LAST week, I argued that the Philippines possesses an abundance of politicians but practically no genuine political parties. This would merely be another amusing defect of Philippine democracy were it not for what I am proposing.

I have long advocated replacing our unitary-presidential system with a parliamentary system, eventually operating within a federal republic. There is, however, an inconvenient detail.

Parliamentary government cannot function properly without real political parties.

Otherwise, we might be abolishing our dysfunctional presidential system only to discover that we have transferred the same political families, oligarchs, butterflies and balimbings into a shiny new parliament. We would have changed the plumbing while keeping the sewage.

Parliament is not a prime minister

Many Filipinos understandably think parliamentary government simply means replacing the president with a prime minister.

It does not.

If that were all we wanted, we could change the brass plate outside Malacañang and save ourselves the trouble of constitutional revisions. The fundamental difference is political accountability.

Under our presidential system, we elect one enormously powerful national personality for six years. Once elected, he assembles a Cabinet, negotiates with Congress, distributes political favors, builds coalitions and attempts to govern a political establishment consisting of people who may have campaigned against him only weeks earlier.

Then comes the migration of political butterflies: enemies become allies, allies rediscover principles, blocs appear overnight. It is musical chairs to “Bayan Ko,” with everyone claiming he moved seats for the national interest.

A functioning parliamentary system changes the organizing principle: voters choose parties offering governing programs; the majority forms the government, its leader becomes prime minister, ministers answer to parliament and an organized opposition presents an alternative. This is why I favored parliamentarism: It provides continuous scrutiny through question periods, opposition discipline and party accountability. But the essential ingredient is real parties. Without them, the machinery collapses.

Imagine our present parties in parliament

For entertainment, let us imagine transferring today’s political habits unchanged into a parliamentary system.

Election Monday: Party A wins a plurality.

Tuesday: Party B congratulates Party A.

Wednesday: Seventeen members of Party B discover that they have always secretly admired Party A’s philosophy.

Thursday: Party C joins the government in the interest of national unity.

Friday: Party D splits into D-Original, D-Puso, D-Tunay and D-One More Chance.

Saturday: Everyone issues statements denying political opportunism.

Sunday: Rest.

Monday: Cabinet appointments.

We would have invented parliamentary government, Filipino style.

The problem is not parliamentarism. The problem is putting parliamentary institutions atop a political culture organized around personalities, patronage and dynasties.

That is why political-party reform is not an accessory to constitutional reform. It is a precondition.

In a genuine parliamentary system, voters must know what a party stands for: welfare or markets, autonomy or centralization, higher taxes or tax cuts. Coalitions may compromise, but elections must still offer real choices — not merely vows to end poverty, fight corruption and create jobs. No party campaigns for poverty, corruption or disorder. The serious question is how.

From patronage to program

Here, the institutionalization of parties becomes revolutionary. Imagine Philippine politicians depending less upon the favor of one president because their political careers depend upon strong parties with dues-paying members, transparent financing, local organizations and established procedures for selecting candidates.

Imagine aspiring leaders entering politics through parties that educate and train them instead of through famous surnames. Imagine political parties existing 12 months a year rather than being resurrected every election like Lazarus.

Imagine elected representatives being accountable not only to whoever financed their campaign but to thousands of ordinary party members who can demand explanations.

This is what we attempted to inculcate in the Centrist Democratic Party (CDP): membership ownership, political education, internal elections, party discipline, a program of governance and continuous community engagement between elections.

Again, I cite this not to canonize CDP. Political experiments have successes and failures. But the institutional principle remains sound.

Federalism and dynasties

Here lies another danger.

Federalism without political reform could simply decentralize political capture. Instead of one centralized oligarchic system, we could create several regional oligarchic systems, each with its own governor, dynasty and family corporation masquerading as democracy.

Congratulations. We would have democratized feudalism. I warned about precisely this problem years ago. Political-party reform was one of four preconditions we proposed before a full transition: party reform and financing, freedom of information, electoral reform and an effective prohibition against political dynasties.

Federalism is supposed to bring the government closer to the people. But without safeguards, it could bring political dynasties closer to the treasury. That is why the sequence matters.

First build the vehicles

We Filipinos are fond of constitutional solutions. Government fails, somebody proposes Charter change; somebody else shouts dictatorship; then a new scandal arrives, and we forget what the argument was about.

But constitutions do not operate themselves. They need institutions, and in a democracy, the vehicles are real political parties — aggregating interests, recruiting leaders, forming governments and sustaining an opposition.

A parliamentary constitution without genuine political parties is like constructing an expressway before inventing automobiles. The road may be beautiful. Nothing useful will travel on it.

No more political messiahs

Our presidential system has trained Filipinos to place political hope in one individual. Every six years we ask: Who can save us?

Makoy promised a New Society. Cory restored democracy. Tabako promised Philippines 2000. Erap championed the masses. GMA offered economic management. PNoy promised the straight path. The Deegong promised order. BBM offered unity.

Different presidents. Different promises. Same republic waiting for the next one. A parliamentary system properly supported by genuine political parties changes the question.

