Duterte urges next admin to initiate Cha-cha, recommends abolition of party-list system

President Rodrigo Duterte is calling on the next administration to immediately start the process of amending the Constitution with a recommendation to abolish the party-list system. which he said is being abused by leftist groups.

In his Talk to the People aired Thursday morning, Duterte said the next president should work at Charter change (Cha-cha) early on so as not to give the public the impression that they are vying for another term.

“Kung sino ang mag-presidente ngayon na papasok [whoever the next president is], it could be as good as any other time to initiate whether to convert Congress into a constituent body or magtawag ng [call for] constitutional convention but it is very expensive to do,” he said.

Duterte had pushed for a shift to a federal form of government as a means to address national economic and power imbalance. Under the proposed shift, the country would be divided into states that would be formed from the existing regions.

Party-list

In his Talk to the People, Duterte also suggested to the next administration to abolish the party-list system, claiming leftists are using it to “destroy” the government so they could replace it with their own.

“Although there are a very few, but still they participate in the government that they wish to destroy. ‘Yan ang nakakatawa diyan. Pumapasok sila sa gobyerno [that is funny because they enter the government], they participate in the governance process, and yet what they really want is to destroy that government at palitan nila ng kanila [so they could replace it with their own],” he added.

In a public address in March, Duterte identified Kabataan, Anakpawis, Bayan Muna, ACT Teachers and Gabriela as  “legal fronts of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).”

Bayan Muna party-list Representative Carlos Zarate, in response, accused Duterte of red-tagging, saying the President's claim was an election strategy against the opposition. —KBK, GMA News