"Delete Option"

Here's an interesting article on economic reform. While I do not share the writer's pessimism about related political reform, his proposed approach in pursuing constitutional amendments appears practical and doable.

Delete
FIRST PERSON
By Alex Magno
Updated December 13, 2008 12:00 AM

Some groups here have made a cottage industry of resisting constitutional reform at every instance and for any reason at all. These groups constitute a volatile alliance of churchmen, ideologues from the usual movements of rage and whichever politician feels at the moment to be at the cusp of the next presidency.

This creates a predicament for those of us who feel strongly that constitutional reform is in the national interest.

I have outlined, in previous columns, the main reasons I feel that Charter change ought to be at the top of the national agenda. The sum of these arguments is that, under the present constitutional framework, we have a set of institutions that are vulnerable to capture by the domestic oligarchy and powerful vested interests.

But the Charter change agenda always seems to be trapped in the politics of the moment. If it is undertaken by way of a constituent assembly, the interests of the sitting politicians come into play. If it is done by way of a constitutional convention, the process would be open-ended, creating too much uncertainty and opening up too much political space for ideologically-driven players.

Those rabid opponents of Charter change who marched in the streets of Makati yesterday would not yield to the prerogative of elected representatives to begin consideration of a mode of Charter change. Whatever they propose, railroaded or not, will have to be, at any rate, submitted to the people in the plebiscite. That is the more appropriate time to debate the reforms submitted to the people for consideration.

Yesterday’s march was, from the standpoint of representative democracy, grossly premature. It preempts any discussion of reforms by duly-elected representatives who are acting within their proper mandate.

Yesterday’s march was an event of bigotry. It was undertaken in the spirit of rejecting even a mere discussion of proposals for Charter change. It is act trapped in the presumption of malice. It does not enrich our democratic culture.

I did say, in one televised interview, that I have lost hope constitutional reform will ever happen in my lifetime. A freshly-elected administration has no incentive to surrender its electoral victory to Charter change. A sunset administration, when it does initiate a constitutional reform process, will always be suspect.

We saw that in the case of Pirma at the end of the Ramos period.

We see that today.In one recent public forum organized by civic groups sympathetic to constitutional reform, I suggested that if there is anything that is politically feasible it has to be narrowing down the debate to only the economic provisions in the 1987 Charter.

Forget about reforming our institutional arrangement. That will always be divisive because there will always be vested interests finding themselves on opposite sides of any political question. The Senate will always oppose any shift to a unicameral assembly. Oligarchic interests will always oppose a shift away from the presidential system because any other option will be a lot harder for them to control.

The only possible aspect of the constitutional reform agenda where some amount of consensus may be forged is that section that “constitutionalizes” our nation’s economic policy.

That section is anomalous to begin with. A constitution should never prescribe economic policy. Economic policy ought to be an evolving thing, shaped by the continuing process of legislation and policy-making. (emphasis supplied)

In the scenario I propose, the House majority could simply pass a resolution deleting the provisions in the 1987 Constitution that preempt economic policy-making. With a limited scope, the Senate has to agree with the revision. No one, except the ideologically blinded, wants our economic policy to be fixed like religious dogma. (emphasis supplied)

I call this the “Delete Option.”

Because the provisions to be removed will not be replaced, there is no need to debate wording. The debate on economic policy, henceforth, will occur where it must: in both chambers of Congress.

It is a simply, surgical operation that will not disturb the institutional arrangement. It will not endanger the political ambitions of those who now so vociferously oppose constitutional reform.One might call it Constitutional Appendectomy.

The necessary reform of our economic architecture has been delayed because deleting the economic provisions has been tied up with the other messy political issues in the Charter change agenda. There is an immediate benefit in liberalizing the economic architecture the soonest to help us cope with the global recession.

We will likely debate the reform of our institutional arrangement forever and ever. But let us not hold our economy hostage to the endless bouts of partisan positioning.

The commission that gave us this Charter, which we hurriedly ratified in the context of political fluidity, debilitated our capacity for economic growth. Over more than two decades, our people incurred immeasurable opportunity costs because of the restrictive constitutional provisions.

Let’s do what can be done in the area of constitutional reform. Forget about lifting term limits or shifting to a parliamentary form of government. Only a revolutionary government can manage to reinvent our government so that the oligarchs will finally cease to control it.

In the meantime, let us align Charter revisions with the urgent effort to save our economy in these uncertain times.