I remember a joke someone told me once: A couple who couldn?t have a child sought the advice of a doctor. The doctor gave them all sorts of fertility pills and prescribed a regimen of diet and exercise guaranteed to bring about the desired effect. At the end of six months, they still could not produce a child, and so they went back to the doctor.

The doctor ticked off the items he had prescribed to them, and the couple said yes to all of them. The doctor was dismayed and attributed the case to just bad luck or bad genes. Then, just as the couple was about to go away, the doctor asked: ?By the way, how often do you have sex??

The couple answered, ?What is that??

I remembered this joke curiously enough in connection with Charter change. The House of Representatives is currently debating whether to effect it by way of con-ass [constituent assembly] or con-con [constitutional convention]. Some administration representatives, like Victor Ortega of La Union, say it?s too late for con-ass. The better tack is a constitutional convention whose members should be elected in the regular presidential elections of 2010. This has the virtue of more easily passing through the Senate, which is sure to oppose con-ass or any attempt to extend term limits.

But change the Constitution we must, they say. Ortega, who was himself a con-con delegate in 1971, says he is not averse to con-ass ?as long as we achieve the constitutional reforms we need.?

My question remains: Why change the Constitution at all?

The expectations from the con-con of 1971 were equally momentous. The call for changing the Constitution itself did not come from Marcos but from the activists who wanted to change ?a colonial document? into one that would truly make the country free (from ?US imperialism?) and democratic (from the ?oligarchs?).

Looking back, you have to wonder if that wasn?t quixotic. From the beginning the exercise was doomed. Despite all sorts of safeguards to make sure the elections would be ?non-political,? or would not be an extension of dynastic politics, a law expressly banning from running people related by several degrees of affinity or consanguinity to current officials, most of the winners turned out to be extensions of existing political dynasties. The con-con did produce a group of Young Turks ? Raul Roco, Bobbit Sanchez, Nene Pimentel, etc. ? but the bulk of it was more of the same.

Whether the 1971 Constitution could have wrought dramatic changes on the country or not is academic now. Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and wrought a dramatic ? and profoundly tragic ? change upon the country. He manufactured his own Constitution, after jailing 11 of the Young and Not-So-Very-Young Turks, with help from the remaining ? and much bought or cowed ? con-con delegates. Though he was a stickler for the Constitution and referred to it at every turn, even calling martial law ?constitutional authoritarianism,? nobody really paid any attention to it. It might as well not have been there.

The 1987 Constitution also raised heroic expectations. It was produced in the first place to make martial law, or dictatorial rule, impossible in future, ?Never again!? being the cry of that day. The new Constitution did manage to delete the draconian portions of the one it replaced, which vested absolute powers on the ruler. And it did manage to restore liberal democracy, or the kind of democracy we knew before martial law, good and bad, to the country. But it didn?t do much else. Certainly, it did not stop the rape and the pillage and the human rights abuses, all of which flourished right after Marcos departed. And today, we?re right back where we started, or where the con-con of 1971 started: faced with the ambitions of an unscrupulous ruler to keep power. The dictatorial rule is there already, albeit disguised in robes not unlike ?constitutional authoritarianism.? ?Never again!? has become ?Again and Again!?

That brings me to the connection between the joke above and Charter change. It?s quite simply this: You do not have sex and you are not going to have a baby, unless you are God and can induce immaculate conception. Even Zeus had sex with Leda to produce Helen, though it?s a wonder why any woman would consent to do it with a swan. But that?s another story. You do not follow the Constitution, and you are not going to have change, unless you have a Moses to send lightning bolts in your direction when you go astray. The Constitution is just fertility pills and a regimen of diet and exercise, the sex is obeying it, practicing it, embodying it.

The Constitution is not just a piece of paper, it is something that constitutes. It means nothing if it is found only in a glass-encased document. It means something only when it is found in our sinews, in our lifeblood, in our hearts and minds.

The Constitution is not the problem, we are the problem. For us, there seems to be no visible connection between producing a Constitution and obeying it. Just like for us there seems no visible connection between holding Senate hearings on corruption and punishing the guilty. Producing a constitution and holding Senate hearings have become ends in themselves. Whether it?s the colonial 1935 Constitution, the aborted 1971 Constitution, the abortion that is the 1973 Constitution, the reformist 1987 Constitution, or the brave new Constitution of 2010 or 2050, none of it is going to matter unless we are willing to live it. Unless we are willing to stop the summary executions of presumed communists, unless we are willing to stop the rape and pillage, unless we are truly determined to never make dictatorship happen again.

First, let us enforce the law, then let us change it.

Everything else is just trying to make a baby without the most joyful part of it.