New revenue sharing
In Pimentel’s federal blueprint, the central government will be left with less powers under a modified revenue sharing that earmarks 80 percent for the federal states and 20 percent for the central or federal government. The Mindanao senator is confident that cutting the powers of the “imperial president” will deal a death blow to patronage politics, will restore public accountability, and make public governance efficient. The equitable sharing of funds and resources among the various states, he says, will speed up development and thus “reduce insurgency to irrelevance.”
Unlike Pimentel, Abueva is careful in qualifying that federalism is not a “panacea” or a “cure all” for the country’s myriad woes. “Federalism will not solve our problems,” the former UP president stresses, but “it will allow people to take greater control over their own lives and satisfy their preferences – what they really want.”
Meantime, the renewed attempt at tinkering with the constitution faces the daunting task of investing it with credibility considering that previous attempts – at least five over the past 15 years – were trounced by public resistance. In these attempts, political motives centering on keeping discredited regimes and their allies in power belied claims of being based on legitimate grounds.
Moreover, the present proposal for federalism cum parliamentary system suffers from a flawed empirical basis. The claim that parliamentary democracies have higher survival rate is refuted by the fact that the states often cited to prove this point have also broken down at some periods. Nor is it absolutely true that federalized countries show promise of economic growth: Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and many other states are such cases. That federalism is popular in the community of nations is a farce: only 24 out of 193 countries have federal political systems.
Caution should be taken in theorizing that institutional weaknesses that have deep historical, social, economic, and political roots can be remedied simply by adopting hook, line, and sinker other structural models. More to the point, it is simplistic to blame the country’s current economic and political woes on some constitutional infirmities inferring that every institutional loophole that arises can be plugged by simply drafting a new constitution.
The so-called “redistribution” of powers and resources from the central government to federal, self-ruling states will not dissolve but will in fact strengthen the power of the local oligarchs allowing them to lord over their respective fiefdoms at will. Except to say that LGUs or federal states – which will continue to be under the domain of the oligarchs anyway – will be benefited, the proposals for federalism are silent on whether power redistribution will in fact lead to grassroots democracy under which the people will have greater access to governance and public resources. This is why whatever support the federal system proposal has drawn comes mainly from oligarchs, including some senators and the League of Provinces in the Philippines (LPP). Real power redistribution is when power shifts hands from the oligarchs to the marginalized people.
Political transformation
More often than not, constitutional reform which is driven by a change of the political system and status quo is warranted or preceded by a major political transformation. In this respect, no constitutional change, whether landmark or infamous, has ever occurred without a nation undergoing some epochal change. The 1899 Malolos Constitution, for instance, was precipitated by the victorious revolution against Spain that was hijacked in another colonialist betrayal, the U.S. imperialist occupation of the Philippines. As a colony for the second time, the Philippines was placed under the U.S. Constitution. The 1973 constitution gave legitimacy to dictatorial rule imposed by the Marcos rightist coup of Sept. 21, 1972. In turn, this was replaced by Aquino’s 1987 Constitution that “restored democracy” following Marcos’ ouster by people’s uprising – which, by the way, also resurrected the political power of anti-Marcos oligarchs as well as martial law collaborators. A constitution, in short, is usually instituted by whoever takes power in a major political transition, revolution, social upheaval, or regime change. This is also the case in many countries of the world.
Even if it materializes, the proposal for a federal system only creates the illusion that it will bring fundamental change to the country’s problems whose roots are deep, systemic, and structural. Instead it will further entrench the power of the oligarchs and, being divisive, would leave the country more fragmented. Contrary to the claims of the proponents of charter change, it is the power equation borne out of a class system dominated by the oligarchs that brings about weak governance, corruption, and the economic quagmire that the people are now in. Will adopting a new template bring about a fundamental change in such elite-biased power relationship that easily?
What is needed is a people’s constitution that will truly give legitimacy to an empowered people under a genuine democracy. But that needs a fundamental political transformation that is yet to be realized. Posted by (Bulatlat.com)
