Fidel's Shocker

Analysis : Fidel Ramos' shock formula

Amando Doronila
Inquirer News Service

WITH A PERSISTENCE characteristic of the man, former President Fidel Ramos has addressed the argument that revising the 1987 Constitution alongside the impeachment proceedings against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo could put competitive claims on the time and energy of Congress.

Misgivings have been expressed that Congress would be overloaded with two extremely important tasks with rather fundamental implications for political change -- the first involving the dismissal from office of a sitting president, and the other, constitutional change seeking a shift from the 70-year-old presidential system to the parliamentary system -- let alone doing normal legislation and being sidetracked by congressional investigations.

Speaking at the 104th anniversary of the defunct Philippine Constabulary-Integrated National Police, which Ramos headed during Ferdinand Marcos' martial-law regime, Ramos asserted that "impeachment, constitutional change and lawmaking can be done simultaneously."

The speech reflects the "can-do" mentality of Ramos, which is the hallmark of his high-performance presidency, but the agenda he proposed to fast-track constitutional change is a tall order and unrealistic. Members of Congress do not have the work ethic set by Ramos during his presidency.

Ramos urged members of Congress to change their bad habits and hold plenary sessions in the morning rather in the afternoon. At present, committee hearings, in which most of the bills are drafted, are held in the morning, if members are not diverted by congressional investigations.

Thus, Ramos proposed that members refrain from taking too many holiday breaks and junkets abroad. "Work 16 hours a day," Ramos said. "They should stop dinner meetings. They should just be served pan de sal and coffee. Food is expensive now. Let us cut out the frills and the extravagance."

One wonders whether legislators can accept a Spartan lifestyle. The menu he prescribed is barracks food. Ramos is not only stressing the urgency of constitutional change, he is also advocating a drastic lifestyle change and a work ethic that would send members of Congress into paroxysms of culture shock. Between lifestyle change and constitutional change, the former might be harder to undertake.

To be sure, Ramos lived up to this rigorous work regime during his presidency, which found him working longer hours than the fabled workaholics such as the Japanese and Koreans in their drive to transform the countries into advanced industrial economies. Ramos set a legislative agenda that performed and that received Congress' consensus.

The high performance of his administration -- in particular, the breaking of the energy shortage in his first year in office -- seems to have motivated Ramos to push constitutional change to the fast lane and to think that his agenda can be accomplished within a timeframe of six months, culminating in a switch to the parliamentary system by middle of 2006.

However, Ramos has to overcome the resistance to his call for constitutional change, coming from critics who suspect that the switch to the parliamentary system would pave the way for his return to power as prime minister, the same criticism hurled at Speaker Jose de Venecia, another advocate of speedy revision.

Other than that, the switch, it is alleged, is a mechanism that would divert the not inconsiderable public pressure on President Arroyo to step down because of allegations of cheating in the 2004 election to the process of constitutional revision and buy her precious breathing space, thereby prolonging her stay in office.

Since 1986, Ramos has played a pivotal role in, first, ousting the Marcos dictatorship, and, second, in defending the Corazon Aquino government from six coup attempts. At a critical moment of the Arroyo regime on July 8, when it was on the brink of collapse, Ramos intervened by coming to the side of Ms Arroyo and emphatically rejecting calls for her resignation. He also put on top of the national agenda of political change the issue of constitutional revision. Ramos' intervention is believed to have neutralized the intervention of the other Edsa People Power I key player, former President Aquino, who joined the resignation call.

Although Ramos' intervention was crucial to the Arroyo regime's survival, it would be too much to say that Ramos is now the power behind the regime and has taken it captive. That is exaggerating his role. Ramos' agenda seems to be larger and more important than opening space for a soft landing for President Arroyo from the current crisis.

Ramos' interventions have grown out of crises since 1986. These crises have defined his political outlook and have influenced his thinking that the succession of crises has demonstrated that the presidential system has proved to be dysfunctional, and has underlined the urgency of the shift to the parliamentary system.

Ramos has called attention to persistent gridlock in the adversarial system of checks and balances of the presidential system and the system's inflexibility. The stalemates that can't be broken within the system have driven conflicts over non-performing, venal and scandal-ridden governments for resolution to the streets through people power. The adaptability of the parliamentary system in averting crisis and dismissing political leadership through a non-confidence vote is the strongest argument for systemic change.

Whether or not the shift would allow survival of the Arroyo regime is secondary to the promise of deadlock-breaking within a parliamentary arena, without going to the streets and the shedding of blood. Besides, her political life is likely to be decided soon enough by another process, which is impeachment.