The Citizen On Mars

It seems to me like the wait has already gone for far too long and now, it might be finally over. Or so I thought.

The initiative to amend the constitution—or revise it altogether—has received a major push now that the House committee on constitutional amendments has already approved a list of amendments that may be tackled upon by a constitutional assembly—if ever there’d be one. Of course, the ruling party is all but confident that it can railroad the plan to convene a constitutional assembly since the requirement of the law may be tenable at this point, they (the ruling party) having the right numbers at this point in time.

The present constitution allows the Congress to make any proposition for amendments or revisions thru a vote of three-fourths of all its members. Section 1 of Article XVII states:

Any amendment to, or revision of, this Constitution may be proposed by:
(1) The Congress, upon a vote of three-fourths of all its Members; or
(2) A constitutional convention.

There is a catch to this however. The above provision of the constitution is not very clear as to the three-fourths vote requirements, whether such would mean all the members of the Lower House and the Senate voting as one or whether such three-fourths votes be culled while the two houses of Congress are voting separately. If it’d be interpreted that the casting of votes may be held separately, then the constitutional assembly may not materialize just as yet since it has been long known publicly that most of the Senators wouldn’t agree to any amendment proposition that may cause the elimination of their existence, like when the set of changes includes the shift to a parliamentary form of government. It’s like them putting a hole in their own heads, some say. Or hitting themselves with a hammer in the head.

The second view holds that the whole of Congress, meaning all the members of the Lower House and of the Senate would be convened together as one body for one rare moment, and cast their votes together, without any division or separation.

There is even this unusual interpretation that says the three-fourths vote requirements only refers to the votes of the members of the Lower House, with Senate members not having to do anything about it at all. Now this is what I mean by a highly tenuous proposition; it is just not tenable and is completely unheard of.

In my view, the three-fourths vote requirement mentioned in the constitution refers to the whole of Congress voting as one; where all congressmen and senators would become one collective body for one exceptional moment and cast their votes together. The three-fourths vote requirements should be counted from the result of all the votes cast and not separately. It is clear that section 1 of Article XVII of this present constitution states and uses terminologies such as “The Congress” and supplemented by such phrase as “of all its Members”, where the present constitution itself defines the word “Congress” in this manner “the Congress of the Philippines which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives” (Section 1, Article VI of The Constitution of The Philippines) in the portion defining the legislative department. It is apparent to me that whenever the word “Congress” is used, without any further description or qualification, it should be interpreted as to mean the whole of the Congress of The Philippines, including all members of the Lower House and of the Senate.

So in this manner, the constitutional assembly may push through.

Do you think we should go on with the charter changes as contemplated by the house committee on constitutional amendments? I have not really seen the list of amendments or revisions being proposed thereat but I think it would include the initiative to change our system of governance towards a parliamentary form of government. If you ask me about my sentiments about the charter change propositions, I would say that I have not really studied this matter quite thoroughly, the upsides or downsides of it, its advantages and disadvantages, the good things and bad things about it. There is just really no knowing how to have a thoroughly educated view on this; there are just so many things to consider—and it takes time to finally decide on it. But for this time, I feel that I am more inclined to support a transition towards the parliamentary form of government. It’s not a very educated opinion but merely one that is heavy on hunch. Maybe I have just grown so sick and tired of coup de etats or threats of them, of gossips about them coming and going, about unauthorized troop movements suddenly spotted in the dead of the night, about some civil groups holding secret meetings in order to plan the ouster of the present government, often thru violent means and often having an arm attack as an element of such plan. Maybe in a parliamentary form of government, we don’t need no more EDSA I or EDSA II in order to dispatch an erring president. I don’t want to wake up one day, about decades from now, and realizing that there was just another people’s movement that had toppled a gambling president and it was called EDSA XX or EDSA Beinte.

Just like I don’t want to wake up one day about decades from now and I’d still be seeing Superman movies like Superman 15. Or Godfather 20. Or Rocky 17. How about Spiderman 23?