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House draft charter better than Puno Commission's version: constitutionalist

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ABS-CBN News

MANILA - The federal charter passed by the House of Representatives is &quot;better&quot; than the version submitted by a consultative committee &quot;in some instances,&quot; one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution said Friday.The House&#x27;s federal charter was described by legal experts as &quot;fake&quot; and &quot;grotesque&quot; after it removed term limits for elected officials and lifted a ban on political dynasty that was imposed in the draft crafted by the 23-man committee headed by former Chief Justice Reynato Puno.&quot;The local government provisions are there. In other words there is decentralization. In other words, the House version is still unitary and if you read the provisions, they do not say federated states. They say autonomous regions,&quot; Christian Monsod, who helped craft the 1987 Constitution, told ABS-CBN News.&quot;It is really enhanced autonomy, not federalism,&quot; Monsod, who was against the shift to federalism, said.<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">The House version may be better in some instances than the draft federal constitution proposed by President Duterte&#x27;s consultative committee, says Atty. Christian Monsod. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ANCEarlyEdition?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ANCEarlyEdition</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ANCRecap?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ANCRecap</a> <a href="https://t.co/3fioj8Exja">pic.twitter.com/3fioj8Exja</a>— ABS-CBN News Channel (@ANCALERTS) <a href="https://twitter.com/ANCALERTS/status/1073371978222850048?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2018</a></blockquote><div><script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charSet="utf-8" type="text/javascript"></script></div>President Rodrigo Duterte may have simply wanted to decentralize power from Manila, even without overhauling the charter, he said.&quot;I think federalism to him was a very convenient buzz word during the elections but what I think he really meant was fiscal decentralization, decentralization of powers, decentralization of resources in able to allow the outlying areas to catch up on development with Manila,&quot; he said.The House, however, &quot;cannot be trusted with that task&quot; of overhauling the entire constitution as the lawmakers allegedly failed to &quot;prove their sincerity,&quot; he said.The 1987 Constitution did not put a provision on political dynasties because it trusted the Congress to determine that for themselves, Monsod said.&quot;They slept on the job and now they are blaming the constitution,&quot; he said.&quot;If this Congress is really sincere about radical social change and the dismantling of feudalism, why don&#x27;t they enact a law now?&quot; he said.&quot;How can you trust people, who cannot even prove their sincerity, with a change in structure with so many changes needed in the law? How can you trust them when they have shown that they cannot be trusted with that task?&quot; he said.It would be better to just &quot;improve the local government code&quot; to achieve Duterte&#x27;s promise of decentralizing power away from the capital, Monsod said.&quot;All we really need is to implement fully the present Constitution,&quot; he said.&quot;My premise is our problems today is rooted in feudalism that we haven&#x27;t been able to change, mass poverty and gross inequality and they are all provided in the present constitution,&quot; he said.

The federal charter passed by the House of Representatives is "better" than the version submitted by a consultative committee "in some instances", one of the framers of the 1986 Constitution said Friday.

The federal charter passed by the House of Representatives is "better" than the version submitted by a consultative committee "in some instances", one of the framers of the 1986 Constitution said Friday.