Charter Change which has been shelved for over a decade by politicos due to its unpopularity, is today the centerpiece of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administrative strategy. To former Pres. Fidel V. Ramos, the shift from the presidential to parliamentary form of government should solve PGMAs woes and shaky economic mortars. La Presidenta said that the present system had “degenerated to an extent that it is difficult for anyone to make any headway. Our political system has betrayed generations of Filipinos.”

So the Matriarch is telling everyone, educated and uneducated, that the culture of corruption that has installed the country to its shameful number 2 rank throughout the world cannot be blamed on the corrupt. The culprit is the presidential system. The 2 Edsa revolutions, therefore, were wrong in kicking out presidents. The bureaucracies of Marcos and Erap and the Constitution from where they were based should be the ones imprisoned. And the judiciary must pay for lapse of judgment of the justices misreading the law.

Then to lead this historic (from the dean of House legislators Jose de Venecia) assault on the true untrodden range are the kingmakers of the executive and legislative branches whose forte rests on their ability to sing “If we could hold on together” and cash in on the pork notwithstanding whether the barrel is there or not, respectively.

Together they shall be the CON-ASS. Don’t you get that wrong for while the word may mean, “with the stupid,” it’s referring to constituent assembly. There’s a requirement though, they must take a new melody, “Happy days are here again.”
It was all included in the SONA. The shortest ever recorded but loaded to the fore for La Presidenta’s allies, she got 5 standing ovations and 33 deafening applauses. De Venecia was also caught on photo with double thumbs up. It’s the one given by a coach to an athlete for a job well done against competitors.

The antagonists are the majority of senators and the measly opposition minority to stop the Charter change for two reasons: that the CON-CON is better than the CON-ASS and that the impeachment of PGMA takes precedence over any amendment to the Constitution at an opportune time.

Taken in context, working out impeachment and cha-cha at the same time makes one process a cover of the other. As a matter of fact a delusion of hope emerges which in reality is of morbid consequence. The present impeachment widens the fissures of an economic dam about to burst and the establishment of a unicameral assembly in the refuse of the old Congress, if both simultaneously take off, are devoid of proper safeguards.

This, Juan de la Cruz should watch and reject outright.