When the few and the powerful are celebrating over what is portrayed as a feat to uplift the lives of the Filipino people, ordinary mortals must be on their toes. Just before 2018 ended, President Rodrigo Duterte’s supermajority in the House of Representatives, headed by former President now House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, practically railroaded and…
WERE they fools duped into boarding the “federalist ship,” and drafting and defending a constitution that would supposedly bring into fruition President Rodrigo Duterte’s oft-repeated claim that a shift to a federal form of government would accelerate the development of the country’s poorest regions? At least one member of the Duterte-appointed Consultative Committee (Con-Com), who…
In this video, former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and lawyer Neri Colmenares explain why people should reject the present administration’s plan to shift to a federal form of government.
The Transitory Provisions state that the term of the incumbent president and vice president would end on June 30, 2022 and Duterte is not allowed to run for president in the May 2022 elections. However, he may still run as the transition president.
“It’s not about federalism … it’s about tyranny.”
Faced with the impending approval of the proposed Federal Constitution, they warned against Duterte’s charter change as a tool for forwarding a full-fledged dictatorship.
Two conflicting viewpoints have arisen on how Congress can transform itself into a constituent assembly, as prescribed by the 1987 Constitution, to amend or revise the Charter and enable a shift from a unitary to a federal form of government – a key project of President Duterte, which he told Mandaluyong businessmen in a speech…
As the new year began, the leaders of both chambers of Congress have been talking of prioritizing the shift to a federal system of government by convening the Senate and the House of Representatives into a constituent assembly in January to revise the 1987 Constitution towards that end. Perhaps reckoning how easily and swiftly, in…
President Duterte’s oft-repeated avowal is to accomplish before the end of his six-year term, in 2022, a shift in the form of government from the present unitary to a federal system. That accomplished, he has declared, he will volunteer to resign as President. And he has kept saying that only such a shift to federalism…
The proposal for a federal system will further entrench the power of the oligarchs and, being divisive, would leave the country more fragmented. BY THE POLICY STUDY, PUBLICATION, AND ADVOCACY Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CENPEG) Posted by Bulatlat Vol. VIII, No. 26, August 3-9, 2008 More than a year after the move to…