Silvestre, Ephraim Zeus M. Atty.

Junasa
PS 401

When Duterte assumed office in the Malacanang, one of his priority agenda is to repeal the 1987
Constitution and to change the form of government. According to Duterte, by changing the form of
government and the Constitution would lessen the congestion in imperial Manila, inequalities in
distribution of wealth among provinces or region and to avoid further conflict in the Mindanao provinces
especially in the provinces under the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao or ARMM. The Duterte
administration, want to shift the form of government from unitary to federalism. In Federalism form of
government there will be a Prime Minister, which would become the head of government and President,
which would be the head of the state. Aside from this the Philippines will be divided into five states
namely: Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao, NCR and BangsaMoro State.

But for the critics of Duterte it is not the right time to repeal the current Constitution and to
change the form of the government. For them, Duterte only want to do this in order to extend its power
together with its allies in the government. According to former Chief Justice Davide, the 1987
Constitution is one of the best Constitutions in the world because it contains all the best character of a
best Constitution. In addition to that Davide also said that changing the Constitution would lead only to
more corruption and inequalities among provinces and region.

In the seminar conducted in the Adamson University about Federalism, According to one of the
keynote speaker Kabataan representative Elago changing the current form of government to federalism
would not end poverty, inequalities and injustice among the poor. Representative Elago also said that in
roder to lessen poverty and inequalities the government must address directly the issue not by changing
the Constitution. Aside from this, one of the speaker also said that the propose Constitution by the Duterte
allies would threaten the basic and fundamental freedom of an individual particularly the freedom of
expression and the right of the accused from due process of law because in the propose new Constitution
some of the provision in the Bill of Rights is change and deleted.

For me, whatever form of government would be used or implemented if the officials of the
government do not have the will to implement the laws and follow what is good in the society; it will only
end up into nothing and will result only to more poverty, inequalities and injustice in the society. The best
thing to do is to address the root cause of all the problems and set aside politics so that the government
can achieve its goal and mission to the people. Federalism is good if the individual behind the architecture
of this proposal would implement what federalism really is and not federalism for them or self-serving
form of federalism for a particular class in the society. And lastly I did not like the propose amendment
regarding the foreign ownership of business and property in the Philippines because in the existing laws
about foreign ownership, it should be 60 and 40 percent between the government and the foreign owner
but in the propose amendment it will be change to 100 percent or absolute foreign ownership that would
only result to exploitation of our natural resources and high value of basic goods.