The problem isn’t that the Constitution doesn’t need amending, because it does; rather, it is that the amendments of interest to those in a position to do something about it, immediately, aren’t of particular interest to the broader electorate. We do not have a consensus on what changes need to be done, only a general feeling of unease due to the ever-increasing ability of our officials to exercise power without either responsibility or accountability.

Because of this unease, we view any officially-proposed effort to amend the Constitution with mistrust. Nothing our officials do reduces this mistrust. House Speaker Prospero Nograles, for example, has tried to reassure the public by saying that while he’s convinced efforts to amend the Constitution will take place before the incumbent President’s term ends, Congress will tackle other pending legislative work first. First and foremost being the deliberations on the National Budget for 2009.

Consider, however, what former budget secretary Benjamin Diokno told me when we discussed the current controversy involving Senate President Villar and this year’s budget. Diokno told me on Korina Sanchez’s television show that this year’s budget is actually more pork barrel-oriented than the 2007 budget. Now budgets for election years have traditionally been stuffed with all sorts of goodies for our elected officials. It’s how presidents and Congress provide funding for the sudden frenzy of public works and other activities to court the electorate’s support.

But why should the 2008 budget actually exceed the 2007 budget in terms of these political goodies? Normally, to prevent massive inflation and restore some fiscal order to the sorely-strained finances of the government, post-election budgets are leaner and less pork-filled. The reason for this, Diokno said, is that we have to realize the useful life of a budgetary item is not one, but two years. This means that if you stuff the 2008 budget now, it not only helps you in 2009, but all the way to the eve of the 2010 elections.

In other words, the 2007 election-oriented budget, bloated as it was, was bloated further because if you think the political funding required for a congressional election last year was big, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet: 2010 will either be a presidential election year, or the year the administration makes a last-ditch effort to campaign for, and win, a plebiscite changing the rules of the game.

So when the Speaker says don’t worry, while we fully intend to amend the Constitution, we will attend to our work first, we have to bear in mind that the two are connected and that the success of the latter depends on the passage of the former. The present budget is a campaign budget, not only providing for our government’s expenses for this year, but sinking funds into the administration campaign kitty for 2010.

But it’s not enough. The sinking fund needs to be enlarged because it has to pay for five—count it, five—campaigns.

• First, the campaign to keep the President’s current legislative majority and insulate her from impeachment.

• Second, the campaign to amend the Constitution.

• Third, the campaign to ensure the election of administration candidates for the legislature, whether it’s the existing Congress or a new parliament.

• Fourth, the campaign to elect the local candidates of the Lakas-Kampi Frankenstein party, a monstrosity that will only come to life if there’s enough financial voltage to turn it into the living dead.

• Fifth, if all else fails, the campaign to ensure the election of an administration-affiliated or administration-friendly president in 2010.

Now, you and I may have our pet proposals when it comes to beneficial changes to our Constitution. Businessmen want the economic provisions liberalized. Others want to experiment with federalism and the parliamentary system. I myself am primarily interested in three:

• First, either instituting presidential run-off elections if we retain the multiparty system, or restoring the two-party system, in either case removing the possibility we will all have to endure a minority president in the future when our culture only respects leaders with majority mandates.

• Second, instituting a real party-list system where it counts, which is in the Senate, by means of bloc voting, to give parties a chance to run full slates for that chamber; or, if we won’t restore bloc voting, which is the only antidote to the free-for-all, every-senator-for-himself celebrity system we have now, then returning to the senatorial districts we had under the Jones Law.

• Third, restoring the four-term with one reelection for the presidency; synchronizing House terms with the president’s and so making their terms (and those of local officials) four years, too; electing only a third of the Senate in each electoral cycle; and lifting term limits for legislative positions where experience and seniority need to be built up, while maintaining term limits for all executive positions, national and local.

That’s what interests me, and it may not interest you, but our leaders, ideally, should be stepping in to help form a national consensus so that we can find reforms on which we can agree. Instead, the proposals being floated officially simply aim to limit the electorate’s already limited ability to have a say in what officialdom does.

They will involve tremendous expenses without fundamentally altering the way politics has become so expensive that everyone, candidates and the electorate, are increasingly at the mercy of all the sectors that view elections as a means of making a killing every three years, instead of selecting people who can be trusted with the stewardship of public office and public funds.