Stop using the people for trapos' hidden agenda

From the Senate hearings and from the official position of highly-respected and truly honorable legal experts, including the eminent retired justices of the Supreme Court, it is becoming clearer and clearer each day that the only parties interested in playing games with the Constitution are traditional politicians from the House and from the Palace, whose agenda are highly suspicious. The people have nothing to do about this at all. They are being used again.

There are characters who are actively spending multi-millions to push for Charter Change. It is incredible that they would spend their hard-earned millions to fund an advocacy that would not yield any direct and concrete returns on their investment.

Even the president who used to say that amending the Constitution is not one of the priorities of his administration, has made a 360-degree turnaround by calling the Senate president and the Senate protempore to the Palace, and instructing them to initiate the proceedings, instead of the House. That presidential action, with due respect, was a clear violation of the principle of separation of powers and the Senate leadership should have stood up to defend the independence of that august body.

The president, who has travelled more than 18 times abroad in less than two years in office, always came home with arrival speeches that bragged of billions of alleged foreign investments that he and his large entourages supposedly secured from investors abroad. He needed no Charter Change to entice such foreign investors. His own elder sister, Senator Imee, also declared that none of the foreign investors who want to do business in our country has mentioned anything about amending our Constitution.

The problems that worry prospective investors are our unstable government policies, our notorious corruption, our poor infrastructure, the peace and order and security threats, crimes, and the high cost of fuel and power that all make our economy not competitive in Asia and in the global business arena.

This too much ado about peoples' initiatives, which is actually a trapos' initiative, is the triggering factor pushing the country to a constitutional crisis. And when the Senate and the House continue to lock horns and never stop in their word war, prospective investors are turned off.

This kind of traditional politics, where two Houses of the same Congress are at constant loggerheads is the one that drives investors away, and not the provisions of the 1987 Constitution which has served us well for 37 years. These greedy politicians who constantly hunger for power and are undermining the Senate so that nothing else could restrain their aberrations, are the very ones who are bringing our nation down. There is nothing wrong with the Constitution.

The highly-publicized alleged attempts by traditional politicians to use billions in the budget of DSWD and DOLE, if true and if supported by enough evidence, should be stopped immediately and unconditionally. These so-called overt acts to promote the hideous agenda using the peoples' names should be nipped in the bud immediately. Learned luminaries, men of unblemished integrity and proven patriotism like Chief Justice Hilario G. Davide, Jr. and retired senior associate Justice Antonio Carpio, constitutionalists like Christian Monsod and lawyer Romulo Macalintal, have spoken against the People's Initiative and even against any mode of amending the Constitution.

As between the wisdom of upright justices on the one hand and the questionable motives behind the trapos in the House and the Palace on the other hand, we do not have to be geniuses to decide whom to believe. These trapos might be thinking that all of us are stupid. No, they cannot fool all the people all the time. It is time to say no. Enough is enough.