A. History of the Philippine Constitution

1935 Constitution

• established Presidential System with unicameral National Assembly;
• amended in 1940 to change term of office of President and to replace National Assembly with bicameral Congress.
• amended in 1946 to include Parity rights for Americans doing business in the Philippines
• remained fundamental law until 1973

1973 Constitution

1987 Constitution

B. The moves to change the 1987 Constitution in the previous administrations

Ramos Administration, 1997
On the targeted areas of amendment

Economic Provisions

Political

On the mode of amendment

Oppositions

Estrada Administration, 1999

“President Estrada believes that in the face of the new world realities, the best way that government can make Filipinos globally competitive into the next millennium is to push amendments that would ease or lift constitutional provisions restricting the flow of investments and technologies into the Philippines.” (taken from the website of the Office of the President http://www.concord.ops.gov.ph/QA.htm)
To create enough jobs, improve the delivery of basic services, and uplift the lives of majority of the poor, Estrada pushed to amend the Constitution subservient to the interests of big multinationals and his big businessmen kumpares; he proposed that amendments could be done through the Constitutional Correction for Development or CONCORD process.

On the targeted areas of amendment

On the mode of amendment

Opposition

On July 26, 2004, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in her state of the nation address mentioned that by 2005 she is expecting that Congress will start considering the resolutions for Charter Change, giving way for the consideration of financial and revenue measures in the first regular session.

Arroyo’s version of Charter change is in no way different with the proposed constitutional amendments of the previous administrations. The government highlights the change in the form of government as the heart of the Constitutional change in order to mask the main objective that is to remove the “hindrance” to foreign control of our patrimony and loosen the protectionist provisions of the Constitution.

Moreover, during the state of the nation address of PGMA, she declared that the system clearly needs fundamental change- the sooner the better and it is time to start the great debate on charter change.

She also said that economic progress and social stability of the provinces, along with the increasing self-reliance and efficiency of political developments and public services, there, make a compelling case for federalism.

Furthermore, she said that although our form of government will be the decision of the body constituted to undertake charter change, we should consider that legislation could be quickened and laws made more responsive to the people under a parliamentary system, similar to that of our progressive neighbors in the region.

According to Ms. Arroyo, a federal type and parliamentary form of government would be more effective in enacting reforms than the current unitary, United States style presidential system with a bicameral legislature. (Philippine Daily Inquirer, June 3, 2005.)

Shift in the Form of Government

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo endorses the federal type of government, as part of a package of constitutional changes designed to save her embattled presidency.
The leaders of the House are also endorsing it, although Rep. de Venecia and his cohorts are really more interested in a parliamentary system that gives their kind — politicians with a patronage and electoral base in the districts — both executive and legislative powers.

For Rep. de Venecia, et.al. a shift to parliamentary system offers a back route to the prime ministership and protects the monopoly of political power by traditional politicians, most of them members of political clans, from the incursions of media and movie stars into what was once trapo territory.

House Concurrent Resolution No. 04 hardly mentions federalism. Federal form of government would be installed within 10 years after the approval of the amended constitution. The proposed constitutional amendments in the House of Representatives spell out Rep. de Venecia’s dream:

• an all-powerful unicameral parliament or National Assembly, which will elect a powerful Prime Minister,
• Who will choose his Cabinet mainly from the elected representatives? All members of the parliament will be elected by single-member districts;
• There is no mention of party-list or proportional representation.
• There will also no longer be any limits on the number of parliamentarian’s terms, which will each be four years rather than the current three.
• The President, elected from among the members of the National Assembly, will have only ceremonial functions.

