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Editor’s note: Ryan Mello and Fellglow Keep closely collaborated on this feature. They shall collaborate closely again on taking down the remaining 3PA points. CooRRECTors were warned. They did not listen. They shall suffer the consequences.
The first piece probing the CoRRECT Movement was predictably met with a horde of midwits that fell for our trap and boosted public awareness for us (thus helping fulfill Fellglow Keep’s early-mid 2022 prophecy about March 2023 being the time the Pillar blows up). Never before has publicity been this high for a niche outlet, but CoRRECTOrs (to be called “CooRRECTors” from now on in this essay) have never been known for sharing a total of more than one braincell among themselves. Predictably, none of them brought up even one counterargument or rebuttal against any of our points—beyond of course petty drama by those so mentally stunted that they think they still study in high school. But despite our outlet’s small audience so far, no less [sic] than Orion Perez Dumdum himself would grace our humble social media page. Dumdum himself is no stranger to mistaking politics for petty drama (or vice versa). Unfortunately, Dumdum does not seem to have the brainpower to simulate self-awareness. Thus, we will have to explain to his audience—some of whom are hopefully smarter and more intelligent than this man—why your beloved 3PAs have nothing to offer you.
While well-intentioned, it has been the position of the Pillar that such ideas fall so short and ignore the real threats posed by ideological, cultural, and social subversion propelled by globalist, “progressive” organizations that are quasi-governmental (in the form of state-based foreign aid programs), non-governmental (NGOs and the whole complex of transnational entities like Amnesty International or the World Economic Forum, among many others), and corporate (foreign, mainly Western, companies that have made explicit their adherence and advocacy of corrosive frameworks like critical race theory, non-traditional gender roles, feminism, etc). It might very well be said that CooRRECTor ideas are useful and positively contribute towards national development, but it has yet to be established definitively as to why these are the key reforms that need be made towards that goal, or that these proposals are most sufficient in that regard, or that even the attendant assessment of the problems being resolved is actually valid.
Do not evade your responsibility with bluster and by vainly imploring your opponents to provide counterproposals. No one needs to be a mechanic to know when a car is broken. You as advocates of these constitutional changes must conclusively and without doubt prove that the positive results that you tout come solely and independently from the changes that you advocate and can only best be achieved through implementing these changes over any other alternative or other proposal.
Whenever advocates of changes talk about the benefits that they claim would arise through their implementation, they should seriously consider whether or not such benefits can realistically claim to have those changes as their cause. They must be able to conclusively prove that these positive effects arise as the specific result of the advocated changes above or even to the exclusion of all other factors. The strong claims that they make demand no lesser level of evidence than this, so that there can be no other course to follow than to make these changes.
Otherwise, if the advocates cannot or will not make such a justified determination, then they should be able to show that the changes that they hope to make are at least the best and most accurate choices to make in light of alternatives and other possibilities of change. Different systems or economic policies may be able to achieve the goals that advocates claim they desire, so the onus is on the same advocates to conclusively show that not only can their proposals best achieve their stated goals, but also that all other alternatives are demonstrably inferior to the proposed changes.
As with the preceding notion, even if advocates concede that benefits are not exclusive to the proposals they are making, they must at least show that every other alternative is inferior and insufficient to meet the results being desired. Evidence provided in this instance must show clearly that no other alternative is possible, and that the changes are in themselves alone and not owing to any other preceding or concomitant factor are uniquely capable of generating the desired results.
You who claim us to demand a utopia have lost all notion of reasoning and common sense. Implementing these changes will take time and adjustment, but most importantly, they will use taxes. It is as simple as that. Does anyone remotely rational think that nit-picking is merely splitting hairs when billions of pesos of public funds are at stake? If it turns out that the parliamentary system is no better than the presidential system, then we have spent all this money for nothing. Disproportionately screeching like high school girls at intelligent discussion will only convince many that these billions are not worth spending—in which case Dumdum’s disciples have done a great job at convincing many. For the rest? Prove that you have risen above high school classroom drama and GMA/ABS-CBN produced dramas in your view of reality.
