EDITORIAL - Cha-cha off like a runaway train

There is probably no constitution in the world that has not undergone some changes. Change, whether applied to constitutions or anything else, is part of the dynamics of everything. In other words, nothing is static, or nothing is supposed to be if it is to be alive at all. In the case of constitutions, to nail it to the circumstances at its birth is to sign its death warrant.

And so, to say it in a few words, even the Philippine Constitution needs change. And if it is necessary to change it now, then let the process of changing it begin. But not at the pace at which it has begun, especially at the House of Representatives, which is alarming. Over at the Lower House, they already have a broth going, so to speak. Not only that, they intend to serve it something in May.

Over at the Senate, they are also at it, but at a much slower pace. But the sense of deliberate slowness is only cosmetic. There is always a sense of rivalry between both houses. What the Senate is trying to project has nothing to do with substance. It merely wants to underscore a comparison, and then hammer home whatever the perceptible difference.

The bottomline is, Congress as a whole is still proceeding too swiftly to effect changes that require very careful study. Not only are we trying to embark on a seachange in manner of governance, from the present presidential republican form to a federal type, but also incorporate another change into the one change that would put the contentious Bangsamoro Basic Law into effect without undergoing the undivided focus and scrutiny it deserves.

In the proposed shift to federalism upon which this whole charter change initiative rests, and which Congress as a whole is seemingly so dying to pass, the Bangsamoro that the BBL seeks to create automatically becomes a federal state. The focus on federalism has taken away the need to take the Bangsamoro issue as a separate concern.

This is not said in opposition to federalism, which does have many practical and sublime merits, but rather a word of caution against the palpable haste at which the proposed shift is being, for lack of a better word, railroaded. If, in any plan to build a new road where there was none, there must be undertaken all sorts of studies and tests and hearing, how much more for a change in the Constitution that would pave a change in the way of life as we have always known it.