The Long View
Senate swindled?
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:41:00 05/01/2008
There was no public clamor for it, no public campaign for it, and thus, no basis for arguing a public consensus has emerged demanding it. And yet the Senate seems to have decided to go all-out for federalism.
The Senate proposal, per news reports, is as follows: The country will be subdivided into 11 federal states, and each state will elect six senators. Filipinos overseas will elect nine senators. The Senate would thus go from the 24 members it’s had since 1916, to a membership of 75. As an appetizer for the House of Representatives, which would have a maximum of 350 members, the term limit (currently three terms) would be raised to a maximum of four terms, still at three years per term for representatives. (Senators can serve a maximum of two terms of six years per term.)
Senators Edgardo Angara, Rodolfo Biazon, Pia Cayetano, Juan Ponce Enrile, Francis Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada, Gregorio Honasan, Panfilo Lacson, Francis Pangilinan, Ramon Revilla and Manuel Villar were the original endorsers of Pimentel’s federalism proposal. They were later joined by Senators Benigno Aquino III, Lito Lapid, Loren Legarda and Miguel Zubiri. The bipartisan nature of the support for Pimentel’s proposal has caused some unease, because the idea seems to have come out of the blue and the way the numbers swelled has suddenly made possible a perfectly constitutionally-sound revival of previously failed charter change proposals.
Then again, the senators coming together regardless of party affiliation might simply be a manifestation of how the loyalty of administration senators to the Palace ends where their loyalty to the Senate begins.
Political analyst Ramon Casiple wrote in his blog that it was “a gambit essentially to preempt a reportedly serious Palace decision to launch a charter change initiative in the few months remaining before the 2010 election fever sets it. It is a political thrust designed to control the tempo on the issue and prevent it from endangering the 2010 elections.”
Casiple says that after the Senate closed ranks behind the Pimentel resolution, the Palace pooh-poohed the idea, claiming it’s not interested in charter change. But he thinks the Palace is simply waiting and sniffing around for any opportunities that may fall into its lap. But not on the Senate’s terms.
More skeptical (or is it paranoid?) minds can’t help but wonder, though, if the Senate hasn’t been taken for a ride, and the possibility that Pimentel has sold out to the Palace has even been raised. But Pimentel’s federalist credentials are impeccable, his reputation as an elder statesman too precious, his son’s entering the Senate and Zubiri being expelled (possibly by the end of this year) too probable, for him to start flirting with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at this time.
What Pimentel has done is put federalism back on the table, because there is no national consensus on the proposal yet. The Senate resolution offers something to incumbent members of the House but nothing at all to the President or to the proponents of a shift to the parliamentary system, who received a thumping from public opinion in December of 2006.
If a consensus can be said to have emerged from the failed charter change efforts of former Speaker Jose de Venecia, it’s that the public won’t budge from directly electing the chief executive (and by extension, is opposed to any scheme that might extend the term of the President or give her a new post-2010 lease on political life).
Pangilinan has said he views the Pimentel proposal as talking points but that any constitutional amendments should take effect only after 2010 and the amendments should really arise from the deliberations of a constitutional convention. Aquino has expressed similar reservations. And Gordon is more interested in election automation than in proposals to amend the Constitution.
The House of Representatives, which launched a trial balloon to give the President emergency powers to deal with the distribution of rice, saw the proposals made by some of its members immediately shot down by the public. It hasn’t even deigned to nibble at the Senate’s federalism proposal. There’s really nothing in it for them, and its members are more interested in poring over the latest census data to engineer the creation of new congressional districts in time for 2010.
The President, for her part, after shrugging off the Pimentel proposal, is trying to whet the appetite of Congress by announcing an extensive Cabinet revamp is in the offing. This is delightful news for Congress because it means the Commission on Appointments will have the opportunity to wheel and deal with her so that she can get her appointments through the bicameral body’s confirmation process. Or so they think: because, really, whether Congress likes it or not, the President has proven that Cabinet portfolios are dependent not on Congress’ say, but hers. If they don’t like it, she’ll reappoint them all the way to 2010.
Which only serves to underscore Casiple’s analysis that the Senate proposal was a gambit to put the Palace on the defensive. The House will also be hard put to call the Senate’s bluff by making proposals of its own, because they’d only be a rehash of the proposals that helped destroy De Venecia—something Speaker Prospero Nograles doesn’t want to relive.
Since the Senate has put federalism back on the table, revisiting the issue will be useful. At present, the concept of federalism is still too alien and abstract for the public at large to really get excited about it, even as quite a few people have gotten obsessed with the idea. Reintroducing the idea to the public will help focus attention on the many proposals being put forward to improve our political system and foster development and democratization in the country.
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