GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star, Monday, January 14, 2008
Watch closely the revival of Charter change in the House of Reps. It’s going to be off beam. The usual backers of parliamentary-federal form or economic reformists won’t be in the lead this time. Speaker Joe de Venecia in fact is distancing himself from the revived push for constitutional review despite his decade-long advocacy. Today’s amenders have an agenda other than improving the system.
Only one amendment will be introduced — but it will unlock the door to many others. That one amendment will reword the very way of amending or revising the Constitution. It will state once and for all that, whenever a change is to be made by Congress, the Senate and the House shall conduct plenary voting jointly.
The operative word is “jointly”, and the aim is two-fold. First, it will ensure that the House majority, that gang of Malacañang gofers, will prevail in any debate on Charter rewriting. Then, it will enable the majority to do as it pleases with the other parts of the 1987 Constitution, in order to stay in power forever.
For the sly amenders, Article XVII, Section 1 is vague and thus open to pesky debates. It 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....” The proviso is subject to two interpretations. And the amenders want only theirs to hold sway.
Literalists say it simply means joint voting by the 24-member Senate and the 237-seat House. Meaning, any redraft opposed by all 24 senators will pass just the same if three-fourths of the House, plus 18 (three-fourths of the Senate), say so. In real numbers, it means that 178 hardcore members of the majority, plus 18 for a total of 196 congressmen, can change the Constitution. That can easily be done at present, given that there are 204 admin majority men versus only 33 oppositionist minority members. Never mind the will of the 24 senators.
The literalists even cite the different wording of the 1935 Constitution to their favor. That basic law stated in Article XV, Section 1: “The Congress, in joint session assembled, by a vote of three-fourths of all the Members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives voting separately, may propose amendments to this Constitution....” They say that since the 1987 document clearly does not state, “voting separately,” then the intention is to vote jointly, It’s just too bad that the Senate’s has only 24 members compared to the House’s ten-fold.
Contrarians insist that the intent of the 1987 provision is the same as the 1935 parent. That is, that the two co-equal chambers of Congress should vote separately, as they do when passing laws or joint resolutions. There is a simple explanation — the human factor, they say — for the different wordings of the same aim. The 55 drafters of the 1987 paper were not supermen. The committee on form of government had originally intended a unicameral parliament. But in plenary, fatefully on the penultimate day of session, the bicameral-presidential form won by one vote. After which, the delegates reconvened the next day to finish their work, then cocktailed in celebration, leaving the final editing to a committee on style. The editors, exhausted from the anticlimactic job, inadvertently overlooked reconciling the original draft with the final vote. Thus, conflicts arose between the unicameral-parliament and the bicameral-presidential wordings. At least five sections were stained. And that’s all there is to the seeming confusion.
Today’s amenders want to have the last word — and the last laugh. Since the provision’s wording is prone to debate, they will rewrite it to specify, “voting jointly”. With their present numbers in the House, it would be easy to pull it off. After an expected overwhelming House vote, they will proceed to argue their case in the Supreme Court, where opponents will surely contest them.
Comes the fun part. If the amenders win in court, they will then hold a plebiscite. There they will use the people’s money, doled out in Malacañang, to ensure electoral victory.
