The constitution looks more as an authoritarian system with democratic politics in power than a proper democracy. Moreover, and it won't surprize anybody : the country is full of robbery, rackeeetry and corruption from administration.
To be neutral, look at those popular recognized rankings :
- Democracy Index, from the serious newspaper The Economist
http://graphics.eiu.com/PDF/Democracy_Index_2010_web.pdf
- Corruption Perception Index (it is a poll of local populations), from Transparency International
http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results
About economic freedom (especially entreupreneurship freedom, investment freedom and property right) :
- Economic freedom ranking, from the Heritage Foundation
http://www.heritage.org/index/explore
- Another economic freedom ranking, from TheFreeWorld
http://www.freetheworld.com/2010/reports/world/EFW2010_BOOK.pdf
And it is the same in almost all the independant reports...
1) A new 6th republic is needed to respect local identities
I consider before all, that Philippines is a multicultural country. It implies that the new constitution must to respect local cultures, and local languages. Obviously, it is not the case for now with the 5th republic.
And this conditions implies that the new Republic must to be a Federation or a Confederation, who divize the country in different states, depending of their local languages and their local religions.
For example, it could be as follow, a (con)federation of 14 states. Of course, I drawned it fastly, to create this 6th republic, a census must to be created to not forget any filipino :
But it is not enough. The new republic must to be recreated from begining, to leave all what can create corruption, and also to create more freedom and more democracy.
All the rankings cited previously make me think of a country who should be a democratic example for Filipino : Switzerland. Switzerland is a confederation of 3 provinces who talk 3 different languages (French, German, Italian). Their confederation is an united country who respect its local identities, their freedom (as economic as civil) and the democracy.
It is also the only one country in the world where people can organize referendums without the agreement of politicians. And politicians in their congress are not responsible of big budget to manage contrary to here... They debate, they vote, they propose, they investigate, but that is all. Then, their congress is proportionnally distributed.
Why is it important to respect local identities ?
First of all, when you force people to learn a language who is not their language, they would success less in their studies. Or they could not study as well.
Then, when you have a part of your local population who is less well educated, your local territory will growth slower than those who talk natively the official language (tagalog nowadays).
At the end, Philippines in 2011 is a country based to make Manilla and the tagalog provinces richer and richer while the other provinces become lower and lower.
And because of that, the demography of manilla growth up also : people come often there to find a better job.
This situation must to change.
Secondly, about religion, attitudes are not the same. Muslims, for example, claims to apply sharia because it is religiously needed, while christians don't have this. Then, less obviously but still, attitudes changes with languages, you can observe it anywhere in the world. Compare a French and a German, their values are the same, but their attitudes not. Same for here, it is also good for all the local people to identify themselves into politics who talk their languages and have their attitudes.
These are the reasons why I think it is important to respect local identities.
2) A new 6th republic for more democracy and freedom is needed
As explained before, Philippines is not democratic with this constitution. Moreover, big corruption rumors exists to say that Church corrupt army to racket officials. Others rumors are that administration rob businesses to give authorisation to trade. Also, Politic robbery rumors runs (such as more than 560 millions robbed during Arroyo mandate... where is the money if it's true ? probably in the church hands !).
Millions of pesos are also given to senators to manage their debates. Why they would need it to debate ?
And how can we justify that we putshed Estrada ? Maybe he was a bad president, maybe corrupted, but he was democraticly elected... This kind of practices must to stop...
How can we justify also that oversea filipinos who are not born here can not run for a national election ?
It would be a problem to divize the country into 14 states ?
Absolutly not !
Switzerland separated its country into 26 "cantons". Moreover Switzerland have only 7.8 million of citizens !!!
So divizing is not a problem, just a pretext claimed by all kind of tagalog-nationalists who want to continue to enjoy of their situation. Because the numbers of divisions in switzerland, as a proportion of philippines, it would mean 312 local states... So 14 is very little.
More freedom ? It implies that Police could not abuse of their position, and justice must to be independant.
Moreover, here, safety don't have enough funds to fight crimes. Then, strange rules exists : forcing people to stand up for the anthem for example. Loving a country must to come from heart, not force.
To finish, penalties here are too big (probably due to the lack of fund to fight crime). This country put a lot of people too long in prison, and don't fight to re-integrate ex-prisoners to the society. For example, some companies ask a police record before to hire a person : the ex-prisonner then must to be criminal again to survive in this jungle.
Economic freedom is also needed : Entreupreneurship and investment must to be totally free, without administrative authorisation. This rule would prevent 99% of the corruption. Property right of citizen and foreigners must to be respected.
- It should be forbiden for a governor to expulse someone from its house.
- It should be allowed for foreign companies investing here to own 100% of their company and their buildings.
- It should also be allowed that a foreign permanent resident can own 100% its house.
More democratic ?
When parties are privately financed, it means that church (= vatican country) can legally corrupt a party with its filipino priests and cardinals. Political parties must to be financed by only two ways to be democratic :
- public grants based on their results in elections (proportionally distributed)
- cotisations of their members on a price regulated by congress to be cheap
When you allow private funds, you allow two things :
- legal corruption
- you make impossible for a poor to win a presidential election
This is as simple as that. So it must to be changed.
Also, politicians here enjoys always of political amnesty. It is absolutly unacceptable in a democracy, only the president can have that during its mandate. Politicians and Judges must to be wisely controled by a special police anti-corruption, independant from ministers.
Following those rules would make Philippines really more democratic, and respecting freedom and local cultures. Switzerland is not the only one good example : Australia or Germany is another example of federation. However it is -in my opinion- the most appropriated to copy.
Also, following that rules would make people economically more free, but also wealthier because the economy would move faster, and filipino could enjoy exponentially of new-jobs created by foreign direct investment.
To finish, following these rules would give a chance to any local culture to growth as fast as possible contrary to the actual situation.
If you are lawyer or just passionated by laws, here is the switzerland constitution :
http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/sz__indx.html
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