Trusting the eXpErTs
Dumdum has an “essay” (if you can even call it that) on why the Parliamentary system suits the Philippines. All he does in said “essay” is look at top 10 lists of countries for certain metrics, then declare himself the winner since the Parliamentary system is on top. We shouldn’t even have to explain why this does not at all constitute rigorous analysis, but since Dumdum thinks he’s apparently a legend for doing so, we have to consume precious oxygen and ATP to explain why.
Dumdum thinks that he somehow found a causal effect by seeing the top 3 or so countries of world rankings on certain metrics be parliamentary. Never mind that in a distribution, having the top n percentile be of a certain category doesn’t also ensure that the x-th percentile will also be of that category. Never mind that descriptive statistics (if you can even lump what Dumdum did under that) of a percentile doesn’t substitute for causality analysis or impact evaluation. Some CooRRECTor coomenter commented that our initial probing strike wasn’t even scientific, it was “just observations” (never mind even that science is literally just observations). If ours wasn’t scientific, how much less is Dumdum’s? He has never done a single difference-in-difference analysis (does he even know what that means?), yet he somehow thinks he has the quantitative chops to analyze how parliamentary systems are allegedly better. Dumdum, if you are reading this, have you understood any of the statistical terms we used so far? Will you understand any of the ones we will use going forwards? He, professed to not even be a political scientist (much less a statistician), thinks that
As we can clearly see, there is even no need for complex statistical regression analysis to prove that the countries that come out at the top of each category happen to be countries which use Parliamentary Systems.
As we have drilled in already, Dumdum thinks that a poor excuse for descriptive statistics substitutes for rigorous impact evaluation and treatment effect analysis. This is the guy you love, CooRRECTors.
Dumdum then pulls some papers to back his claims. It is ironic that Dumdum doesn’t even have the chops to even begin to understand why a top 10 list doesn’t in any way prove or back his claims, but whines about the preview of the following teardown of these papers to be “highfaluting bullshit”. He and everyone who believes CooRRECTor claims should know that these papers started the highfaluting bullshit in the first place, we just returned the favor by pointing out why they make zero sense. That these studies made all these statistical errors completely invalidates any use of them to justify CooRRECTor positions—common sense that apparently is still too high for CooRRECTors in their grade school thinking to reach.
First, Dumdum links a paper by Lederman, Loayza, and Soares (2001) about political institutions and corruption. This study used both Ordered Probit and Ordinary Least Squares regression design. Technically the latter is supposed to be a Fixed Effects design since the authors included time period dummy variables, but we digress. Already, the authors fundamentally misunderstand what probit parameter estimates mean. The coefficients given refer only to Z-scores meant to calculate predicted probabilities. Estimating said predicted probabilities needs calculating marginal effects. While OLS estimates are marginal effects, doing so using discrete dependent variables is bad practice. Unfortunately, so-called “expert” economists have refused to see reason with this bad practice. For starters, economists have used Linear Probability Models (which is what the OLS estimates are in this case) for decades now. Many defenses have been made to do so, including the following gem:
The LPM won’t give the true marginal effects from the right nonlinear model. But then, the same is true for the “wrong” nonlinear model! The fact that we have a probit, a logit, and the LPM is just a statement to the fact that we don’t know what the “right” model is. Hence, there is a lot to be said for sticking to a linear regression function as compared to a fairly arbitrary choice of a non-linear one! Nonlinearity per se is a red herring.
So here’s a call to keep the LPM—it’s convenient, computationally tractable, and may have less bias than index model alternatives. In many settings we will never know. Of course as good practice we should explore result robustness to model choice. Hopefully, as in the case of our paper, specification choice just won’t matter for the bottom line.
Friedman, Jed. “Whether to probit or to probe it: in defense of the Linear Probability Model.” Development Impact. (2012).
