“THE country will not be bound to adopt the present division into regions as federal states.” Former mayor Constantino Jaraula said this yesterday in reaction to the negative views of Speaker Feliciano Belmonte to the federal system that President-elect Rodrigo Duterte has been espousing. Jaraula, a lawyer and a former congressman who served as the chairman of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments in the 13th Congress, said that whether Congress decides to go by way of a Constituent Assembly or through a Constitutional Convention, the basic and primary step is to conduct an inventory on several factors such as:
  • area of each province and number of inhabitants therein;
  • cultural, religious and educational orientation of the inhabitants;
  • existing economic, political and social development; and
  • natural and potential productive sources.
He said the grouping into a federal state among the various provinces must be based on these factors, principally considering the capability to exist independently of each group. “It is about time that the country graduates from its colonial orientation where power resides only in Imperial Manila and what is distributed to the outlying islands are just crumbs, or whatever political conveniences would dictate,” Jaraula said. He also said the “phenomenal victory” of the Davao mayor which gave Mindanao its first President “must be appreciated by Imperial Manila that the greater majority of the people are fed up with the old system.” Jaraula also pointed out that  were it not for the “Hello Garci” scandal that was exposed in the summer of 2005, Congress would have pushed through fundamental constitutional amendments in 2006.