The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines is Flawed…
These flaws unfortunately contribute to all the major problems we continue to encounter in our daily lives as Filipinos. Massive Poverty, Massive Unemployment, Corruption, Rampant Criminality, Separatist Insurgency, Communist Trouble-making, Political Instability, Overcrowding in Metro Manila, Massive Traffic Jams, Pollution, the “drug mule” problem, dislocation from families among OFW’s, the Pork Barrel Scam, you name it — all these are symptoms of the systemic root problems caused by the flaws of the 1987 Constitution.
The CoRRECT™ Movement pushes for these main Three Constitutional Reforms:
Economic Liberalization
Dismantle Protectionism. Attract investors. Create more jobs.
If we are looking to increase the employment situation in the Philippines, then we must attract as many investors as possible by removing the restrictive provisions in the 1987 Constitution, so that MNC’s can invest & create employment opportunities.
Empower the regions, respect diversity, decongest Manila.
If we can amend the Constitution to allow for the Philippines to evolve towards Federalism, through gradual region-based decentralization, the regions & provinces of the Philippines can develop economically & the Capital can be decongested.
Platforms & Competence: True leadership, not popularity politics.
If we shift from our faulty and unstable Presidentialism over to Parliamentarism, we will gradually see a change in our politics as campaigns will focus more on parties and their platforms and less on name-recall & the personal popularity of candidates.
The Aussie Law YouTube site is operated by Renato Saeger M. Costa, a PhD in Law student at the University of Queensland. He’s originally from Brazil, but is an immigrant to Australia and occasionally...
The Forum of Federations is an international organization based in Ottawa, Canada. The Forum and its partners comprise a global network on Federalism. It brings together elected officials, civil servants and experts in federalism from...
(Originally entitled “Mr. John Gokongwei on Charter Change”) by Ducky Paredes (article from August of 2006) Mr. John, as his corporate family fondly refers to John Gokongwei, has always been known for being a...
Several Filipino politicians have recently said that the Philippine Government should not talk at all about Constitutional Reform and should – according to them – focus purely on the COVID-19 pandemic and crisis. But...
It’s about time the Philippines and all Filipinos started thinking straight regarding the Sabah issue and understanding that the most important part of the Sabah issue is what the People of Sabah themselves think...
Many of the anti-reform naysayers who do not have an evil vested interest in maintaining the status quo tend to go against procedural systemic reforms such as shifting from the Presidential System to the...
The late founding Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, had been invited by the Philippine Business Conference to address them back on November 18, 1992, not long after he had already stepped down...
by Dr. Jan Erk Dr. Jan Erk previously taught political science at Leiden University until September 2016. Prior to his departure, Jan Erk published his MOOC ‘Federalism and Decentralization: Evaluating Africa’s Track Record’. Currently,...
by the late Dr. Juan J. Linz As more of the world’s nations turn to democracy, interest in alternative constitutional forms and arrangements has expanded well beyond academic circles. In countries as dissimilar as...
ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION 1. Ano ang ibig sabihin ng pag-alis sa probisyong 60/40 sa ating Saligang Batas ng 1987? Ito ay ang pagbura ng Article 12 Sections 9 to 11 at iba pang mga probisyon...
The Federal-Parliamentary System is Preferable to a Federal-Presidential System: Sticking to the Presidential System may worsen Philippine Politics (This article came out of the book “Quest for a Federal Republic: The PDP-Laban Model of...
by Juan J. Linz (July 1985) INTRODUCTION In recent decades renewed efforts have been made to study and understand the variety of political democracies, but most of those analyses have focused on the patterns of political conflict...
(Lecture given by Dr. Negasso Gidada, Former President of the FDRE, for a group from University of Maryland as part of UMD Study Abroad- Ethiopia 2015: University of Maryland Program in Ethiopia: The Policy and Politics of...
by Geoffrey de Q. Walker (Professor Emeritus from the University of Queensland) (This article was originally taken from the Parliament of Australia website) The new `age of federalism’ Worldwide interest in federalism is probably stronger...
The Centrist proposals The Centrist proposals (CDPI, CDP, Lakas, 2004 ConCom and CDA) calls for a shift to a parliamentary-federal system, with a unicameral body, with the president as head of state and a...
Proposed Amendments to the 1987 Philippine Constitution The PDP Laban Model of PH Federalism: An Executive Summary The Philippines has a unitary system of government...
Back in the 1980’s there was an extremely popular TV show called Knight Rider. It featured a crime-fighter with a talking car named KITT, short for “Knight Industries Two-Thousand.” KITT was a high-tech Pontiac...
