Jose Abueva, 93

On August 19, I found a small notice in The Philippine Star that former UP professor Jose V. Abueva died peacefully in his home at Antipolo.

Rappler.com reports that Abueva was president of the University of the Philippines from 1987 to 1993. In 1998 he signed the UP – Department of National Defense Accord which banned police and military from entering UP campuses without notifying the university administration. Rappler stresses that the accord was scrapped by the Duterte Administration in January 2021.

Rappler recognizes that the professor wrote books on democracy and governance, administration and decentralization. Mentioned is the title of his book: Decentralization, not Federalism – key to Philippine Progress.

I find this article does not do justice to the real legacy of the great thinker and political scientist. His work that Professor Jose Abuva will be remembered for is:

CMFP DRAFT CONSTITUTION FOR A FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES WITH A PARLIAMENTARY GOVERNMENT

By Citizens’ Movement for a Federal Philippines

Edited by Jose V. Abueva

This work was published in 2005. The envisioned constitution would be called “The 1987 Constitution as Revised”. It proposes ten federal states.

New is Article IX: Political Parties. It postulates: “As political organizations or institutions, they shall... determine the principles, policies and programs that shall guide their members as they and the political party seek and exercise governmental power. Party platforms and programs and public morality and ethics are the bases for holding political parties and their members responsible and accountable for their performance in and out of office.”

Article X describes a fundamentally new role of the president: He is “only the Head of State, a largely symbolic and ceremonial president, but still an important government official and national leader.”

All proposals for federalization of the Philippines are modifications of Professor Abueva’s model. As are in particular:

Senator Aquilino Nene Pimentel’s Joint Resolution No. 10, signed by 16 senators in 2008.

His son Koko Pimentel pushes for a “uniquely Filipino semi-presidential executive-legislative set-up.”

Santo Thomas University political science professor Edmund Pagao says: Under this “dual executive structure” the president will be in charge of foreign policy and national security while the prime minister will run the government with his cabinet.

Former Chief Justice Reynato Puno and his Bayan Ko party sees the remedy of this nation’s ills in a Federal Republic of the Philippines with a parliamentary system and a prime minister at its helm.

PDP-Laban Federal Institute states: There is a president and a prime minister, but no vice-president.

Finally, President Duterte favors for his successor a regional setup as in the French system. The president is elected with majority in two polls on consecutive Sundays. Then he appoints the prime minister. Later in legislative and communal polls, the electorate gives him a strong majority in parliament so that his policies are executed all over the nation down to the barangays.

There are proposed as many variants as are columnists in the media. I, as a German, recommended in several readers’ letters the model of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Erich Wannemacher

Lapu-Lapu City