Why Should Pnoy address charter change in his 5th and penultimate SONA and follow this through in the last two minutes of his administration?

Simple. Our country badly needs it!

We are faced today with ‘overhangs’ Pnoy of late has not confronted squarely: the Bangsamoro Question for the immediate term and the All Inclusive Growth for the country over the long haul.

The MILF and the Bangsamoro and even the citizenry had high expectations when Pnoy assumed power in 2010. Having been catapulted to the highest office of the land through the demise of a beloved icon – his mother Cory, he then proceeded to waste this advantage.

This is in response to an article entitled “Should Aquino reconsider charter change?” published in The Philippine Daily Inquirer under the business section. Within thestorywas a question:

“Should the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution be amended to make the local business environment more attractive to foreign investors? Should these changes be part of the President’s agenda to be laid out during his much-awaited annual address to the joint session of Congress?”

And herewith I am unhesitant toretort, why not? What is there to fear in amending the constitution that has indeed many lapses? We need charter change. The present administration has to admit that globalization and the advent of free markets require that we have to open up and embrace foreign capital.

This article however will first address the first ‘overhang’- that of the creation of the Bangsamoro State as this is a much more pressing matter – a question in fact of ‘life or death’ and has a substantial and direct impact on the latter (The economic provisions as a rationale for constitutional change will be taken in a later blog).

To refresh our memory, we have today the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) pending consideration by the Philippine Congress.The Philippine Government (GRP) and the MILF signed a Framework Agreement (FAB) in 2012 to create and establish the Bangsamoro. The FAB calls for a Transition Commission (BTC) to draft a Basic Law (BBL) that will govern the Bangsamoro. Corollary to these were a series of negotiated agreements on transitional arrangements and modalities; revenue generation and wealth sharing; power sharing - all signed in 2013; normalization and Bangsamoro waters & zones of joint concerns; and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) – all signed in 2014.

All of these were negotiations after the failed 2009 MOAD (Ancestral Domain) which was declared unconstitutional by the Philippine Supreme Court – which brought to the brink of collapse the Peace Process.

President Pnoy’s pronouncements on his ascendancy to power in 2010 averted what could have been a disaster and in his SONA of 2013 reoriented the Peace Process with his declaration that any agreement “...we are forging must be set in stone and not merely written on water, only to be forgotten by history...”. Bold words indeed but it re-started the process.

But where are we now after this audacious language, the signing of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB); the creation of the 15-member Bangsamoro Transition Commission (BTC) tasked to draft the Bangsamoro Basic Law (BBL) and its submission to the Philippine Congress with Pnoy’s certification that such is an urgent legislation?

First, the Big Man did not certify it. It was sent back to the negotiating panel (MILF) with revisions. Of course, the MILF was compelled to reject the proposed revisions. And even the GRP chief negotiator pronounced that the BBL must fall within the parameters of the Constitution. The BBL is practically dead in the water. So here we are back to the beginning.

This is what we, in the Centrist Democratic Party (CDP), Ang Partido ng tunay na Demokrasya, has been saying all along. Let us amend the outdated1987 Cory Constitution. Without this change, the BBL won’t fly, the Bangsamoro will not be fleshed out and we are left with the “failed ARMM”.

Satur Ocampo in his column in the Philippine Star, “At the Ground Level”, July 26, 2014 commented, “...The MILF avers that it agreed to forgo political independence and opted for autonomy upon the Aquino administration’s explicit promise that it would not impose the Constitution as the framework for the peace talks...”

It seems that the MILF were a little bit more sincere in their position that the GRP’s. In some quarters, the uncharitable would aver – “They’ve been had, again!”

Consider the following:

This is the 4th attempt by our Muslim brothers to work out an agreement to better the lives of their people – also our people.

The Peace Process started after bloody incidents: The 1976 Tripoli Agreement; The founding/establishment of the “failed ARMM’; and the lamented MOAD of 2009. Our Muslim brothers’ patience is running out.

Pnoy knows that Bangsamoro will not come into existence without constitutional amendments. Yet he doesn’t want to move against what he considers his mother’s legacy – the 1987 Constitution.

Today the swords are beginning to rattle – or more appropriately, the M16’s are being oiled. The winds of war could be upon us.