At the Philippine Constitution Association’s celebration of Constitution Day Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016, former Chief Justice Reynato Puno denounced the kind of democracy and money politics the country has had.
“Beyond the thick cosmetics,” he sneered in his 35-minute speech, “our democracy today is dismissed as no more than a plutocracy.”
Chief Puno laments “the concentration of too much power in the Presidency.” “The abusive use of this power brought us the PDAF (Priority Development Assistance Fund or pork barrel) and the DAP (Disbursement Accelerated Program or more pork) anomalies,” the former jurist explained, adding “With the power to appoint, our presidents can pack the courts and independent constitutional bodies like the COA, the Ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission with their factotum. When the independence of these institutions is lost, you can see the rise of de facto dictators.”
He elaborates: “Many of our problems in government, including corruptions running riot, are the offshoots of the overwhelming power of the President so often times misused and abused.” Thus, “unless and until we recalibrate and limit these powers, we will always stand in danger in being governed by presidents and their subalterns who cannot resist the temptations of power and will betray the interest of the people.”
“Worse,” Puno winces, “is the people have to endure a bad president for six years. Theoretically, a bad president can be removed by impeachment before the end of the term of his office.”
It costs from P2 billion to P4 billion for a candidate to get himself elected president. Presidential candidates are allowed by law to spend P10 per voter plus P5 per voter by his party.
In this year’s elections, there are 55 million voters. So P15 times 55 million is P825 million, per presidential candidate.
“If we have at least four candidates for president and four candidates for vice president we are looking at a total of P6.6 billion in campaign expenditures—assuming each candidate will spend the maximum allowed by law,” Puno estimates. “Candidates spend way beyond [that],” he figures.
In 2013, a 30-second prime time commercial was P834,374 on Channel 2 and P695,500 on Channel 7.
In many cases, reckons Chief Puno, “a candidate buys as many as 10 commercial spots per day in one TV station, which will cost, in the case of ABS-CBN, P8.3 million a day and in the case of GMA7, P6.95 million a day. Even if one runs the commercials for just 30 days out of the 90-day campaign period for the presidency and the vice presidency, that would already total P457 million for just the two TV stations.”
Radio rates for 30-second prime time commercial are P67K for DZMM, P70K for DZBB, and P52K for DZRH.
“And we are not including yet the cost of advertising in regional TV and radio stations,” cautions Puno. “Add to these the cost of campaign materials: posters, tarpaulin banners, leaflets, sample ballots; plus the cost of holding rallies and meetings, transportation for moving around the country, organization, the buying of votes, etcetera—and the total per candidate could really run up to from P2 billion to P4 billion each.”
“Election spending is bad for democracy,” Puno asserts. Yet, “our election will not bring any meaningful change to our people. To the poor and the powerless, our election will just be all noise and nonsense. It will not improve their lot for our elections are mere contests between the haves and the haves. The winning haves will have it all. They will never look at the overlooked of our society especially the poor and the powerless.”
Predicts Puno: “The escalating cost of our presidential election will ultimately kill our democracy. Consider the source of money funding our election. It used to be that the candidates alone shoulder the expenses of their election for the simple reason they were affordable.”
Candidates tapping businessmen gives rise to corporate plutocracy. Also, “some candidates forged unholy alliances with criminal syndicates, the captains of jueteng and worst of all, the drug lords.”
Quoting the anti-illegal drugs agency, PDEA, Puno notes that “most of our barangays are already infiltrated by drug lords who now dictate the results of their election. The saddest day of our democracy is when narco-politics become our kind of politics. That is the day when our politics will produce profiteers instead of patriots and I hope we are not beginning to see its silhouettes.”
Chief Puno sounds exasperated: “I do not know how long we can endure the inequalities and inequities bred by our presidential form of government and our expensive election that has given us a democracy of the peso instead of a democracy for the people.”
He suggests the parliamentary system, pointing out that “more countries that have failed as democracies embraced the presidential rather than the parliamentary form of government. We should have the courage to change our calcified conviction that the presidential form of government is best suited to our people.”
Puno sees constitutional change as the answer to “the tyranny of power of the national government; (or) the imperialism of Manila.”
He thinks the “centralization of power in the national government is the cause of the failure of a lot of our provinces, cities and municipalities to attain progress. It is self-evident that the growth of our local governments will always be stunted if we deny them the basic power to govern themselves. The continuing poverty in the countryside is the reason why we have the longest-running communist insurgency in the world.”
This May’s election, he asserts “will not resolve our political and economic problems. We can always change the persons who will rule us but unless we change the architecture of their constitutional power, we will end up in frustration.”
He suggests a “redesign the obsolete power structure in our Constitution, change our unitary Presidential form of government to federal Parliamentary form.”
“Until then, all we will have are their [candidates’] promises to the people and these promises are no better than post-dated checks that will bounce in due time.”
