Palace revives call to change Charter
Roy Pelovello and Fel V. Maragay
Manila Standard
PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday revived her administration’s Charter Change plans, pushing for a federal system of government by 2012.
In a speech at a human rights workshop, Mrs. Arroyo said she was forming a panel to draft a roadmap toward a federal state two years after her term ends in 2010.
The panel includes the secretaries of interior and local government, justice, the heads of the Presidential Management Staff and the National Economic and Development Authority, local government leaders and congressional allies.
Mrs. Arroyo said the panel might include opposition leaders who favored federalism—a likely reference to Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr., a critic of the President.
The panel would take charge of drawing up programs and proposing a spending plan that would be included in the 2009 national budget, the President said.
It would also draft legislation and executive orders needed to push federalism forward.
Senators were cool to the idea.
Senators Rodolfo Biazon and Mar Roxas said the government should stop toying with the idea of amending the Constitution after its previous bid ended in defeat.
Biazon said he could think of no other reason to revive the Charter Change plan but to “cover up… very serious issues.”
Roxas noted that the proposal came when the administration was under fire over its $329-million national broadband network deal with the Chinese company ZTE Corp., a scandal that has triggered the third impeachment complaint against the President.
Roxas said this looked like an attempt to distract the public from the administration’s current political problems.
Charges of bribery and influence peddling over the deal have caused a rift between Mrs. Arroyo’s Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino party and the ruling Lakas-CMD headed by House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.
In Senate hearings, the speaker’s son, Jose de Venecia III, had accused the President’s husband of warning him to withdraw his bid for the broadband project. But De Venecia III’s Senate testimony also revealed lobbying efforts that the speaker made on his behalf.
Senate Majority Leader Francis Pangilinan pointed to a string of scandals over the last three years and said the Arroyo administration should leave constitutional reforms to its successor.
“Can we trust the Arroyo government to pursue Charter Change with the best interest of the nation at heart? Sadly, based on the string of unconstitutional and illegal acts… foisted upon us these past three years, the answer is most certainly not,” Pangilinan said.
Last year, the Supreme Court ruled against administration-backed moves to change the 1987 Constitution through a people’s initiative.
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