Given the President’s political survival context which has recently undermined a more participatory and democratic process, all agreed that any charter change, if there is one, should happen only after the term of the Arroyo Administration. Except for the labor group which proposed a people’s initiative not to revise but only amend the Constitution, most groups agreed to a Constitutional Convention with many of them expressing the importance of the presence of a progressive national government leadership before attempting to change the social justice-biased and protectionist 1987 Constitution.

Recognizing the 1986 People Power revolution context, all the participants saw the current declaration of principles and social justice provisions of the 1987 Constitution to be progressive enough compared to the previous 1898, 1935, and 1971 Constitutions. These are the provisions that specifically enshrine a broad asset redistribution strategy in favor of landless rural and urban poor, including indigenous peoples and small fishers, and ensure meaningful participation of youth and women.

While the farmer, fisher, urban poor, and youth leaders did not see the need for significant content change in the Charter specifically in the provisions affecting their sectors, they also agreed on the need to strengthen the governance and implementing structures which may or may not need Constitutional amendment or revision. Other groups, however, believed that substantial change pertaining to their sector would be necessary. Labor favored an amendment to declare the State’s responsibility to guarantee “quality of life,” and not just “living wage” for the citizens and to consider labor not only as an economic but also as a political force. The indigenous peoples proposed the scrapping of the Regalian doctrine towards a vision of “nation of nations,” providing self-determination status both in property rights and in governance, not only to Muslim and Cordillera peoples but to all other indigenous peoples as well. Women favored a review of family concept and proposed incorporation of body self-determination concept.

With regard to the proposed governance structure such as the shift from unitary to federalism and from presidential to parliamentary, most leaders agreed on the need for further and substantial discussion on these proposals. Many were wary about the possible undermining of the implementation of existing asset reform legislations if federalism would be only defined as strengthening local governance given the predominance of local elite and warlords leadership. They were likewise wary at the parliamentary proposal which would mean the concentration and consolidation of powers at the national level also by the current political families and local warlords and not as a structure to democratize governance and ensure greater representation especially of the interest of vast majority of the basic sectors.

Participants to the RTD on federalism proposed a cautious shift to a federal system from the current unitary system with the transition considers as important factors a) the breadth of implementation of asset reform legislations, 2) ensuring the highest values such as social justice and human rights competencies lodged at the federal or national government, and 3) an asymmetric (i.e., giving greater autonomy to specific regions given some conditions) rather than a symmetric transition system. Participants to the RTD on the national patrimony/economic provisions, on the other hand, agreed on the need to dissect sectors that should be fully protected and those that we can open to greater liberalization. Given the many ways the current national patrimony provisions have already been undermined by the political leadership’s various legislative, executive, and judicial issuances, it was also stressed that the most crucial economic reforms are basically political in nature and therefore call for political system reforms. Also, instead of focusing on the question of ownership, it was agreed there should be strong provisions answering the vital economic questions of 'who controls' and 'who benefits.'

(Visit this site for periodic updates on the highlights of each of these sectoral roundtable discussions).