Part 3
A CONSTITUTION is one of the highest manifestations of an ordered and civilized society. A written document created as consensual repository of all a people’s social, cultural, economic, political traditions, values and ideals. Thus, juxtaposing present-day pocket campaigns supporting a federal form of government referenced from contextual historiography of Philippine constitutions, and traced to our “founding fathers,” additionally validates preponderant absence of such concept and style of governance, as prescription for the nation. Succeeding revised charters, corroborates the aforementioned as result of lessons learned in a verifiable time line. A vernal age of heroes, tutoring for greater unity, to de-emphasize tribal or regional identities and contentions, instigated and capitalized by former (and up-coming) colonials. Andres Bonifacio’s “oneness in heart and thinking,” such a great proposition, supported by a verifiable time-line, tutoring, one people, one identity, one territory, one republic, a single state, in a unitary form of government, as bedrock of the Philippine state. Jose Rizal’s Latin verve cum admonition, summarizes such ethos “Unos Imstar Umnium”. From the Malolos Constitution, the Mabini proposed overture, then 1935 Constitution, considered by many legal eagles and scholars as the best basic document written, followed by the Imperial Japanese army sponsored Kalibapi Constitution, to the 1973 and 1987 Charters, all do not infer a formulary, an iota, of federal states for the Philippines.
Mabini’s Constitution Title II, On the Philippine Republic Sec. 20. The Territory of the Philippines is the union of all Filipinos residing within the territory comprised of the Islands of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, the Jolo Archipelago and other adjacent islands found within the region formerly known by the name of Islas Filipinas”. Mabini makes reference to Marianas Islands, Carolinas and other territories subject to the Spanish government in the Oceania region as integral part of the Philippines “if they voluntarily take-up the cause of the Filipinos to secure independence”.