For technical discussion on why doing so is wrong, please read Pua’s On IV estimation of a dynamic linear probability model with fixed effects—assuming CooRRECTors even have the brainpower to do so. For convenience, we quote the abstract:
Researchers still estimate a dynamic linear probability model (LPM) with fixed effects when analyzing a panel of binary choices. Setting aside the possibility that the average marginal effect may not be point-identified, directly applying IV estimators to this dynamic LPM delivers inconsistent estimators for the true average marginal effect regardless of whether the cross-sectional or time series dimensions diverge. I also show through some examples that these inconsistent estimators are sometimes outside the nonparametric bounds proposed by Chernozhukov et al. (2013). Although there are no analytical results for GMM estimators using Arellano-Bond moment conditions, I show through an empirical example that the resulting GMM estimate of the average treatment effect of fertility on female labor participation is outside the nonparametric bounds under monotonicity.
Pua, Andrew Adrian Yu. On IV estimation of a dynamic linear probability model with fixed effects. No. 15-01. Universiteit van Amsterdam, Dept. of Econometrics, 2015.
Pua deals with binary choices, but by induction (and some algebraic manipulation) one easily extends to the n choice case, and even to ordered choices. The paper that Dumdum cites unfortunately fails to give any estimated marginal effects for the Ordered Probit Model, so no one can take its findings seriously. This already takes down one of Dumdum’s so-called evidences, especially since said paper is one in a very long line of economist-written ones that rely on faulty statistical methods.
Next, Dumdum cites Gerring and Thacker’s Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitarism and Parliamentarism. Unfortunately, this paper simply uses a weighted least squares on two decades of data without any justification at all. There were no tests on autocorrelation, stationarity/normality, multicollinearity, panel cointegration, or so many possible features of the data set that can and will ruin the estimation. No one can take this paper seriously without exposing himself as someone who reads only abstracts without scrutinizing studies closely.
In another piece, Dumdum at least has the decency to pull proper descriptive statistics, no matter how jejune. We directly quote this opening line:
The frequent collapse of presidentialist regimes in about 30 third world countries that have attempted to establish constitutions based on the principle of “separation of powers” suggests that this political formula is seriously flawed. By comparison, only some 13 of over 40 third world regimes (3l%) established on parliamentary principles had experienced breakdowns by coup d’etat or revolution as of 1985 (Riggs 1993a).
Then again, Dumdum thinks that pulling descriptive statistics is a proper substitute for rigorous impact evaluation. The real question we need to ask: is it even possible to statistically determine whether parliamentary or presidential systems have direct causation on any metrics?
Let’s say we are testing the effects of a new medicine. We need to randomly select which patients will get the medicine and which will get a pill full of sugar (placebo), or there will be statistical bias in our analysis. Some med students will complain that observational studies exist and can be used to great effect. But observational studies for testing medications will have fewer confounders than testing entire political systems. How, you may ask?
Think. A constellation of factors, whether historical, economic, political, or anything else made 20th century nation states decide to adopt parliamentary or presidential systems in the modern sense of the word. How many statistical fallacies can one encounter? Omitted variable bias, self-selection bias, counterfeit counterfactual estimates, and these are just scraping the very top of the barrel. Whatever factors caused countries to adopt systems also affect much more than that. Factors that didn’t affect that yet by chance just so happened to align with some countries will also induce bias. We also need to account for heterogeneity among implementations of these systems, definitions of these systems, whether we can even validly compare pre-WW2 versions of these systems to modern ones, among so many other concerns. So many factors are at play here that we can’t just treat parliamentary vs presidential as placebo vs medication. We cannot even do difference-in-difference analyses because the slopes will surely not be parallel with how many factors are at play. Don’t even try and suggest propensity score matching. So much latent bias exists when it comes to treatments this wide reaching in scope.
Is it possible that Dumdum was just reading journal articles uncritically? Is it possible that he was just cherrypicking papers to make his worldview look better? We can cite our own papers showing how parliamentary systems are inferior (in fact we have, just scroll down). We can fling empirical evidence at each other all we want, and still get nowhere. Empirical evidence in the social sciences works to great effect, but being a philosophical field, we must start and end with first principles. Empirical evidence is only the cherry on top.
