The Philippines’ Quest for Federalism

Photo from PhilStar

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2018 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

The idea of a full federal system of “coming together” or shared sovereignty and “holding together” or shared governmental powers presumes symmetric and asymmetric balance of power in the electoral process.  But Filipino policymakers and scholars talk about decentralization but not federalism paramount to issues on fragmentation and secessionism. In this context, decentralization was perceived to be an effective means of diffusing power from the center that would effectively prevent an authoritarian regime. Hence the shift to federalism removes the restrictions to the martial law powers of the president as enshrined in the 1987 Constitution.   

Federalism can be taken advantage to deepen the discourse of devolution that flexes opportunity to implement reforms on amalgamation highlighting inter-local cooperation. Since 1967, Republic Act No. 5185 or the Decentralization Act was enacted to increase the financial resources and powers of local governments.

On the other hand, the Republic Act No. 7160 or the Local Government Code of the Philippines institutionalized a systemic allocation of powers and responsibilities between national and local governments. The Local Government Code assures that powers and structures of cities, municipalities, and barangays shall remain. However, not all regions are equal in terms of opportunities and resources; but proposed federal government shall be created to provide more funding support to depressed regions in order to accelerate development to equalize with other progressive regions, in which effect regions shall acquire more power to control over their funds and resources in pursuit of subsidiarity and solidarity.

Whether or not the fiscal decentralization succeeded or failed in the span of almost three decades, there have been no sharp improvements in local public service delivery. Fiscal autonomy becomes inutile when more local government units depend on the Internal Revenue Allotment from the Philippines national coffers. This will result to massive accountability from the central government where people will demand more services if they are paying their taxes properly. The dilemma also rises with the mismatch of the assignments of revenues and expenditures; on the contrary, local governments have not fully exploited their local taxing powers. In the end, the fiscal social contract should therefore feed accountability in all local levels. If national government refuses to be true to decentralization then policy implementation becomes the biggest challenge.

The current discourse on federalism catches the contours of the form rather on the substance of the subject that bespeaks accountability, transparency, democracy or autocracy. If the common denominator in the parlance of federalism in the Philippines calls for accountability and political participation, in spite of the form of the government, these values should have been the bases of founding a stronger government even before.

Benchmarking from the experiences of other countries on how federalism had worked on to their advantage is conceived as cultural expressions of their political aspirations and synergy to commit to innovative calls of their security environments. The Philippines should breed its own indigenous form of federalism as a prescription to alter the mindset and perspective of Filipino civil servants to assume proactive roles to stand with the aphorisms of the basic local governance as building blocks of robust nationhood.

Rhetoric on demystifying the spoiled Philippine political structures of overconcentration of central power in Imperial Manila, corruption, patronage politics, political dynasty, secessionism and terrorism can be addressed with the promising face of federalism. The devil is in the detail when political ambitions can be launched for an extension of power of leaders characterized by desynchronized or suspended local and national elections. This opens up a judicialization of politics which vest enough powers to key positions in the government.   

To counter such scenario, the Philippines’ emancipation from oligarchical system of clientelistic politics, political reforms must not be limited to relational dynamics between the balance of power of the central and local governments. Federalism must pave way for electoral and party reforms, debate on anti-political dynasty provision in the Constitution, amalgamation of fragmented local government units, restructuring of tax system, reconfiguration of the presidential system, and professionalizing the civil service.

The assurance that Filipinos shall fully enjoy the benefits of democracy by uplifting their lives espouses the campaign of a semi-parliamentary system with a strong presidential system, directly voted in tandem with the vice president. The president nominates the prime minister who will act as the chief executive officer of the country. However, this precludes a condition of a stronger party dynamics for which the president’s political survival relies on the strength of political parties supporting him that contradicts the nonexistence of strong parties in the Philippines.

More so, the promise of political participation insinuates the greater respect for ethnic diversity and political culture change which spans for intergeneration. The centuries-old reality of Philippine regionalism debunks the pitch that through federalism and decentralization, devolution of regional financial and political powers will wield good governance, peace and order, and competitiveness.