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©New Straits Times
(Used by permission)
by John Teo
 THE Arroyo administration in the Philippines has just one full year left in
office and is refusing to let slip any chance it gets to amend the country's
constitution. What happens there, as I always believe, is of more than passing
relevance to Malaysia.
Rather remarkably, the post-Marcos Philippine constitution
has remained intact and unamended all these 20 or so years. It is not for lack
of trying, however, and certainly not for any lack of convincing arguments for
some long-overdue tinkering.
The most pressing argument appears to be for removing some overly protectionist
economic clauses that have seen the country starved of desperately needed
foreign investment. The most memorable case in point for Malaysians was when our
investors won a bid for a hotel (albeit the notable Manila Hotel) only to be
challenged in court by the local bidder, who won his case for the hotel to be
designated as "national patrimony" that cannot be sold off to foreigners. As
well, even though the continuing human suffering is now mostly out of the public
eye, the simmering insurgency in Mindanao cries out for urgent enabling legal
foundations to effect real political autonomy for the Muslim minority within the
Philippine nation.
It was during the presidency of Fidel Ramos that an initiative to remove the
constitutional stricture of a single six-year presidential term was shot down.
The move had been as much to extend Ramos' tenure as to avert the widely
expected "disaster" otherwise of Joseph Estrada's election in Ramos' place.
Within just the past week, a noted Philippine journalist was still describing
the denial of Ramos' term-extension bid as a "triumph of democracy", even after
what we all now know was a sad turn for Philippine democracy following Estrada's
election.
Philippine democracy seems only to have gone from bad to
worse ever since, and all because some powerful forces within the country are
implacably opposed to any constitutional changes, even if they concede the
merits of some arguments for them.
Now, as before, one of the arguments against any constitutional amendment
appears to be that some current incumbents in high office -- most notably
President Gloria Arroyo -- may benefit from it. Yet, if that piece of logic is
always applied, it will preclude ever amending the Philippine constitution as
presumably there will always be office incumbents who may stand to benefit from
successfully engineering constitutional changes.
It would appear that the Philippines, more than any other developing democracy
in the region, is especially prone to seeing the sound democratic principle of
constitutional checks and balances running amok and wreaking havoc on the health
and vitality of a functioning democracy.
This constitutional straitjacket has spawned the rise and recurrence of the
peculiarly Filipino phenomenon of "people power" in the perpetual popular quest
for political ideals and the equally perennial denial of any possibility of
practical perfection.
This potentially dangerous virus has since transplanted itself abroad, to
Thailand most recently, with an altogether unhappy saga still unfolding amid an
unending political stalemate.
I often wonder if such dangerous bugs afflicting our neighbours ever give
Malaysians any reason to pause and seriously reflect. Or, as with the case of
the really life-threatening HIV/AIDS virus, nobody ever seriously thinks they
will catch it until they actually do.
Our own democracy is no doubt growing with renewed vigour, which can only be
good. Our panoply of political checks and balances -- informal as well as
institutional -- is always in play. At any given time, certain forces assert
themselves more while others yield. The ever-changing dynamics and constant
countercurrents produce a balance and equilibrium, of sorts.
Perhaps we too often give short shrift to our own peculiarly Malaysian political
dynamics and its surprising durability and efficacy. Perhaps it is time we
recognised it for what it is: inoculation against polity-threatening bugs let
loose in the neighbourhood.
Then again, perhaps not. It is always best to err on the side of extreme caution
in such matters. And most especially in the case of our ever-so-delicate social
fabric, where the stakes of any irreparable tear are particularly high for all
of us.
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