Viewpoint
Judas odds
By Juan Mercado
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:15:00 08/14/2008
MANILA, Philippines—“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” Henry Kissinger once mused. Now, an aroused Malacañang seeks to ram through Joint Congressional Resolution 10. “It’s all systems go for Charter change,” Press Secretary Jesus Dureza says.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo denies this is to extend her stay in power beyond 2010. Addressing Swiss President Pascal Couchepin, she said, “Federalism would ensure long-lasting peace in Mindanao.”
Dureza embroidered the President’s first public endorsement of Charter change since October 2006. The Supreme Court zapped as “a grand deception” the regime-backed “people’s initiative” to overhaul the 1987 Constitution.
CR10 convenes Congress as a constituent assembly (ConAss), not a constitutional convention (ConCon). Legislators would keel-haul the Constitution and shift to a federal form of government, Dureza stressed.
A ConAss agenda, however, cannot be straitjacketed. Everything is up for grabs, once it starts. The meet becomes, to paraphrase the editor H.L. Mencken, “a place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals. But betting odds would favor Judas.”
Judas odds may be glimpsed in Dureza’s crystal bowl. “A similar move in the House of Representatives will snowball to concur with the Senate’s overwhelming support,” he predicted. These fit a “grand design”: The Bangsamoro would docilely become one of 11 component federal states once the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain is signed.
Is that so? A Supreme Court restraining order aborted Malacañang’s efforts to wedge the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) as a sovereign state into the nation under “executive privilege” blackout. The President’s efforts to deny stakeholders information on BJE predictably fanned bloodshed.
Look at this “ultimate aphrodisiac’s” history. It can be instructive.
“To pole-vault into the 21st century,” President Fidel V. Ramos said during his administration in urging that the Constitution be overhauled. And 87 congressmen agreed in House Resolution 40. In the Senate, Juan Ponce Enrile obliged with Senate Resolution 18.
Ramos and his backers also wanted a ConAss, not a ConCon. This allowed the fox to guard the chicken coop. Ramos said 147 amendments were needed. No one could remember what the 146 were. But all agreed on the 147th: lifting the cap on terms of office.
The proposal to shift to a parliamentary system is nothing more than “a red herring,” Ateneo de Manila University’s Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, wrote at that time. “The real object is to lift term limits.”
Ferdinand Marcos wrung that from his farcical “Citizens Assemblies.” Flanked by his defense minister, Enrile, and his Constabulary chief, Ramos, Marcos would tell captive audiences that his rewritten constitution formed the “bedrock for constitutional authoritarianism.”
A strong backlash, capped by a huge Luneta rally led by ex-President Corazon Aquino, forced Ramos to reluctantly jettison the idea.
Joseph “Erap” Estrada forgot that he appeared in this rally, as vice president, notes his former chief of staff Aprodicio Laquian, in “The Erap Tragedy.” As president, Erap tinkered with the idea of recasting the Constitution. He too was titillated by the prospect of a longer Palace tenure. “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” When sober, Estrada fiddled with provisions on denying land ownership to aliens and foreign capital.
Estrada and his advisers “failed to take into consideration the people’s strong aversion to constitutional change,” Laquian wrote. “Memories of Cha-cha … during the time of ... Ramos were still fresh in people’s minds. Their suspicions could not be allayed.”
“Puffed up by his assessment of his own vast powers, Estrada believed he (could) convince people to support him,” Laquian added. “He used his formidable persuasive powers, not hesitating to be punitive… He badly miscalculated the public mood. Faced with growing opposition for more than a year, he finally backed down.”
Marcos, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo all itch to blue-pencil constitutions. Those whose terms of office are petering out seem most infected by this virus. They try to deodorize self-seeking. Marcos: “to save democracy.” Ramos: “to pole-vault into the next century.” Erap: “para sa mahirap.” Arroyo: “to secure peace in Mindanao.”
“Idealism [remains] the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their lust for power,” Aldous Huxley observed. Judas did it with a kiss. Brutus, Casius and Casca scrambled for “enforced ceremony” to justify knifing Ceasar. These “honorable men” claimed assassination was needed “to save Rome.”
The Constitution that will work, we’re told, is one that “sums up, in legal form, the moral judgment that the community has already reached.” That judgment is reflected in the 17,059,495 Filipinos who voted “yes” to ratify the Constitution in February 1987. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front miscalculates by sneering at that consensus.
“There is a time for every affair under the heavens,” Ecclesiastes says. There’s even a season to rewrite constitutions. But that time is not now. Raw political ambitions shred any chance of creating, in Aristotle’s words, “an atmosphere free from passion.” The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Amando Doronila warns: “The country is already in flames.”
Recasting a basic document can be done safely only after 2010. And that task should be entrusted to delegates elected to a constitutional convention.
“Let there be no change by usurpation,” George Washington said in his 1769 Farewell Address. “[This] is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
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Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com
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