ALKHOBAR - Philippine House Speaker Jose de Venecia has urged overseas Filipinos to support a proposal to change the country’s presidential form of government to a parliamentary one.
Speaking before hundreds of Filipinos at the International Philippine School in Alkhobar, de Venecia said a shift to the parliamentary system is urgently needed to save the country from collapsing into further political crisis.
De Venecia said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo herself is all for the proposed shift, which former President Fidel Ramos is also pushing.
“Ayaw niya na ang presidential system (She no longer likes the presidential system). President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, in spite of the fact that she is the current president of the Republic of the Philippines, is recommending a parliamentary shift for the Filipino people,” de Venecia said.
De Venecia led a delegation of legislators and business executives in a three-day trip to Saudi Arabia on Dec. 3-5.
But in his speech on Monday, de Venecia said Arroyo knows that the current presidential system has proved to be not good for the Philippines.
“President Arroyo is brilliant, capable, hard-working, maka-diyos (God-fearing), at makatao (and for the people),” eliciting wild applause from the audience.
De Venecia said Ramos himself is pushing for a parliamentary system because he experienced the difficulties that comes with it.
He noted that almost all of the presidents elected had gone to an impeachment complaint.
“The constant fighting of senators and congressmen and their parties are among the weaknesses of the bicameral presidential system,” he said.
Overseas Absentee Voting
In a brief interview, de Venecia told Arab News that overseas Filipinos can still vote abroad under a parliamentary system. He pointed out that Japan, England, and Italy are have parliamentary systems and they also have absentee voting.
There will only be one election in every five year, he said, unlike in the presidential system where elections are held almost every year.
De Venecia said that election campaigns in the Philippines also run for two years. “This is why the candidates are spending too much money and we don’t know where they get these money to spend during the elections,” said de Venecia, who lost badly to then Vice President Joseph Estrada in the 1998 presidential election despite backing from the incumbent president, Ramos.
De Venecia said such situation has allowed jueteng and other gambling lords and drug lords to influence the result of Philippine elections.
President Arroyo herself has accused by the opposition of financing her election campaign last year from gambling money. Witnesses in a Senate inquiry on last year’s alleged poll fraud have testified that the wife of a gambling lord even distributed bribe money to election officials in the residence of President Arroyo, a charge the president has vehemently denied.
JDV's Dream
De Venecia said the initiative has already made strides in Congress but support from overseas Filipinos is needed to support his vision.
Last week, Congress approved a concurrent resolution shifting the present system into the unicameral parliamentary form of government.
Eventually, after a period of transition, de Venecia said that proposed unitary and powerful government would be transformed into a federal system.
“These are part of the historic changes that the Arroyo government seeks for the Philippines and for the Filipino people.
“I am sure that the Philippines will be able to graduate from a Third World to a Second World society in seven years,” de Venecia said.
“This is my dream, as I know, this is also your dream. Come then my brothers and sisters in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Come let us join hands and together let us March towards this dream of greatness for the Philippines and the Filipino people,” he said.
Disgruntled Ramos
De Venecia’s call for support comes amid speculations that Arroyo, buoyed by the rebound of the peso and improving confidence in the economy, may have lost interest in the parliamentary initiative.
Ramos and de Venecia laid down the proposed change in governmental system last June after rescuing Arroyo’s collapsing “Strong Republic.”
Arroyo then was reportedly about to abandon Malacañang Palace when 10 of her key officials, including her economic managers, resigned at the height of charges that she cheated in last year’s election to beat popular actor Fernando Poe Jr.
At the same time, former President Cory Aquino went on TV to call for Arroyo’s resignation and Senate President Franklin Drilon’s faction of the Liberal Party withdrew its support for the ruling coalition.
Arroyo kept mum as Ramos announced that his support for her continued stay as president was only up to 2006. Ramos said Arroyo should spend the rest of her stay in effecting the shift to a one-chamber parliament.
Arroyo, however, exhibited lack of interest later in the Ramos initiative when she and her lieutenants repeatedly said that she would complete her term as president until 2010.
An attempt was also made by Arroyo’s other supporters in Congress to elect a new House speaker, a move that de Venecia quelled by reiterating her support for the president.
In what could be seen as the latest sign of a falling out between Ramos and Arroyo, the former president was quoted by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on Friday as saying that former election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano should tell the truth on the so-called "Hello Garci" and whoever suffers from the revelation should be prepared to meet his or her fate.
“I’m glad he appeared. He should tell it exactly how it happened because the greatest interest of our people is for the truth to come out and whoever must suffer from the revelation of the truth, well, that’s his or her destiny,” Ramos said at a press conference on Thursday night at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) before he left for the United Kingdom.
Ramos will co-chair the three-day inaugural meeting of the Emerging Markets Forum (EMF) in Oxford.
Ramos was asked to comment on Garcillano’s refusal to talk about so-called “Hello Garci” tapes as he testified in a congressional inquiry into wiretapped recordings of his alleged conversation with Arroyo.
Portions of the conversation which have been leaked out to the public by the opposition showed the president and Garcillano purportedly talking about ensuring Arroyo’s victory in last year’s polls.
The opposition claimed that Garcillano was instrumental in that victory, but he has insisted that Arroyo did not cheat.
Arroyo has apologized for talking with an election official — whose name she never mentioned — while the votes were being canvassed but denied cheating.
