Farmers, fisherfolk, labor, urban poor, indigenous peoples, women, youth, and NGO leaders critiqued the research papers commissioned by the Coalition for a Citizens’ Constitution (C4CC) and presented in a series of nine round table discussions held in the months of July and August 2007. 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.
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