I used to tell our CDM/CDP recruits that even if Jesus Christ were to come down and is elected president, with the 12 disciples composing his cabinet; with our system intact — Christ will fail.

Instead of asking who will save us?, voters should begin asking: Which program should govern us? That is an enormous psychological and institutional shift.

From man to institution. From patron to party. From personality to program. From messiah to mechanism.

Before we change the Constitution

Thus, my advocacy that the Philippines must have a federal-parliamentary architecture. But I am equally persuaded that merely rewriting constitutional provisions will not save us.

We must first — or simultaneously — construct the institutions capable of inhabiting that architecture. Foremost among them are genuine political parties: member-owned, ideologically identifiable, internally democratic, financially transparent, active between elections and capable of disciplining their own elected officials.

Otherwise, we will write a magnificent new Constitution and populate it with the same political habits that corrupted the old one. The butterflies will survive. They always do. They will simply learn to flutter around parliament instead of Malacañang.

And that brings me finally to the conclusion toward which my domestic series of columns have been moving. After decades watching Philippine politics, participating in it, studying it, writing about it and hoping that the next president may somehow succeed where the others failed, I have gradually arrived at a position I once would have considered too sweeping.

The problem is no longer merely who becomes president.

The problem may be the presidency itself.

The Senate President crowed yesterday that the party he nominally coheads, PDP-Laban, has a “pleasant problem” — too many potential senatorial candidates. Koko Pimentel’s estimate is they have up to 20 possible choices for the 12-person slate for the 2019 senatorial race. But his list includes the five administration-affiliated senatorial incumbents up for reelection next year. This is a group that has made noises that, much as it prefers to remain in the administration camp, it is unhappy with the way PDP-Laban has been designating its local leaders and candidates, and therefore prefers to strike out on its own, perhaps in alliance with the other administration (regional) party, Hugpong ng Pagbabago, headed by the President’s daughter and current Davao City mayor, Sara Duterte.

Setting aside, then, the five-person “Force,” the administration-oriented but not PDP-friendly reelectionists (Nancy Binay, Sonny Angara, Cynthia Villar, Grace Poe, and JV Ejercito), what Koko’s crowing over is a mixed bag. Some of them have been floated by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez (with whom Mayor Duterte clashed in recent months): six representatives (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo who is in her last term in the House of Representatives; Albee Benitez, Karlo Nograles, Rey Umali, Geraldine Roman, and Zajid Mangudadatu), three Cabinet members (Bong Go, Harry Roque, and Francis Tolentino), and two other officials (Mocha Uson and Ronald dela Rosa), which still only adds up to 11 possible candidates (who are the missing three?).

Of all of these, the “Force” reelectionists are only fair-weather allies of the present dispensation; their setting themselves apart is about much more than the mess PDP-Laban made in, say, San Juan where support for the Zamoras makes it extremely unattractive for JV Ejercito to consider being in the same slate. Their cohesion is about thinking ahead: Creating the nucleus for the main coalition to beat in the 2022 presidential election. The contingent of congressmen and congresswomen who could become candidates for the Senate, however, seems more a means to kick the Speaker’s rivals upstairs (at least in the case of Benitez and Arroyo) and pad the candidates’ list with token but sacrificial candidates, a similar situation to the executive officials being mentioned as possible candidates (of the executive officials, only Go seems viable, but making him run would deprive the President of the man who actually runs the executive department, and would be a clear signal that the administration is shifting to a post-term protection attitude instead of the more ambitious system-change mode it’s been on, so far).

Vice President Leni Robredo has been more circumspect, saying she’s not sure the Liberal Party can even muster a full slate. The party chair, Kiko Pangilinan, denied that a list circulating online (incumbent Bam Aquino, former senators Mar Roxas, Jun Magsaysay, TG Guingona, current and former representatives Jose Christopher Belmonte, Kaka Bag-ao, Edcel Lagman, Raul Daza, Gary Alejano and Erin Tañada, former governor Eddie Panlilio and Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña) had any basis in fact.

What both lists have in common is they could be surveys-on-the-cheap, trial balloons to get the public pulse. Until the 17th Congress reconvenes briefly from May 14 to June 1 for the tail end of its second regular session (only to adjourn sine die until the third regular session begins on July 23), it has nothing much to do. Except, that is, for the barangay elections in May, after a last-ditch effort by the House to postpone them yet again to October failed.

Names can be floated but the real signal will come in July, when the President mounts the rostrum and calls for the big push for a new constitution—or not. Connected to this would be whether the Supreme Court disposes of its own chief, which would spare the Senate—and thus, free up the legislative calendar—to consider Charter change instead of an impeachment trial. In the meantime, what congressmen do seem abuzz over is an unrefusable invitation to the Palace tomorrow — to mark Arroyo’s birthday. An event possibly pregnant with meaning.

