FILE PHOTO: Lawyer Christian Monsod, a constitutionalist and former chair of the Commission on Elections. Radyo Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines — One of the framers of the 1987 Constitution has warned against amending the economic provisions of the Charter, saying that it might open the possibility for corruption.
Atty. Christian Monsod, a staunch defender of the Constitution, said in a phone interview that “money can be made” when the economic provisions in the Charter were inserted with one powerful phrase: “unless otherwise provided by law.”
“We are not talking about specific amendments. What they [proponents] want is just to insert that phrase. The argument, they say, is just to leave it open,” he told INQUIRER.net.
“The consequences and implications of that are very serious. Money can be made,” he continued.
He expressed worry that inserting that phrase into the provisions in the Constitution would make it “meaningless” as it would be up to the legislators to decide which laws to pass to circumvent the Charter.
Monsod, who is a member of the 1986 Constitutional Convention, warned it would be dangerous to add the phrase as it opens the door to “transactional legislation,” or the act of offering money to lawmakers to pass laws favorable to certain companies or businesses.
This is more commonly known in Filipino as “lagay.”
The lawyer explained that the addition makes it easier to engage in transactional legislation as “the percentage of foreign ownership can be done by ordinary law with 80 votes from the House and seven votes from the Senate.”
This is in contrast to the current system for amending the Constitution which requires three-fourths each of the House and Senate voting separately before pushing through with the amendment.
Renewed push
On Monday, Senate President Miguel Zubiri filed a Resolution of Both Houses No. 6, emphasizing the need to amend specific provisions of the Constitution.
Under the Senate resolution, proposed constitutional changes should only cover three provisions related to foreign ownership of public utilities, educational institutions, and the advertising industry.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez is leading the Philippine delegation to the 2024 World Economic Forum in Davos and has expressed intent to tout the relaxing of some “restrictive” economic provisions in the Constitution to prod investors into funneling money into the country.
This year, the renewed push for a Charter change had sprung from talks that a pro-Charter change group had started collecting signatures to amend the Constitution through a people’s initiative.
READ: Hontiveros hits people’s initiative route for Cha-cha
But talks on amending the Constitution are not new.
In 2019, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian’s Resolution No. 1 of Both Houses earlier suggested the inclusion of the phrase “unless otherwise provided by law” in the Constitution’s economic provisions.
READ: Charter change, but for only one reason