With these in mind, one of the key problems in trying to “prove” the superiority of parliamentarism over presidentialism is the just-so nature of comparisons between the two. If parliamentary country A exhibits better metrics than presidential country B (C, D, and so on), then CooRRECTors would argue that A proves that parliamentary systems can, in general, provide better results for other nations than presidential systems. Obviously, this method of analysis ignores a whole bunch of factors orthogonal, independent, and distinct from mere political systems. Economic, cultural, environmental, and biological considerations rightfully precede any discussion regarding political systems, and play more fundamental roles in establishing and determining the competencies of any society in terms of metricated output.
More crucially, the burden is on these CooRRECTors in their assertion that parliamentarism is the best possible system to adopt to prove that what they are proposing not only can deliver better results, but must necessarily do so. In attributing the political dysfunctions of a nation as the results of a faulty political system, one is effectively assigning blame and responsibility to that system. It is only thus fair to assume that a counter-proposal to be made by such individuals must necessarily be held to the same standard, such that prospective systems are undoubtedly going to provide the results that they are projected to provide. As with the pre-existing analysis of prior faulty systems, proposed systems must also stand and fall on their own merits. Faulty systems such as presidentialism caused and worsened national problems, and by the same measure, parliamentary systems ought to be axiomatically proven and practically corroborated to provide by itself the benefits that are being attributed to it specifically.
Literature Glorifying the Presidential System
Since CooRRECTORs insist that the experts are on their side, we shall present our own assortment of experts. Finding these took simple Google Scholar searches.
…if parliamentary regimes have a better record of survival than presidential regimes, it is not because they are parliamentary.
Cheibub, J. A., & Limongi, F. (2002). Democratic institutions and regime survival: Parliamentary and presidential democracies reconsidered. Annual review of political science, 5(1), 151-179.
We argue that systems of government do matter, but their effects are indirect; they exert their influence through societies’ prior democratic records. Confirming the conventional argument, our data analysis shows that uninterrupted parliamentary democracies face significantly lower risks of a first breakdown than their presidential counterparts. Contrary to the common understanding, however, we find that the risk of a democratic breakdown can be higher for parliamentary regimes than for presidential regimes among the countries whose democracy has collapsed in the past. Furthermore, the risk of a previously failed democracy falling again grows as (the risk of) government crises increase(s). Hence our study questions the common belief that parliamentary systems are categorically more conducive to democratic stability than presidential ones.
Hiroi, T., & Omori, S. (2009). Perils of parliamentarism? Political systems and the stability of democracy revisited. Democratization, 16(3), 485-507.
These nations are more complicated than just their systems of governing and it is terribly difficult to categorize them in a way that allows for an equal comparison point. Looking at the sections necessary in the survival of democracy — political stability, human development and economic potential —while being mindful of how historical context and constitutional strength play into the selection of the nations we compare, parliamentarism shows some benefits in terms of coalition building and ability to better represent the diverse voices of a nation without total gridlock. However, presidentialism shows that it is important to have strong control mechanisms in place and have those separate branches of power to prevent the abuse of executive power.
Presidentialism also appears to be more viable with parties that are at least moderately disciplined, and it is especially problematic with highly fragmented multiparty systems and with congressional elections that occur more frequently than presidential elections. Finally, we argue that switching from presidentialism to parliamentarism could exacerbate problems of governability in countries with very undisciplined parties. All of these points suggest that even if Linz is largely correct in his argument that parliamentary government is more conducive to stable democracy, a great deal rests on what kind of parliamentarism and what kind of presidentialism are implemented.
Mainwaring, S., & Shugart, M. S. (1997). Juan Linz, presidentialism, and democracy: a critical appraisal. Comparative politics, 449-471.
We leave finding others as an exercise for the reader.
