If we are only talking of a computer whose program became all messed up, hitting the reset button will normally fix things quickly. But we are a country of 120 million souls so things are more complicated.
Getting all the elected officials to resign and be forbidden to run in a snap election may seem like a reset for the sick man of Asia that the doctor prescribed. But it is not that simple.
To begin with, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano who proposed it may have ulterior motives. He may think that having all elected officials resign will wipe out all their sins that have so angered our people. They will insist they don’t have to return their ill-gotten wealth nor go to jail.
That kind of reset doesn’t work. People must go to jail and their ill-gotten wealth confiscated by the state or no one will take us seriously as a nation, not even us. We must restart with a clean slate.
The French Revolution modeled a restart that works. But it was bloody. We will be happy to just send the bastards to jail and confiscate their ill-gotten wealth.
Unfortunately, that seems to be beyond our ability to do as a nation. South Korea routinely sends their presidents to jail. Thailand recently jailed a once very powerful prime minister. In our case, we needed the International Criminal Court to make Duterte accountable for his crimes while in office.
We have a Constitution. But when push comes to shove, we shove it aside and take short cuts. A Cayetano-style reset messes up our reputation as a country that claims to respect the rule of law.
For the moment, the constitutional approach to a reset depends on BBM and his newly appointed Ombudsman, Boying Remulla. If we go by BBM’s established lackadaisical style of leadership, things can go wrong.
However, BBM now looks like he seriously means it when he says there are no sacred cows. To see is to believe.
Those of us from UP know Remulla and Martin Romualdez are fraternity brothers in Upsilon Sigma Phi. And they normally protect each other, right or wrong.
Except Kiko Pangilinan. He had the guts to go against the wishes of his fraternity when Kiko, as student regent, had to cast his vote for the next UP president. Can Remulla do that?
Kiko was expelled from the fraternity for not upholding the brotherhood. But years later, the Upsilonians took him back because his expulsion was silly and Kiko was right.
Still, these Upsilonians aren’t all hopeless. One other Upsilonian, Ninoy Aquino, went against Ferdinand Marcos Sr., another Upsilonian.
Furthermore, I heard that Remulla told his friends he had an ‘awakening’ when he became seriously ill and wasn’t sure he would survive. He now supposedly claims he just wants to do what is right.
Can we depend on Remulla’s spiritual awakening? Undoubtedly, he is an improvement over his predecessor.
Nevertheless, we have no choice but to force ourselves to believe BBM when he said no sacred cows, no relatives, walang ka-alyado, walang kapartido. We must keep the public pressure for him to behave.
Because people are now very angry and skeptical, if BBM and the new Ombudsman are seen protecting anyone, things could get very bad. even a hard reset.
This reset business brings us to an urgent need to revise our 1987 Constitution. Times have drastically changed over the last 38 years. We must update our Constitution to make it relevant to our lives today.
There are some silly provisions that must be removed to save us further international embarrassment. The provision limiting ownership of mass media, even advertising agencies to Filipinos, is plainly irrelevant and stupid.
Even before the digital age came about, satellites made mass media go beyond borders. Whatever reasons the framers of the Constitution might have had for that provision no longer apply. More so now with the internet, unless we want to put up something like The Great Firewall of China.
Since the presidential system has clearly not worked, we should try another one. The parliamentary system would have given us a quick constitutional reset option now. A vote of no confidence is all it takes to start anew. And if that doesn’t work, dissolving parliament and having a snap election is constitutional.
We do not need such a large contingent of congressmen costing the taxpayers more money than should be spent for the purpose of legislation. We also do not need a Senate, at least not the Senate we have now.
A unicameral legislature of about 100-150 members should be more than enough. And no more party list. The party list may have been a good concept but a Supreme Court decision bastardized it. Rich people ended up representing security guards and motorcycle delivery men.
A revised Constitution should also make the provision on political dynasties immediately implementable with no need for enabling legislation from Congress or Parliament.
We should also take the opportunity to make the new Constitution more friendly to open competition in the economy. No more provisions that provide rent-seeking opportunities for our blood-sucking economic elite. Foreign direct investments should be welcomed like what our ASEAN neighbors did.
Yes, a reset is needed to get us out of our mess. We should learn our lessons from history that brought us from being the second-best economy in the region to a basket case in less than 50 years.
For now, let’s first clear the deck of the corruption scandals that have tarnished our reputation.
BBM and the Ombudsman must show we have what it takes to deal with corruption: the corrupt must face the certainty of punishment and be thrown in jail and ill-gotten wealth confiscated. That’s what other civilized countries do.