Likening the island of Luzon to a wild chicken that needed to be tamed, a consultant of the Davao-based Kilos Pederal sa Pagbabago called on federalism advocates to concentrate their efforts in converting the island to support the shift to a federal form of government.
“Visayas and Mindanao are with us but we need to win over the island of Luzon since it is there were resistance is great,” Architect Florencio “Chito” Gavino told a regional training of trainers for a speakers’ bureau hosted by the Department of the Interior and Local Government under regional director Alex C. Roldan on October 11 at the Grand Menseng Hotel.
Roldan said the activity was held to train a multi-sectoral pool of speakers on the content of the draft federal Constitution as proposed by the Consultative Committee.
Roldan said the activity would also fine tune speakers’ responses to the question, ‘Why do we need to amend the Constitution?”
Gavino said amending the Constitution was a do or die proposition to heal a sick society ‘through real social transformation.’
He said this sickness is manifested in the ‘tatsulok’ configuration of a Philippine society characterized by a few very rich families at the top, lesser number of middle-income families in the center and multitudes of poor families at the bottom.
He said these ‘divisions’ is worsened by insurgency, rampant criminalities, corruption, rapid population growth and a degraded environment.
Gavino provided the participants with a module on social transformation prepared by the Kilos Pederal sa Baguio in converting people to support federalism.
Characterized by a question and answer format, the module provided answers on the meaning of real social transformation, the need to undergo system or structural reform and the need to bring about people reform.
It is spiced with mental exercises or ‘palaisipan’ that is geared to convince people on the need for a more efficient and effective government system.
The mental exercises examined the defects of a unitary or highly-centralized government as compared to a highly decentralized federal system of government.
Gavino said the module can be adopted by groups or government agencies taking up the cause of federalism, adding the module is certain to tame ‘wild chickens’ opposed to charter change or federalism. (jkl)
