MANILA – President Rodrigo Duterte’s silence on federalism during his fourth State of the Nation Address (SONA) is a testament that Charter Change (Cha-Cha) is not one of his priorities anymore.
Opposition senator Franklin Drilon said in a statement that Duterte’s non-mention of federalism and Cha-Cha, one of the President’s top campaign promises, speaks volumes.
“What’s more telling in the President’s speech is not what he said but what he did not say,” Drilon said.
The non-inclusion of federalism indicates that the Cha-cha was laid to rest, according to the senator.
“The SONA became Cha-Cha’s final resting place,” Drilon said.
During his post-SONA press conference, President Duterte said that, while he is still up for a federal government, he is not seeing it happening in his term.
“Federalism is good but there are certain things that you have to be very clear,” Duterte said. “It’s better left in conferences that are not allowed to be open to the public.”
President Duterte has been pushing since the start of his term for a shift to a federal from the current presidential form of government as a means to address national economic and power imbalances.
“One is that it devolves a lot of authority to the local governments, regional. It must be something like the president. I suppose that it would come after me. But it has to have a strong president to put together the country,” he added.
Duterte’s proposed shift has yet to pass Congress, which is dominated by his allies, despite amendments proposed by the Consultative Committee chaired by former Chief Justice Reynato Puno./PN