Winnie Monsod was being preposterous when she chided those individuals who rejected posts in Duterte’s cabinet because of the paltry pay. To paraphrase her, she said that they should not even be thinking about...
Of all the most important systemic and fundamental constitutional reforms that must be implemented in order to improve the Philippines, Federalism is the reform that has the most solid support among most ordinary Filipinos....
An insightful CoRRECTor, Louis Gerard del Rosario wrote a very good status update: Yes, a parliamentary system is a hard sell to many Filipinos, because it does not allow direct election of the head of...
If you didn’t already know, Bartolome Alberto Mott, whose nickname is “Tom” (from the ‘Tolome’ of his first name) and is better known to the entire Philippines as “Tom Rodriguez” is not just a...
These days, when you think about Singapore, you imagine a photo of the “three buildings with a boat on top.” If you have friends who have been to Singapore, they prove that they visited...
Why Both Roles Should Be Separate, Especially in the Philippine Setting I am no political scientist and I don’t claim to be one now in writing this. I am writing this based on my...
This old article from 27 April 2006 by Alex Magno emphasizes that Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia and the late Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore could only emerge from the electoral mechanisms of a...
(As a tribute to the great Singaporean statesman, Singapore’s first Prime Minister and visionary “Third World to First” leader who passed away early morning of March 23, 2015 (Monday morning), the CoRRECT™ Movement would like...
by Erwin S. Fernandez Abung na Panagbasay Pangasinan (House of Pangasinan Studies) Although José Rizal and Andrés Bonifacio met on some points in their politics, they diverged from their concepts of Philippine nation and...
*This was taken from a status update of a foreigner. Names withheld and disguised to protect their privacy. So, tonight after some grocery shopping, my personal assistant named Pilar asked me if I could...
After the recent revelations of the pork barrel scam, the patronage politics exposed during the Typhoon Yolanda Tragedy and the privileged speech revelations in Senate , it strikes me that the Government of the Philippines...
Note: This was originally a status update from FB that went viral. We were able to get permission to publish it from the lady who was able to speak with several survivors of Super-Typhoon...
Noong ika – pito ng buwan ng Nobyembre ng taong 2013, ang Republika ng Pilipinas ay nakaranas ng hagupit ng isang malakas na bagyo na may pangalang local na “Yolanda” at pangalang internasyonal na...
The writing is on the wall: “P-Noy” is losing support. As a result of the wrath of Typhoon Yolanda (aka “Haiyan”), Philippine President B.S. Aquino III has been exposed to the rest of the...
Once upon a time, there was an American Peace Corps volunteer named Sam. Sam was a nice, good-natured 29 year old White Anglo-Saxon American guy who stood tall at 6 ft 7′ and enjoyed...
The recent US Federal Government Shutdown has further proven to everyone around the World that the Presidential System is an extremely unreliable, buggy, flawed, and faulty system of government whose proneness to gridlock has...
Many Filipinos want to get rid of the Pork Barrel. But as mentioned in a previous article, it is necessary to understand the root causes of this “contraption” in order to come up with...
There has been some debate among Filipino netizens about what is more important when it comes to fixing the problems of the Philippines. Much of it has been centered on the flawed culture in...
There’s been a lot of anger expressed regarding Janet Nápoles, her daughter Jeane, their lavish lifestyles, and the Pork Barrel scam that funded it all. Everyone seems to be screaming about the need to...
Perfect timing. Just what we needed for the Constitutional Reform campaign… The Court of Appeals just recently reiterated its decision uphold the 1987 Constitution to ban FedEx from operating in the Philippines because its...
Yes, you read it right. We’re talking about Benign0 (the “Get Real Philippines” guy who uses the “Jimi Hendrix” avatar on the left) being just as clueless as his “namesake” Benigno S. Aquino III. Why...
by: Jan Emil Langomez Risa Hontiveros, Bam Aquino, Nancy Binay, Chiz Escudero: What do these political candidates have in common? It’s simple really, all were born and raised within Metro Manila. These “senatoriables” are...
Nancy Binay is joining in the Senatorial Race because she can and because she has the necessary name-recall in order to win. She’s joining the race because she has exactly what the current Philippine...
When all the three component reform initiatives – Economic Liberalization, Evolving Federalism, & the Parliamentary System, known collectively as the CoRRECT™ Three Point Agenda, are put together, the result is a potent solution that makes the Philippines more conducive to economic development and growth that can help get the Philippines moving up to First World status
This website aims to introduce the Philippine Public to the reasons behind the need for Constitutional Reform & Rectification for Economic Competitiveness & Transformation. We would like to introduce Filipinos to understand what are among some of the easy-to-solve issues that have continued to remain unsolved, simply because many of our leaders and elites have unfortunately been unable to look at root causes.