Fundamentally Misunderstanding the Problem
…pray tell, cher Marquis, how do you plan on having those judges and bureaucrats and legislators and teachers and journalists and bankers and industrialists, who have all grown up together, shared a secluded life as a unified ruling class; how the hell are you gonna make them check and balance each other? That can’t work. And it isn’t working. They marry each other and send their kids to the same schools. Yeah, they’ll do some show and play politics theater, or Kabuki as the American like to say for some reason (as if only Kabuki was fake and other theaters were real), but in the end they are an endogamic ruling class and they know it.
Spandrell, Leninism and Bioleninism
The abstracted notion of a parliamentary democracy does little to elicit for itself any notion of marked efficiency with regard to solving a country’s concrete and extant problems as compared to its other counterparts. It is rather farcical to assert the benefits of an unrealized model in opposition to a system that exists in practice, especially when variants of that model also exist in the real world and exhibit similar problems to that of the system being critiqued. In other words, it is much more “realistic” to expect pigs to fly than to expect a parliamentary system to fix things. Those who do put the cart before the horse. They believe that the problems that they see are rooted at a systemic level, ergo, change the system and the people will magically convert to the desired norm with acceptable losses.
The point of politics is that the system is second only, and downstream to the persons and cliques involved. In any demotic system, especially in Democracy, personality politics is a quick and easy Schelling point. Depending on the faculties of your broad mass of voters or whatever nominal stakeholders, you necessarily have to prop up figures to rationalize and demand loyalty from others.
The likes of Trudeau Sr and Blair are a good example of this in practice. These were dominant personalities within the parliamentary systems—no one can deny that without losing contact with reality. Trudeau Sr.’s main opponents were Silent Generation Nice Guy Robert Stanfield and boomer Nice Guy Joe Clark. Despite public disapproval from policies like declaring de facto martial law and nationalizing Western Canada’s economy, Trudeau Sr kept getting elected because he had the charisma when his opponents had none. The Canadian media even called it ‘Trudeaumania’. Blair, on his part, became the face and head of New Labour after his Nice Guy predecessor unexpectedly lost against Thatcher’s successor in 1992 (and was so bland that his face barely even changed between black-and-white and color TVs).
Hell, one could even argue that CooRRECTors could obtain the results that they need without wholesale constitutional replacement. Strip the president of his veto and appointment powers and you kneecap the whole damned office, leaving it wide open for personality politics to simply migrate to the legislature. For midwits who seem to think ill of the Philippine Senate for this very reason, shifting towards parliamentary systems would only worsen it, the grandstanding in the US Congress notwithstanding even.
Barely Answered Questions
Of particular importance for this piece is the Frequently Answered Questions (FAQ) article of the CoRRECT movement, a document meant to explain their position to the public in a succinct and reasonable manner, and attempts to state their ideas to the broadest possible audience. While some of the questions and answers are rather unobjectionable, some others are so questionable in nature that they require not only correction but also self-reflection about the coherence and viability of both the claims made, and the underlying assumptions that ground them. Furthermore, while specific questions will be tackled and discussed, each question that had not been subject to such will nonetheless be stated in a postscript. For non-Tagalog speaking readers, translations will be provided for Tagalog entries both in discussed and postscript FAQ portions.
The FAQ is divided into three separate sections, each dealing with one of the prongs of the 3PA. The first section is on Economic Liberalization (with ten questions), the second on Federalism (with nine questions), and the third on Parliamentary System (with sixteen questions). For now, we follow that last section, from the first to the last question, and we provide commentary where needed. We hope that dealing with these questions will help clarify some of the Pillar’s positions to readers intelligent enough, while also explaining the shortcomings that those on the Pillar find in ideas or proposals such as the 3PA and as well as those of a similar or sympathetic nature.
2. Bakit natin kailangan ang sistemang Parliamentario? (Why do we need a Parliamentary system?)
- Ito ay dahil ang Pilipinas ay patuloy na nagdudusa sa ilalim ng talamak na korupsyon, kawalan ng kakayahan sa paggawa at pagpapatupad ng batas at pabago-bagong direksyon ng polisiyang pang-ekonomiya. (This is because the Philippines is suffering under widespread corruption, the lack of manufacturing capacity and implementing laws, and the regularly changing direction of economic policy.)
