TOMO IV / BLG V-VI / Biyernes, 14 Disyembre 2018 email: phkule@gmail.com
EDITORIAL
Chartered plight
The path to perdition might be just one chartered ride away — hijacked by a regime hell-bent on railroading constitutional revisions, running over democratic norms, and jettisoning public interest in the name of greed and global capital. The treachery of this trajectory cannot be overstated. The approval of the draft federal charter, forwarded as Resolution of Both Houses (RBH) No. 15, in the lower parliament this week demonstrated yet again President Rodrigo Duterte’s chokehold on the supermajority, which he can galvanize into action out of mutual benefaction. That 224 out of 249 solons present voted in favor of the bill would have been shocking had it not been a foregone conclusion. This is all too expected of a Congress crammed with oligarchs, sycophants, and traditional politicians who carry out their duties without any modicum of respect or rumination. Decorum fell by the wayside when, during the plenary debate on the resolution last week, only 40 lawmakers were on the floor but still went on to holler their complicity in the president’s project of dividing and conquering the nation. How much reminding is necessary? Duterte rode to victory the waves of the electorate’s disillusion. The rhetoric he has employed to justify the turn to federalism taps into the grievances of millions of Filipinos outside “imperial Manila” who sense a liberal minority conspiring against their interests. Yet multiple provisions of the proposed federal charter have all but the greater public in mind. RBH 15 lifts certain constitutional limits and so grants the state the discretion, among others, to pass on to corporations the provision of social services like housing and healthcare; to render workers even more vulnerable to wage insecurity and inhumane labor conditions; and to peddle natural resources and public utilities to foreign businesses for more systemic plunder. No amount of hoodwinking can also depict the proposed deletion of congressional term limits as
beneficial to the people. The lower house even went so far as to reject the prohibition of political dynasties. This sets the stage for patronage to thrive even more in federated states, for the same families and landed elite to trade wealth and functions among themselves at all levels of governance. There is no reason, then, to believe the draft charter prizes the people’s interests above all else, especially when the document barters our rights for the fulfillment of our duties to the state. The Marcos dictatorship exploited similar legal instruments in the 1973 Constitution to criminalize dissent deemed inimical to peace and order, to relax grounds for martial law, and to make human rights violations seem like clockwork. The passage of RBH 15 is indeed a referendum not on a much-needed reform but on the insistence of a cabal of the president’s lapdogs to doom the people to all manner of misery. While Duterte did not author the draft constitution himself, such an attempt to dismantle legal safeguards did not just leap out of a vacuum. This betrayal of national patrimony has come after his displayed enthusiasm for dictatorial departures. This sellout of the country’s future has come after the president ’s contempt
for civil-society institutions, for checks and balances, for the longstanding structures of constitutional democracy that now bode collapse. Really, no one can be much surprised by the audacity of a man whose second instinct, next to butchering the poor into subservience, is to tighten his grip on office. Yet Duterte did not usher in but merely continued efforts at consolidating power begun by his predecessors, one of whom now serves as House Speaker and, exceeding bounds of vulgarity, has penned RBH 15 herself. Recalling Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s lust for power gives both context and caution. To date, she is the only president to have exhausted all means to amend the 1987 Constitution, from trying to steamroll a plebiscite to calling for a
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constituent assembly and a constitutional convention. This woman’s tenacity to cling to authority is not to be underestimated. But neither is the people’s defiance, which in itself is a force to reckon with. After all, though the resolution is now for the Senate to deliberate on, the task of thwarting it and all other forces that spurn our democratic values remains ours to realize. It will require that we recognize the imperatives of collective resistance and refuse once more to be taken for a ride bound for disaster.
This sellout ofthe country’s future has come after the president’s contempt for civil-society institutions, for checks and balances, for the longstanding structures of constitutional democracy that now bode collapse.
ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN KENNETH ZAPATA
I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A ! I PA S A PA G K A BA S A !
REBELKULÊ
ANG PAHAYAGAN NG MGA MAG-AARAL NG UNIBERSIDAD NG PILIPINAS DILIMAN