We are hit by many problems such as:
1) Chronic Unemployment & Mass Poverty.
This leads to high crime, misery among the masses, and even forces Filipinos to become OFW’s and sometimes get into desperate situations that lead them to become drug mules or get trafficked into prostitution.
Only Economic Liberalization by removing anti-FDI provisions in the Constitution will start solving that.
This leads to mass migrations from the regions towards Metro Manila and forces Filipinos to crowd themselves into the Capital where housing is a problem, causing our people to live in slums. Meanwhile, the rest of the country suffers.
Only Evolving Federalism by enshrining region-based decentralization in the Constitution will start solving that.
3) Political Instability, Misgovernance, Disrespect for Authority
Our current political system causes the Philippines to be one of the most chaotic and anarchic of countries in the region. We also have ended up with lousy governance and the adoption of wrong policies which have contributed to the lack of trust and respect among our people towards government and our authorities.
Only redefining the System of Government in the Constitution as a Parliamentary System will start solving that.
In case you are interested in helping out to craft a proposed constitution or set up amendments to the current Constitution, you may want to join in the
Virtual Constitutional Convention which is a wiki facility in this site that allows volunteers and other interested participants to propose constitutions or amend/edit other proposals. Click on the icon or HEREto go straight to it.
The Aussie Law YouTube site is operated by Renato Saeger M. Costa, a PhD in Law student at the University of Queensland. He's originally from Brazil, but is an immigrant to Australia and occasionally teaches…
The Forum of Federations is an international organization based in Ottawa, Canada. The Forum and its partners comprise a global network on Federalism. It brings together elected officials, civil servants and…
(Originally entitled "Mr. John Gokongwei on Charter Change")
by Ducky Paredes (article from August of 2006)
Mr. John, as his corporate family fondly refers to John Gokongwei, has always been known for…
Quezon City -- Veejay Villafranca/Bloomberg
Several Filipino politicians have recently said that the Philippine Government should not talk at all about Constitutional Reform and should - according to them…
Sabahans of different ethno-linguistic groups wearing their traditional ethnic attire (Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas)
It's about time the Philippines and all Filipinos started thinking straight regarding…
Many of the anti-reform naysayers who do not have an evil vested interest in maintaining the status quo tend to go against procedural systemic reforms such as shifting from the Presidential System to…
The late founding Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, had been invited by the Philippine Business Conference to address them back on November 18, 1992, not long after he had already stepped down as…
by Dr. Jan Erk
Dr. Jan Erk previously taught political science at Leiden University until September 2016. Prior to his departure, Jan Erk published his MOOC ‘Federalism and Decentralization: Evaluating…
by the late Dr. Juan J. Linz
As more of the world’s nations turn to democracy, interest in alternative constitutional forms and arrangements has expanded well beyond academic circles. In countries as…
Pindutin ang kada tanong para makita ang mga sagot...
ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION
1. Ano ang ibig sabihin ng pag-alis sa probisyong 60/40 sa ating Saligang Batas ng 1987?
Ito ay ang…
The Federal-Parliamentary System is Preferable to a Federal-Presidential System: Sticking to the Presidential System may worsen Philippine Politics
(This article came out of the book "Quest for a Federal…
by Juan J. Linz (July 1985)
INTRODUCTION
In recent decades renewed efforts have been made to study and understand the variety of political democracies, but most of those analyses have focused on the…
(Lecture given by Dr. Negasso Gidada, Former President of the FDRE, for a group from University of Maryland as part of UMD Study Abroad- Ethiopia 2015: University of Maryland Program in Ethiopia: The…
Canberra, Australia
by Geoffrey de Q. Walker (Professor Emeritus from the University of Queensland)
(This article was originally taken from the Parliament of Australia website)
The new `age of…
The Centrist proposals
The Centrist proposals (CDPI, CDP, Lakas, 2004 ConCom and CDA) calls for a shift to a parliamentary-federal system, with a unicameral body, with the president as head of state and a…
Proposed Amendments to the 1987 Philippine Constitution
The PDP Laban Model of PH Federalism: An Executive Summary
The Philippines has a unitary system of government by an accident of…
Back in the 1980’s there was an extremely popular TV show called Knight Rider. It featured a crime-fighter with a talking car named KITT, short for “Knight Industries Two-Thousand." KITT was a…
Winnie Monsod was being preposterous when she chided those individuals who rejected posts in Duterte's cabinet because of the paltry pay.
