By Atty. Howie Calleja
As a global pandemic continues to grapple our nation, with no sign of slowing down, the talk of the town is not securing safe vaccines. Nor is it rolling out a swift and efficient inoculation program. It is not even addressing the growing disparity in healthcare, education, and income that has become even more exacerbated over a year of loss of life, and livelihood. No, the recent news cycle has been covering another attempt to push for charter change (“Cha-Cha”). It seems that, even in the face of a deadly virus, politicking shows no fear or restraint.
Over the past week, renewed talks of charter change have been brought to the attention of the public not just for its ill-timed (read: insensitive) initiative in the middle of a pandemic, but also for the proposals to allow foreign ownership to “open up” the economy. Not to mention that we are expected to trust legislators who don’t even understand how to convene a Constitutional Assembly, as they have attempted to ignore the bicameral nature of Congress, with amending the constitution.
The latest rounds of Cha-Cha attempts leave the constitutional safeguards that prevent foreign ownership of lands, public utilities, and mass media firms up for debate. Under the guise of “opening up the economy” are the proposed measures being pushed, but is this really for the benefit of the Filipinos? The rebuttal is a two-fold argument: first, a restrictive economy does not equate to a failing economy; and second, the constitutionally-mandated preferential treatment of Filipinos is not only in our best economic interest, it is tantamount to protecting our national sovereignty.
The narrative that foreign ownership will “cure” our failing post-COVID economy is one that conveniently ignores the economic growth that our neighbors in Southeast Asia have enjoyed, despite their own trials with the pandemic. Up until this past year, the Philippines’ economy was growing, and the Foreign Investments Act was safeguarding our constitutional mandate to uphold Filipinization of public lands and utilities, while allowing a steady incline in investments. Once the pandemic hit, and the sorry response of the administration halted any progress made, we’ve now turned to blaming the decline on “prohibitive” constitutional restrictions. In reality, the administration has only been made to face their own failures. This is further proved by the success of Vietnam, and other neighboring developing countries, in surpassing the Philippines in GDP per capita; largely due to the former’s pandemic response and success in containing the virus.
This also largely ignores the fact that foreign investments is not solely reliant on the ability to secure ownership of lands. In fact, since our all-time high in 2014 for Foreign Direct Investments, many economists have opined that it is our egregious human rights record, corruption in high government positions that create numerous hurdles for business, inconsistent judiciary system, and unstable trade climate (that has been further rocked by our pandemic response) that has deterred foreign investors.
As we contemplate allowing foreign ownership of lands and public utilities in the renewed Cha-Cha proposals, it would do our representatives well to remember that protecting our national sovereignty was once a promise of the Duterte campaign. Though it certainly a broken promise, it is incredibly hypocritical to openly advocate for foreign domination of our economic interests. Using Cha-Cha to open foreign ownership seems to be another mechanism to legitimize China’s encroachment in our businesses, our infrastructure, and, indeed, our territorial integrity. From the past year’s growth of Chinese-owned telecommunication companies, media groups, and preferential job treatment for Chinese citizens, the opportunity to own land will only put more Filipinos under the poverty line.
This is not solely a matter of Filipino pride, but a matter of national sovereignty. Indeed, the Supreme Court has recognized the spirit of the constitutional mandate of the Filipinization of public utilities to be an “express recognition of the sensitive and vital position of public utilities both in the national economy and for national security.”
The right to own land, public utilities, and mass media companies have previously been exclusively reserved for Filipinos and now the proposal to -effectively- hand over control of our national economy, directly contravenes the lessons learned from the Parity Amendment that granted American citizens the right to utilize and exploit natural resources and operate public utilities. The Filipino-First policy enshrined in our constitution was a vehement protest against our colonial past, where Filipinos were made to be second-class citizens in their own country. To allow, and advocate, for its removal sets our nation, rich in natural resources, on a dangerous path of sanctioning exploitation.
The clamor to “update” our constitution from 1987 to 2021 through Cha-Cha seems to be one that is willing to disregard the rights that we reclaimed from our colonial past. Indeed, our constitution was crafted with the ideals of the primacy of Filipino life, liberty, and livelihood. This recent push for Cha-Cha, and the continued rhetoric that only economic provisions are up for debate, only leave room for crafting a constitution that favors the majority. We must be wary; as, once the constituent assembly is open, there is nothing stopping the amendment or revision of any of our constitutional provisions regarding term limits, the party-list system, or even freedoms under the bill of rights.