By Gonzalo Duque 

 

I have not written about Speaker Joe de Venecia for quite some time until I saw a personal invitation for his 90th birthday in Manila to be celebrated on December 28, instead of his December 26th birthdate.

There are a lot of stories to be told about the life of Manong Joe. It will take a lot of lines here in my column to be able to capture his life story.

One thing I can say about Manong Joe is that he is a survivor, having outlived a lot of political leaders in our country. Some close friends attribute his longevity to his big, long ears.

Suffice it to say that it was a distinct honor and privilege for me to have competed with him twice as a congressman right after the 1987 Constitution was promulgated by a Constitutional Commission and ratified by the Filipino people.

Manong Joe served five times as Speaker of the House, a monumental feat unsurpassed in the history of the House of Representatives.

Since 1987, the congressional seat of the Fourth District of Pangasinan has revolved around Manong Joe, his wife, Manay Gina de Venecia, and their son, Christopher.

My good friend, Jaime Aquino, is continuing to write the story of the family of Manong Joe.

Will he succeed?

I doubt!

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If there is one thing that caught my attention recently is the issue of political dynasty.

President BBM recently certified to Congress that the issue of political dynasty should be a priority for legislation, short of certifying that it is urgent. 

Mukhang nagpapa-pogi lang si PBBM. 

The issue of political dynasty had long been pending in the halls of Congress since the 1987 Constitution was ratified by our people.

Our constitution has declared as a policy that a political dynasty should be removed from our system. 

But the mistake of those who framed our Constitution is that instead of detailing the prohibition on political dynasty, they left it to Congress to enact an enabling law.

It was doomed to fail because our lawmakers would not enact any law that would prohibit their families from occupying different elective and appointive positions in our government.

 Another constitutional infirmity that should have been corrected since the inception of the 1987 Constitution is the policy on party turn-coatism.

You see, when a new President is elected into office, our lawmakers easily jump to the party of the incumbent President so that he or she may gain his or her favor during his or her incumbency.

The problem becomes worse when our Constitution cannot even tell us whether we are under a presidential or parliamentary system of government. 

This should have been cleared if we were to strengthen our party system.

 My stake on this matter is that the presidential system is alright as long as the two-party system is in place.

And to make our government work better, we must revisit the provisions of the Local Government Code, giving more power to the Regional Development Council, short of saying that we should have a Federal system of government in place.#