To paraphrase her, she said that they should not even be…
The Royal Exhibition Centre in Melbourne -- site of the first Federal Parliament of Australia, a perfect example of a country that uses a Federal-Parliamentary System.
Of all the most important…
Thousands watch the cortege of former President Cory Aquino along Sucat road in Parañaque City. MANNY MARCELO/PHOTO
An insightful CoRRECTor, Louis Gerard del Rosario wrote a very good status…
If you didn't already know, Bartolome Alberto Mott, whose nickname is "Tom" (from the 'Tolome' of his first name) and is better known to the entire Philippines as "Tom Rodriguez" is not just a pretty face.…
These days, when you think about Singapore, you imagine a photo of the "three buildings with a boat on top." If you have friends who have been to Singapore, they prove that they visited it with a photo of them…
Why Both Roles Should Be Separate, Especially in the Philippine Setting
I am no political scientist and I don’t claim to be one now in writing this. I am writing this based on my understanding of…
This old article from 27 April 2006 by Alex Magno emphasizes that Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia and the late Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore could only emerge from the electoral mechanisms of a Parliamentary…
(As a tribute to the great Singaporean statesman, Singapore's first Prime Minister and visionary "Third World to First" leader who passed away early morning of March 23, 2015 (Monday morning), the CoRRECT™…
by Erwin S. Fernandez
Abung na Panagbasay Pangasinan
(House of Pangasinan Studies)
Although José Rizal and Andrés Bonifacio met on some points in their politics, they diverged from their concepts of…
*This was taken from a status update of a foreigner. Names withheld and disguised to protect their privacy.
So, tonight after some grocery shopping, my personal assistant named Pilar asked me if I…
After the recent revelations of the pork barrel scam, the patronage politics exposed during the Typhoon Yolanda Tragedy and the privileged speech revelations in Senate , it strikes me that the Government…
Note: This was originally a status update from FB that went viral. We were able to get permission to publish it from the lady who was able to speak with several survivors of Super-Typhoon Haiyan (local…
Noong ika - pito ng buwan ng Nobyembre ng taong 2013, ang Republika ng Pilipinas ay nakaranas ng hagupit ng isang malakas na bagyo na may pangalang local na “Yolanda” at pangalang internasyonal na…
The writing is on the wall: "P-Noy" is losing support. As a result of the wrath of Typhoon Yolanda (aka "Haiyan"), Philippine President B.S. Aquino III has been exposed to the rest of the entire world as…
Once upon a time, there was an American Peace Corps volunteer named Sam. Sam was a nice, good-natured 29 year old White Anglo-Saxon American guy who stood tall at 6 ft 7' and enjoyed playing basketball. Sam…
The recent US Federal Government Shutdown has further proven to everyone around the World that the Presidential System is an extremely unreliable, buggy, flawed, and faulty system of government whose…
Many Filipinos want to get rid of the Pork Barrel. But as mentioned in a previous article, it is necessary to understand the root causes of this "contraption" in order to come up with a truly effective…
By the way, Pork is forbidden in the Old Testament.
There has been some debate among Filipino netizens about what is more important when it comes to fixing the problems of the Philippines. Much of it has…
There's been a lot of anger expressed regarding Janet Nápoles, her daughter Jeane, their lavish lifestyles, and the Pork Barrel scam that funded it all. Everyone seems to be screaming about the need to…
Perfect timing. Just what we needed for the Constitutional Reform campaign...
The Court of Appeals just recently reiterated its decision uphold the 1987 Constitution to ban FedEx from operating in the…
Yes, you read it right.
We're talking about Benign0 (the "Get Real Philippines" guy who uses the "Jimi Hendrix" avatar on the left) being just as clueless as his "namesake" Benigno S. Aquino III. Why…
by: Jan Emil Langomez
Risa Hontiveros, Bam Aquino, Nancy Binay, Chiz Escudero: What do these political candidates have in common?
It’s simple really, all were born and raised within Metro Manila. These…
Nancy Binay is joining in the Senatorial Race because she can and because she has the necessary name-recall in order to win.
