High Denzity

MANILA, Philippines — Amid talk of impeachment at the House of Representatives and alleged bribery by Malacañang of lawmakers and local officials, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has revived her call for Charter change to pave the way for federalism by 2012.

In a speech at the regional workshop on the Establishment of National Human Rights Institutions in Asia in Manila Monday, Arroyo ordered the creation of a panel that would draft a “roadmap to federalism by 2012.”

The panel will include the secretaries of justice and interior and local government, the Presidential Management Staff, National Economic Development Authority, leaders of local government units, congressmen, and opposition leaders advocating federalism, she said.

“The measures could include super-region planning and oversight bodies with officials and staff from the Regional Development Councils and national agencies, to draw up programs and projects up to a stipulated amount for inclusion n the 2009 budget, legislation to affirm and expand executive issuances, and eventually Charter changes,” Arroyo said.

It was in 2005 in her State of the Nation Address when Arroyo made a case for federalism, saying, “Perhaps, it’s time to take the power from the center to the countryside that feeds it.”

Federalism was part of her proposal to change the present presidential form of government into a parliamentary system and from a unitary to a federal system.

Senate Minority Floor Leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. had said that the establishment of a federal system should be the “long-range and ultimate political solution” to the incessant Muslim rebellion in the South.

He said Muslim dissidents in Mindanao would stop clamoring for a separate independent republic if their aspirations for genuine autonomy in the form of a Bangsamoro Federal State would be fulfilled.

Arroyo’s revival of the issue of federalism came as a third impeachment attempt had been filed against her at the House over the controversial national broadband network project won by China’s ZTE Corporation.

Last week, Arroyo held separate meetings with around 190 congressmen and some 40 governors and local executives in Malacañang where cash gifts between P200,000 and P500,000 were purportedly distributed allegedly to make the local officials back off from the impeachment case.

LIRA DALANGIN FERNANDEZ
INQUIRER.net