ManilaMailDC.Net - JdV sees election in May 2007

JdV sees election in May 2007

WASHINGTON - Will President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo be a ceremonial head of state like Queen Elizabeth under a new Constitution envisioned for the Philippines or a Jacques Chirac, one of the most powerful presidents in recent French history, or none of the above?
These are some of the possibilities a constituent assembly or a constitutional convention will likely consider when they rewrite the Constitution and change the country’s form of government from a US-style presidential system to a parliamentary system, Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr said.
De Venecia told the influential Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington DC there was need to change the Philippine Constitution to make government accountable directly to the people’s representatives and to do away with protectionist provisions that have made the country one of the poorest in Asia.
He said a resolution on the issue would be brought to the House floor next week. He bared the plans of the House to finish debates on the measures next month and then sit down with the Senate in a constituent assembly to propose Charter changes.
“We hope to sit down with senators in November or December and submit the draft constitutional amendments to the people in a plebiscite in March or April next year,” De Venecia said.
The first parliamentary elections would be scheduled no later than May 2007 or earlier if possible, he said.
The House leader, however, did not say how he could convince the Senate to meet with the House in a constituent assembly.
The Senate has been pushing for the election of members of a constitutional convention to propose Charter changes.
Depending on the language of the new Constitution, President Arroyo could remain in office under a parliamentary system until the end of her current term in 2010 with full powers and an unchanged mandate assisted by a prime minister acting as a chief operating officer as in France, De Venecia said.
Or she could remain in office with reduced powers, real power residing in a prime minister acting as a chief executive officer as in Britain.
Alternatively she may decide to remove herself completely from the picture.
There was also a possibility the new government could be patterned after the French model until 2010 and then the British model after 2010, De Venecia said.
De Venecia later told Manila-based journalists accompanying him here that he presented these options to Mrs. Arroyo, but so far the President has kept silent about them.
Mrs. Arroyo has stated she would leave the issue of cutting her term short for Congress to decide.
But a day later, the President told GMA-7 she intended to finish her term, which lasts until 2010.
De Venecia declined to speculate on the most likely scenario saying this would be up to the framers of the new Constitution and coyly deflected a query on whether he was a front runner for the job of prime minister.
“There are many competent and experienced people in the Philippines who could be prime minister,” he said and then went on to name Senators Mar Roxas, Ed Angara, Nene Pimentel and Dick Gordon.
If the Senate refuses to sit as a con-ass, De Venecia and other House leaders, including Cagayan de Oro City Rep. Constantino Jaraula, plan to bypass senators in their Charter change push.
Jaraula had pointed out the Constitution requires that in proposing Charter changes, Congress needs a “three-fourths vote of all its members.”
He said the Constitution is silent on whether the two chambers should vote separately to muster a three-fourths vote.
So, according to Jaraula, all the House would need to do is obtain 195 votes of the combined membership, or a combined total of 260 from the House (which has 236 members) and the Senate (which has 24), an opinion shared by his House boss.
Senate President Franklin Drilon and other senators have said congressmen would just be wasting precious taxpayers’ money by proceeding with their plans to bypass the Senate on Cha-cha.
De Venecia denied that Arroyo at the height of her problems a few months offered to cut short her term if a new system of government came into being.
“What President Arroyo said was any adjustments in her term must be dictated by the new Constitution, the transitory provisions in the new Constitution and not dictated by mobs in the streets,” he said.
In her State of the Nation Address last July, Mrs. Arroyo called on Congress to consider rewriting the Constitution and change the country’s form of government saying such a move would help stop gridlock caused by quarrels between the president and the legislature.
De Venecia defended President Arroyo’s run for the presidency last year after she had earlier said she would not seek a fresh six-year term.
“We forced her to run because when she said she was not going to run, I fielded four names from our party to succeed her, but the survey ratings said none of them would make it.
“The survey ratings said they would be massacred by the opposition candidate (the late movie star Fernando Poe), so we literally forced her to run,” De Venecia said.
A problem with the present form of government in the Philippines is the senate which is more powerful than the senate in the United States, he said.
“Because senators in the Philippines are elected nationwide, each and everyone of them behaves and acts like a president,” De Venecia said.
“Most of our senators are very powerful, but they’re either movie actors or television stars. The ones who are recognizable on TV or appear in the movies are the ones being elected,” he lamented.
Sheer popularity will no longer be enough for would-be national leaders under a parliamentary system of government, he said.
On the Constitution’s economic provisions, the Speaker said the plan is to remove restrictions on foreign investors, including ownership of land, as he described the protectionist limitations as “outmoded.”
“We will have a complete open-door policy on foreign investments,” he said.
Regarding the Cha-cha mode, De Venecia said the House prefers con-ass as against the con-con being pushed by the Senate “since we have no money for electing and maintaining a constitutional convention, which would cost about P8 billion, and we are running against time.”