She's joining the race because she has exactly what the current Philippine system…
By Rep. Florencio B. Abad
It is unfortunate that enlightened debate about the proposed shift in the form of government has been hampered by allegations of hidden motives by Senate leaders and by a public…
People often wonder about what determines the success of a society. Is it the culture or is it the system? Quite recently, as the debate on Constitutional Reform progresses and as more and more people realize…
Herman Tiu-Laurel: Anti-Foreign Direct Investment yet he is wearing Western business suit, speaking English, writing in English in his column, and is partly Chinese. Certified hypocrite. Real…
(originally published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, 21st November 2012)
by Peter Wallace
Let me give you a few points to ponder when considering whether or not we need to open up the economy by…
(Borrowed from the Far Eastern Economic Review)
by William McGurn (June 1994)
Editor's note: While it is true that this is an old article from June 1994, the author William McGurn's analysis is so…
Dr. Gerardo Sicat
(taken from the Philippine Star - originally published: 13 June 2012)
by Dr. Gerardo Sicat
As economic opportunity knocks on the country, the question is how to maximize the…
Billy Esposo is awarded a medal by the oligarchs for defending Monopoly by the Oligarchs and fighting against enabling job creation through Constitutional Reform
Almost nineteen months ago, Orion wrote an…
Competition forces you to shape up, or ship out!
It is well-known that the concept of healthy and fair competition has the effect of an "invisible hand" that essentially results in benefits and…
The PhD President: Respected by leaders of developed and progressive countries; envied and villified by small-minded, rumor-mongering, TFC-watching and ABiaS-CBN-brainwashed Pinoys
By Dr. Gloria Macapagal…
Tara, party!
Once upon a time, may isang galanteng gustong mag-imbita sa kanyang mga kaibigan na mag-party sa bahay...
Mr. GALANTE: "Uy mga kaibigan, MAY PARTY AKO SA SABADO!! Kainan, Inuman, Kantahan,…
Every single time there are Filipinos who go against Constitutional Reform, it’s always a matter of ignorance and wrong facts.
The people who are against these reforms simply do not understand it. Their knowledge about the current system is so flawed that they think that the current system is ok. They have very little understanding of what a true functioning system ought to be like, and as a result, they make the mistake of assuming that the system in the Philippines is ok.
Worse, their understanding of the reforms being pushed is also extremely substandard. They don’t know how economics works and don’t understand that by being more open to Foreign Direct Investors by removing the anti-FDI restrictions and 60/40 clauses in the Constitution actually goes a long way in attracting more investors to come in. They go against what they do not understand. Then there’s their lack of understanding of what Federalism is or how it works. They often fail to realize that some of the countries they admire the most such as the USA, or others like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland happen to use Federalism.
And then there’s their utter ignorance about the Parliamentary System. They don’t know what it is or how it works, and oftentimes, they mistakenly think that the late Ferdinand Marcos’ Martial Law system was a Parliamentary System, when actually, we never had a functioning parliamentary system under Ferdinand Marcos during Martial Law, and afterwards, when it was lifted and Cesar Virata who was Finance Minister was made Prime Minister, that still wasn’t a parliamentary system as it was actually more like a Peruvian-style Presidential System, appearing Semi-Presidential like the French, but with the President fully in control, and the Prime Minister acting purely as an underling of the president.
Ultimately, the biggest problem is a lack of knowledge.
This website seeks to cure that problem by providing all the relevant information and knowledge so that more and more Filipinos can be informed and enlightened about what these reforms are and why we desperately need them.
The Philippines Must Learn from Singapore
Singapore used to be much poorer and less developed than the Philippines back in the 1950s and 1960s, but as a result of policies designed to make Singapore much more open to foreign direct investors & multinational corporations, S’pore attracted more companies to come in. More jobs were created and unemployment & poverty were drastically reduced. As a result, S’pore became the richest in Asia. On the other hand, the Philippines with its highly restrictive anti-foreign investor restrictions in the 1987 Constitution, continues to turn investors off, making jobs scarce – keeping most Filipinos poor & desperate.
Singapore serves as a perfect example as the Philippines can easily learn to be open to foreign direct investors and multinational corporations in order to create more jobs. In the interest of political stability, the Philippines can also learn from how Singapore’s parliamentary system firstly allowed it to be able to end up with competent leaders like founding father Lee Kuan Yew and his People’s Action Party and see how it tends to be much more stable, efficient, and less prone to corruption. Lastly, because the Philippines is much bigger than Singapore, emulating Singapore requires that the Philippines autonomize its regions so that the regions all act each like Singapore and together attract investments and improve their own economies.
It’s also worth noting that Malaysia – whose majority Malays & Bumiputras are culturally similar to Filipinos – took many key learnings and insights from Singapore too. As a result, Malaysia is also one of the ASEAN region’s better economies. It’s time to quit being Asia’s Basketcase of Wasted Democrazy!