nation-state itself is dismantled and the captive nations which make up its components recover their respective sense of nationhood and are subsequently liberated. Unless that happens - and this is unlikely to happen in the very near future - this nation-state called the Philippines will always flounder in the sea of uncertainty and face a very bleak future. Its self-destruction is just a matter of time. It is in the face of this grim reality that no choice is left for the Bangsamoro nation but to free itself from this environment of insecurity and the prospects of a bleak future while in colonial captivity by paving its own way to freedom and liberation. A colonized nation is a colonized nation and it does not matter whether the form of government of its colonizer is presidential, parliamentary or federal. What really matters - and this should be the primordial concern - is that the colonized nation is able to free itself from colonial captivity, decide its own political future free from outside impositions, and thereafter establish its own government firmly anchored on a just social order that is in accord with its own belief-system, which, in the case of the Bangsamoro nation, is Islam.
The Institute of Bangsamoro Studies is a non-profit and non-stock institution the functions of which are to undertake research on subjects concerning and affecting the Bangsamoro people, conduct trainings and render community services to depressed Bangsamoro areas.
INSTITUTE OF BANGSAMORO STUDIES Hadji Daud Bldg., Campo Muslim Cotabato City, Philippines
Tel. (63-64) 4213551
Fax: (+63-64) 4217886
Email: morostudies@yahoo.co