Advantages of unicameralism:

1. A democratic principle of representation is based on universal suffrage and is better realized in single-chamber parliaments. In this case the aim of the legislation is the advancement of the general interest. If the second chamber also represents a general interest, it is redundant
2. Electoral mechanism. A crucial issue in this regard is the democratic nature of legislative representation. The collective decision at the ballot box represents the voice of the people. It introduces linguistic and empirical oxymoron, whereupon a population’s representative national body is not chosen/elected by the population. Moreover, the mechanism of appointing members of legislatures to the upper chamber instead of electing them can not only undermine the democratic representativeness principles, but also destroy or preclude the possibility to establish a balance in the legislative-executive relations.
3. Unicameralism is advantageous from the perspective of a unitary state ideology. The introduction of a bicameral legislature can be viewed as the enforcement of a federalist structure that would institutionalize trivial division lines in the nation.
4. Single-chamber parliaments are generally viewed as more efficient in accomplishing lawmaking activities, while bicameral parliaments take longer to deliberate upon and produce legislation.
5. Unicameral parliaments are financially more feasible. Resources needed to sustain the activities of the second chamber increase the overall budget expenditure for the legislature. This issue is trivial for the industrialized nations, where budget expenditures for the second chamber constitutes a miniscule amount of the overall budget.

Arguments for Unicameralism

Records of the 1986 Constitutional Convention and earlier researches point to several arguments favoring a unicameral set-up of the legislative department:

1. A Second Chamber (Senate) provides an opportunity to scrutinize the details of legislation more thoroughly. Since the two chambers are often drawn from different constituencies, issues are examined from different perspectives. A two-chamber legislature serves as a "check and balance" to abuse of legislative power.
2. Since the senators are elected nationwide, they are expected to be less parochial than the district representatives. They are said to be better able to tackle broader issues of national importance.
3. The scope of legislative responsibility is said to be unified with the presence of a second chamber which represents the overall interest of the people.
4. The bicameral system is common to constitutional monarchies (e.g., England) where the upper chamber (House of Lords) is composed of individuals of aristocratic origins, even under a parliamentary setup. In unitary states, it reflects the desire to have within the parliament amechanism—i.e., a "revising Chamber", to maintain a careful check on the first Chamber.
5. In federal states, bicameralism reflects the dualistic structure of the state. Federal bicameralism in the US provides equal representation of States (irrespective of its population) in the upper Chamber, and representation proportional to population in the lower Chamber.
6. A unicameral set-up under a federal state may require a redefinition of the jurisdiction of the national legislature. The area of responsibility of members of parliament shall focus on federal-level concerns, and any state or local matters will be tackled by the respective state legislatures.

Advantages of Bicameralism:

1. Bicameral parliaments with both chambers elected better accommodate various interest groups (social, economic, cultural) or geographic units through widening the basis of representation in the legislature. Two-chamber legislatures are adopted with the aim to enhance representation of subnational governments, and most of them are territorially elected. This is frequently done to offset the centralizing tendencies of unicameral legislatures generally elected on party slates.
2. A change in the institutional structure of the parliament is often designed with the aim to establish a stable political order in a society. Hammond and Miller (1987) demonstrated this on the example of the U.S. Constitution: the interaction of bicameralism and the executive veto tends to produce stable effects despite the destabilizing impact of the legislative power to override the executive veto. This phenomenon is explained on the basis of the preferences of the legislators. In a majority-rule legislature there is always a possibility of choosing a dominating alternative for undesirable policies. The institution of bicameralism induces stability in the sense that clearly undesirable policies can be avoided in the interplay between two houses’ members’ preferences.
3. The key principle of modern democracy, a system of separation of powers, is expressed in bicameralism by strengthening democracy through the supervision of the two houses over each other.
4. Bicameralism leads to more stable policy outcomes and reduces conflict to a single main dimension. This argument is put forward by Tsebelis and Money (1997), who rely on the results from the cooperative game-theoretic models. Elected upper chambers, even those that are considered by many comparative studies’ scholars to be weak, have greater influence on policy outcomes because the decisions in a divided parliament have less policy cycling. This is justified by the close institutional arrangements that are used to resolve conflicts between chambers and influence the policies adopted. The disagreements between chambers are solved through the process of shuttling bills back and forth, which is one of the most frequent solutions in the bargaining process between the two elected chambers. (From “A Reader on Charter Change”)