The charter change puppet

Pepe Alas

January 31

^{United only for politics, nothing more (📷 Eloisa López / Reuters).}

I really do not understand all these anti-charter-change rallies. The powers that be have long painted charter change as if it is a societal evil that nobody should even dare discuss at the dinner table. Through the years, attempts at amending the Constitution have always been opposed and aborted. The mindset is that it should not be given the slightest chance to even go through normal deliberations. Political showdowns (in the guise of "prayer rallies") such as the one we have witnessed last Sunday have created not the desired aversion towards charter change but only division and confusion in the populace.

Those opposing charter change must have forgotten that the very framers of the present Constitution allowed a provision for it. And it's clearly stated in Article XVII:

Any amendment to, or revision of, this Constitution may be proposed by:

(1) The Congress, upon a vote of three-fourths of all its Members; or

(2) A constitutional convention.

Since charter change has never been given a chance, and that reactionaries will always oppose moves to push it forward at any given opportunity, then the ONLY solution to this never-ending debacle is to scrap Article XVII altogether. But then again, scrapping it will require for the Constitution to be amended, of course.

The only possible solution to end this decades-old problem (which, in hindsight, is not really a problem) is to actually embrace the problem. But the powers that be will not have it. They would rather live in fantasy land, thinking that the rhetoric which they so proudly but blindly brandish, i.e., opposition to charter change, is the solution. So there goes the rub. Now we're like hamsters inside a treadmill, viciously jogging in it to no end.

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