We need to change our Constitution. We need to change it because it has failed.
The failure is self-evident: 35 years after the 1987 Constitution, nearly 80% of the people consider themselves poor or near-poor. Since its promulgation, our economy has fallen farther behind its neighboring peers. We have become more import-dependent than ever, most especially for food. Our manufacturing sector has shrunk. Low productivity services power our economy. About a tenth of our population have sought greener pastures as OFWs abroad, ripping apart families.
More sadly, education has deteriorated. Filipino schoolchildren are as much as 10 years behind their regional peers in educational attainment. This will doom the next generation to fewer opportunities and dismal options.
It’s not only in the economic field is the failure self-evident. We have failed to set up a rule of law. Dynastic politics, not accountable political parties, dominate the political system. Our institutions, most especially our bureaucracy, are weak, inefficient, and corrupt.
Why has the 1987 Constitution failed us?
It has failed us because of its flawed economic model. It produced and promoted a rent-seeking system. Rent-seeking is the manipulation of public policy to produce or increase profits. It’s also about generating wealth without increasing value (e.g., monopoly rent) or extracting wealth without increasing productivity.
To understand why and how this happened, we must understand the 1987 Constitution’s history.
The 1987 Constitution is a product of the 1986 People Power Revolution. It was an anti-dictatorship revolution that sought to dismantle the authoritarian regime of former President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. That revolution was a product of a political coalition that included the anti-Marcos rightist oligarchy, the Catholic Church, anti-dictatorial social democratic and other left-leaning forces from the professionals and middle class. The radical left (CPP-NPA), although it erroneously boycotted the 1986 elections and therefore lost the political leadership of the mass movement that toppled the dictatorship, was still part of the coalition because its military arm, which had grown to about 20,000 or more armed fighters, was a decisive force against the dictatorial regime. It was, therefore, not surprising that one of the first acts of former President Corazon Aquino, acting as head of a revolutionary government, was to free Jose Ma. Sison, a.k.a. “Amado Guerrero,” founder and chairman of the revitalized CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines).
The 1987 Constitution reflected the interests and ideology of the anti-dictatorship coalition.
The anti-Marcos rightist oligarchy got protectionist Filipino First and Filipino Only provisions in the Constitution. However, these provisions were not really “new” or “revolutionary.” It was a carryover of some of the protectionist provisions in the 1935 and 1973 Constitutions. What was new was the expansion of these provisions, for example, to mass media and advertising and putting Filipino First in the Constitution. (“Filipino First” in the 1950s referred to prioritization in access to vital foreign exchange, which was then being cornered by established American corporations, but the 1987 Constitution elevated Filipino First in the Constitution and not just access to foreign exchange.)
Ironically, however, in the Philippines, both the Right and the Left have the same protectionist, anti-foreign investment ideology. That is the dialectical irony: the identity and unity of opposites. Both the Left and Right are one. The protectionist ideology of the Left stems from its view of equating “economic nationalism” with its anti-foreign imperialist, anti-neocolonial ideology. The so-called patriotic businessmen were considered by the Left as “nationalist bourgeoisie” or anti-foreign (actually, rent-seeking) businessmen who were considered political allies under the National Democratic Front. In contrast, the protectionist ideology of the Right stems from its desire to prevent competition and extract monopoly rent.
The Catholic Church, a vital player in the People Power Revolution, got the Constitution to effectively bar abortion. (Section 12, Article II.)
Reflecting the leftist and statist ideology of the People Power coalition, the Constitution is full of terms like “regulating capitalism” and “distributive justice.” Article XIII states that “… the State shall regulate the acquisition, ownership, use, and disposition of property and its increments.” The Constitution is very statist and regulatory in its orientation. Moreover, the call for distributive justice mandates asset reform, whether on land, fishing rights, or exploitation of natural resources.
The emphasis is on asset reform or distribution, rather than on development or production.
These two major themes in the Constitution — Protectionism and Statism — produced a rent-seeking economic system. Protectionism led to the dominance of inefficient and rent-seeking monopolies and oligopolies. As a result, the Philippines became the most concentrated economy in Asia, i.e., monopolies and oligopolies dominate the economy. On the other hand, statism led to a regulatory, corrupt, inefficient, and predatory state. Protectionism further reinforced corruption and bureaucratic weakness because penetrating and weakening the state led to rent profits. Rent-seeking, not dynamic capitalism, shaped the rules of the economic game.
Protectionism, which fostered the absence of competition and discouraged foreign investment, also explains the lack of investment and domestic capacity in the Philippine economy. Therefore, the country remains dependent on imports, whether food or machinery.
Statism also doomed land reform, which is mandated under the 1987 Constitution. A corrupt and inefficient state replaced the landlord. Moreover, instead of the agrarian reform beneficiaries being given economic freedom when the land was given to them, they were saddled with all sorts of state regulations and restrictions. In the name of “distributive justice,” successful farmers weren’t allowed to expand with a land retention limit of five hectares. This lack of economic freedom for the farmers has led to the present dismal state of agricultural production.
The Philippines is the mirror image of Chile. Chile had a rightist, pro-market Constitution after the military deposed the socialist Allende in 1973. As a result, Chile became the most prosperous country in South America. It scores high in the Americas in competitiveness, economic freedom, and human development. However, after decades of prosperity, the economy suffered from high-income inequality, environmental degradation, and lack of inclusion.
Therefore, in reaction to the increased prosperity without inclusion, Chileans set a Constitutional Convention in 2021 to rewrite the Constitution and voted a 35-year-old radical leftist, Gabriel Boric, to the presidency. However, the framers of the new Chilean Constitution went too far, and the proposed Constitution was deemed too radical and rejected by the voters in a referendum.
Like Chile, we need to reframe our Constitution, but in the opposite direction, away from the protectionist, statist, Yellow-leftist economic model that has failed Philippine society. This is the reason why the voters overwhelmingly voted to return a Marcos back to power. The Marcos mandate is a reflection of the failures of the People Power revolution and its 1987 Constitution and a message to reverse course.
It’s the economic model of the Constitution that urgently needs to be changed, not whether the government is presidential or parliamentary, federal or unitary.
The external environment is now less benign and more challenging for the country than during the period after the 1987 Constitution was promulgated. The period after the 1987 Constitution saw the end of the Cold War, the rise of globalization, and the Great Moderation (economic stability and low inflation). However, presently, we are in a new era of deglobalization, climate change, Great Power rivalry, and rising inflation. Dribbling or doing reforms at the margins won’t be enough. We need an overhaul of the dysfunctional economic model embedded in the 1987 Constitution if we are going to lift our people out of poverty amidst a harsh geopolitical environment.
It behooves President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., therefore, to respond to the mandate given him and fulfill his historic destiny by calling for a change in our Constitution.
Calixto V. Chikiamco is a member of the board of IDEA (Institute for Development and Econometric Analysis).