WHAT IS THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE?

What is this noisy, contentious rage going about Charter Change?

No, this is not the final boxing round between an "elected nobility" (sic) - called the Senate and a president who holds on capriciously to power like a leech. Nor is it a debate whether the runaway train called "Charter Change" will wait for no passengers or is doomed for a sharp fall off the cliff.

We are of the opinion that the present 1987 Constitution, though clothed with the best of intentions, is fundamentally flawed and must be changed.

The presidential system encourages expensive election (and consequent graft) and leads to instability. The system exhibited a debilitating gridlock between the President and Congress and the Bicameral system is an exercise in redundancy, laced liberally by pork. A Federal type of government has clear edge over a centralized type we have today. And there are just too many restrictions on the entry of foreign capital, bordering on xenophobia, that has penalized the country from going full throttle.

As in previous editorials, we had categorically opted for Charter change.

But there is one thing more important than Charter change. That is sustained political stability without which no economic prosperity will ever be achieved.

Which brings us to the point about how recklessly some officials are going roughshod over what's decent and proper just to get the Charter change. That is winning the battle but losing the war eventually, if you ask us.

The recent barangay campaign for five million signatures was not a Peoples Initiative but a Government Initiative, funded by public funds (and with all the persuasive and coercive force of an incumbent) imposed on a people - half of who did not understand and the other half mildly understanding the issue of Charter change.

The Lower House, chaired by salivating Joe de Venecia, goes for a Constituent Assembly when even his recent bar topnotcher niece knows eons ago that we have a bicameral form of Congress. Despite a legal precedent that such lacks an enabling law, government likewise insists on a Peoples Initiative and the Comelec challenges the oppositors to go to the Supreme Court.

Is this brazen, almost foolhardy move telling us that if the Con-Ass and Peoples Initiative issues are brought to the Highest Court, its members being co-opted, will sign up in favor of government?

Assuming that either processes gets the nod of the Highest Magistracy of the land, does that enhance our primary premise of political stability? Hardly.

In a country wherein majority of its citizens want their president to resign (65%), how can the Con-Ass and the Peoples Initiative reflect the voice of the people? People know the politically tamed lapdogs in the Lower House will vote politically and move for what will protect the best interest of their Supremo. People will also ask how can 15% of the voting populace or 3% of their districts speak for the whole?

Isn't either "victories" hollow - in that the country will continue to plod along as a result there from?

We reiterate that only a Constitutional Convention of elected delegates propagating the pros and cons of Charter change throughout the country for a reasonable period of time will give birth to an educated, conscious electorate who will elect the rightful delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Only a cleansed Comelec, with the "commissioners" purged to kingdom come, will a nationwide plebiscite to ratify the changes proposed by the delegates ensure that the results will be respected and popularly endorsed.

Only with a freely elected Parliament will a people feel confident that they have placed their fate on nationalist, upright lawmakers and executives. Only such Parliamentary form of government that clips the power of the existing president (GMA) and transfer power to a new Prime Minister will political stability follow. Not before that.

Most people want GMA to go. But in her perception and until upturned by an impeachment, GMA thinks she has a legal mandate to reign till 2010. That's the horrible stalemate that has haunted the nation for months now -with the Military perennially at the flanks - and whose support is being courted by both sides, aggravating the instability.

Such will our condition be if the country opts to retain the presidential form of government upon which GMA was supposed to have been elected.

It will be the same banana, with a different color if we go for a Parliamentary form of government but with President GMA (under the transitory provisions) continuing to wield awesome powers. The issue of instability will continue.

Who wants this self-defeating situation? Will we have to prolong our agony?

The embattled Prime Minister of Thailand Thaksin Simawatra is facing the same political crisis in Bangkok and has called for a snap election. But because the Thais know things could be rigged there, the opposition will boycott the elections.

The people were asked to go to the polling places. However, they would check their non-vote to any of the candidates such that there will not be enough candidates elected to the Parliament and denying the creation of a quorum.

Do we have to wait for such "novel" kinds of protests?