Here’s a striking statement about love shared with me by an English college mentor. “Love knows no grammar. How it works can’t be measured by any parts or figures of speech. It goes beyond the literate and illiterate. The sad reality is that, even a fool who has got no philosophy is not spared of its harsh reality.” After almost three decades, I reminded him through a private message of his words. Here’s what he said. “Thank you, Jord. This statement about love is searing to the heart. And, yes, fools do fall for it too. But I thought that we as well speak of the beauty that it gives and not so much focus on the harsh realities. After all, our country has had enough of the negativities.” Thank you, dearest Sir Eugene.

In these decisive times when our nation trembles under the weight of corruption, inequality, and disillusionment, it is you―the youth, burning with idealism, courage, and an unyielding sense of right―who must stand at the forefront of CHANGE. The future of the Philippines hangs in the balance, calling not for silence or apathy, but for unity, conviction, and action. Let your dreams be the spark that ignites renewal; let your voices thunder against injustice; let your hands build the nation our forebears envisioned but never fulfilled. Now is the hour to awaken, to rise, and to lead the march toward a just and transformed Philippines.

Remember, the pages of our history resound with the triumphs of youth who dared to dream and act. From the Propagandists who wielded the pen against tyranny to the Katipuneros who took up arms for freedom, it was always the young who ignited revolutions and rebuilt nations. As Dr. Jose Rizal declared, “The youth is the hope of our motherland,” but that hope is not a gift to be passively claimed; it is a duty to be earned through courage and purpose.

Today’s generation must transform awareness into action―to confront corruption with integrity, to challenge inequality with empathy, and to counter apathy with participation. The time for mere commentary has passed. What the nation demands now is commitment, creativity, and collective resolve. When the youth stand united in conscience and conviction, no obstacle is insurmountable, no reform impossible. The power to redeem the nation’s promise lies not in the hands of the few, but in the awakened spirit of the many. Rise, therefore, as one generation with one objective―to forge a Philippines worthy of its people’s deepest hopes. And to those who were once the torchbearers of youth but have since laid down their fire―hear this call.

The nation does not forget its veterans of hope, those who once believed that change was possible but have since grown weary in the long twilight of disappointment. Thus far history grants no sanctuary to resignation. It demands of every generation the same unrelenting duty―to defend what is right, to confront what is wrong, and to labor still for what remains unfinished.

Now is the moment to rise again. Let not caution disguise itself as wisdom, nor comfort as peace. The courage that once stirred your youth still flickers within; rekindle it, and let it burn anew for the sake of those who follow. Your experience, tempered by time, must now join hands with the fervor of the young - to guide, to mentor, to strengthen.

Together, let the wisdom of the seasoned and the passion of the rising coalesce into a single, indomitable force for renewal. For the task of nation-building is not bound by age, but by conviction. The call of the motherland resounds to all who still believe that the story of the Filipino is not yet complete―and that redemption, though delayed, is still within our grasp if only we choose to act once more. And to those whose hands have long gripped the levers of power―hardened by privilege, dulled by entitlement―hear this with clarity: the era of self-preservation must yield to the dawn of selfless service.

The nation can no longer afford leaders who mistake possession for stewardship, nor governance for dominion. The time has come to relinquish the throne of complacency and make way for the custodians of vision, courage, and renewal.

To step aside is not to surrender, but to honor the sacred rhythm of nationhood―to allow new voices, new hearts, and new minds to breathe life into institutions that have grown stale from neglect. True leadership is an act of stewardship, and stewardship demands humility―to know when to lead, and when to pass the torch. Those who have ruled long enough must now become mentors, not masters; guides, not gatekeepers.

To the youth who will inherit this burden and blessing alike, the call is equally profound. Lead not with arrogance, but with awareness; not with impulse, but with integrity. Let optimism be your discipline―a conscious act of faith in the nation’s capacity to rise again. Lead with inclusivity that unites rather than divides, with courage that reforms rather than destroys, and with resilience that endures when hope seems frail.

For the measure of a new generation’s greatness lies not in its defiance alone, but in its wisdom to build where others have failed. Let your leadership become the living testament that the Philippines, once disillusioned, has learned at last to believe again―through you.

Now, the Filipino youth stand at a defining crossroad of history. The echoes of the past and the murmurs of the future converge upon this moment, and in your hands rests the fragile, however formidable promise of a nation reborn. You are the inheritors of unfinished dreams and the architects of what is yet to be. United in thought and deed, strengthened by the wisdom of history and the fire of conviction, you possess the power to shape a Philippines anchored in justice, animated by democracy, and sustained by the collective flourishing of its people.

The mantle of responsibility has passed to you. Do not falter beneath its weight; bear it with courage, for it is through your resolve that the nation will rise from the ruins of complacency. Let your unity transcend boundaries of region, class, and creed. Let your integrity redefine leadership, and your compassion restore faith in the Filipino spirit.

This is your hour. Let this narrative be not merely a call to awaken, but a solemn commitment―to the country that nurtures you, to the people who believe in you, and to the generations who will follow your example. Stand firm, for you are the heartbeat of a nation yearning to live with dignity once more. Speak right and shine!

Rise, Filipino youth, and let history remember that when your time came ―you stood unwavering, and the nation moved forward.