The arguments in favor of Con-con
The trending development here in the capital is that most Filipinos prefer Constitutional Convention. The people cannot trust the incumbent solons to tinker with our fundamental law with all their selfish agendas and other baggage.
The way the current members of Congress are behaving is the best evidence that they do not deserve to be the best people to amend, revise, or repeal the 1987 Constitution. I concur with the well-considered opinion of our own Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., seconded by the other Chief Justice Puno that Con-con and not Con-ass is the better mode of the constitutional revisions. If the constitutional dictator, the late president Ferdinand Marcos even considered it better to call for a Con-con in 1973 under a regime of martial law, why can't the current administration take the high road of having the sovereign Filipino people elect the wise men and women who shall craft our new fundamental law?
The manifested behavior of the Lower House in railroading the House Resolution calling for a constituent assembly, even with a huge cloud of doubt on the presence or absence of a quorum, as well as the arrogance of the super majority in muzzling all attempts of the ragtag opposition to filibuster, indicates that (and we have to say this with all due respect) the current representatives do not have a strong respect for democratic principles and processes. And so, I dare say that they may not have the moral authority to tinker with the fundamental law of the land. If the super majority, by the sheer tyranny of their numbers, cannot even respect the voice of their own minority colleagues in the House, how can the people trust them to respect their rights?
Also, the Senate, whose members are expected to be more mature and more deliberate in their judgments, disappoints us when some senators unabashedly declared that they were not going to attend any joint session if they were not assured that the two chambers would vote separately and not jointly. The senators then are playing hard to get, and behave as if they are impervious to the call for change in our charter as a nation. The senate would seem to compel the House leadership to come to them on bended knees and assure them that whatever the senators want, the senators would get.
This kind of behavioral pattern disqualifies both the senators and the congressmen from the draconian task of amending our fundamental law. I do not buy the argument that a Con-con is too expensive. Chief Justice Puno is correct; there should be no price tag to the future of the whole nation. The members of both chambers have conflict of interest; they want no elections because they want to extend their own terms, they want to erase the term limits and the anti-dynasty provisions of the current charter. They want to open all our patrimony, including land ownership, to foreign interests. They want to abridge our freedom of speech, press, and expression.
All these are arguments that we need more honorable Filipinos to write a morally upright fundamental law of the land.
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