WANTED: A RESPONSIVE, ENDURING CONSTITUTION!
By Dr. Salvador H. Laurel

"There is a time to destroy and a time to rebuild, a time to tear and a time to repair," so says Ecclesiastes in the Good Book.

The 1986 Edsa Revolution was "a time to tear." And it angrily tore the fabric of martial rule through the adoption of the 1987 Constitution.

The 1987 Constitution was emotionally written by an appointed commission endorsed by Cory Aquino who was then at the height of her popularity, and it was readily, almost blindly, ratified by a trusting people. A number of unwise and defective provisions were, in the process, enshrined in the Constitution.

Now is the "time to repair" --- the time to rectify those defective provisions.

There was a strong move to change the charter last year (1997) but it was deferred because it was politically suspect. Some quarters did not want any charter change to benefit any of the incumbent officials.

Now that objection is no longer valid. Now is the time to change the charter...

No constitution after all is ever perfect. It can only be as imperfect as the men and woman who framed it. And, as aptly observed by a great jurist, "the law must be stable but it cannot stand still."

There is now a developing consensus to return to the two-party system in order to restore political morality, if not political sanity.

There is a move to do away with the high cost of presidential campaigns, which now run into billions, by shifting to the parliamentary system and by providing for a run-off election to ensure majority rule.

There is another strong move to elect senators by senatorial districts, instead of electing them at large, so they will represent a definite constituency and so that senators do not have to spend so much to get elected. There is even the suggestion that we do away with the Senate and revert to the unicameral system.

There is also the continuing clamor, especially in the neglected areas of Mindanao, Visayas, the Bicol region and the Cordilleras, to switch to the federal system in order to speed up the development in those areas.

The Nacionalista Party has been advocating these basic constitutional changes for many years now. It is time to conduct a massive, nationwide information campaign so that all patriotic Filipinos will be able to intelligently participate in evolving a fundamental law that will not only be brief and simple and responsive to our current needs, but one that will serve us for a long, long time.

July 7, 1998

P.S. The articles in this site are excerpted from Dr. Salvador H. Laurel’s weekly column, Turning Point, which ran in the Manila Bulletin from 1995 to early 1999. This is an online repository of Dr. Laurel’s Turning Point articles, arranged by topic.

© 2020 Salvador H. Laurel Museum and Library