De Lima thumbs down Charter change, calls it ‘trabahong tamad’

Detained Senator Leila De Lima on Wednesday expressed "strong" opposition to the Duterte administration's push for Charter change, calling it "trabahong tamad."

In a statement, De Lima, who chairs the Senate Committee on Electoral Reforms and People's Participations, said that the plan of President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies to revise the Constitution appears to be self-serving.

“Like someone who, after being confronted by the demands of real, hard work—or what we call public service—suddenly gives up and blames the Constitution for their failures,” she said.

“At worst, all those are just pretext. The proponents really want something else, and they’re trying hard to make sure we can’t see through their pretense,” she added.

De Lima said it is difficult to entrust the revision of the Constitution to an administration “that has shown susceptibility to abuse power, to allow impunity to prosper, and to repeatedly lie to the public,” said the press release from the senator's office.

“If we can’t trust them to tell the truth, how can we trust them when they say that they are only looking out for the interests of the Filipino people?” she said.

The opposition senator said the proposed Charter change by the President's party, PDP-Laban, which would ultimately lead to a shift to a federal form of government, will most likely not be representative of the general will of the people.

She said that there are two critical aspects of federalism in PDP-Laban's proposal that show that there will only be one single nationally elected government official, which is the President, while the daily operations of the government will be handled by a Prime Minister, elected by the parliament upon the nomination of the President.

"We can also see how a similar set-up works in China, when it is only the Communist Party that makes all decisions, even about the recent constitutional amendment that has now allowed President Xi Jinping to stay in power indefinitely, far beyond the two-consecutive term limit that was in effect up until now,” De Lima said.

“Does that scenario seem increasingly familiar in the Philippine context, too? You be the judge,” she added.

De Lima said that in reality, especially in the Philippines, the will of the people does not matter. What does, she said, is what the "strong leader" wants.

"What he wants, he gets. To hell with the people—they can’t be trusted to know what’s good for them anyway,” she said.

The Duterte administration has been pushing for a shift to a federal form of government as a means to address issues particularly in strife-torn Mindanao. — BM, GMA News