As part of the overall pattern of the original piece, the answer refuses to conform to any basic common sense treatment of the initial question. The question specifically asks for the need for a parliamentary system but the answer proceeds into a non sequitur detailing various problems and difficulties faced by the country, not bothering to explain how a parliamentary system is relevant and uniquely suited to address these concerns. Furthermore, this attempt to sidestep the substance of the question also tries to subtly imply it as if the parliamentary system is the ideal solution to fix these aforementioned problems, without any sort of short justification or evidence that would conclusively establish that parliamentary systems definitively solve these problems by their simple existence, not even considering the likelihood of other solutions that could address each of these concerns with the same or greater level of effectiveness.
3. Ano ang kaibhan nito sa kasalukuyang sistemang Presidensyal? (What is its difference with the current presidential system?)
Ang presidential system ay porma ng gobyerno kung saan ang sangay ng ehekutibo ay nananatili sa pagseserbisyo base sa tiwala ng presidente. Samantalang ang sistemang parliamentario naman ay porma ng gobyerno kung saan ang sangay ng ehekutibo ay nananatili sa pagseserbisyo base sa tiwala ng lehislatura. (The presidential system is a form of government where the executive branch remains in service based on the confidence of the president. On the other hand, a parliamentary system is a form of government where the executive branch remains in service based on the confidence of the legislature.)
Presidential = depende sa president (dependent on the president)
Parliamentary = depende sa lehislatura (dependent on the legislature)
On the whole, this definition is uncontroversial, but it should be pointed out that a parliamentary system is considered to have many different variants, some of which do not closely align with the presented definition and may arguably be plausible alternatives to the proposal being espoused by the advocates of the FAQ. Alternative models that these advocates could take heed to make adequate assessments of include the semi-presidential systems of France, Russia, and Ukraine, the parliamentary-presidentialist systems of South Africa and Botswana, and the various other hybrids in use by Taiwan, Guyana, and Nauru.
4. Anong modelo ng sistemang Parlyamentaryo ang mainam para sa bansa? (Which model of the parliamentary system is appropriate for the country?)
Ang Westminster model ng United Kingdom na ginagamit din ng Australia, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, India, at Malaysia, ang angkop para sa Pilipinas dahil ang mekanismo nito ay kailangang magkaroon ng Shadow Cabinet system kung saan ang oposisyon ay kailangang magtalaga ng mga katunggali ng mga kalihim ng pamahalaan upang busisihin ang trabaho ng mga ito. Kung gagamit tayo ng Westminster model, mabilis na mapepwersa ang pag-develop ng mga malalakas at matitinong partido at mawawala ang mga nanggugulo at pawang saling-pusa lamang. (The Westminster model of the United Kingdom that is also used by Australia, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, India, and Malaysia is appropriate for the Philippines because its mechanism is to need a Shadow Cabinet system where the opposition needs to appoint opponents to government ministers to check their work. If we use the Westminster model, parties would be quickly forced to develop as strong and sane, and the nuisances and interlopers will disappear.)
This is a strong statement that, like with most points being raised here, fails to make a complete and honest assessment of its own ideas. Like with most aspects of the Westminster system, the shadow cabinet is not a formal and constitutional aspect of its framework, being mainly a creature of convention and custom that evolved throughout the years, first originating in Britain during the 1920s. It has no separate legal existence of its own, and was even considered optional during those early years, and cannot formally or legally compel cabinet ministers to do something or otherwise. To the extent that members of a shadow cabinet can scrutinize and criticize their counterpart in government this is largely done so during the public spectacle that is parliamentary Question Period, if ever this questioning is somehow allowed to be conducted by the relevant shadow minister and not by the leading questioner, who is the leader of the opposition. Furthermore, as non-legally mandated entities, the activities of the shadow minister are largely provided for and conducted on behalf of the party the respective minister is a part of, and as such, is subject to the rules of the legislature, existing laws and/or parliamentary conventions, and the overall willingness of the government majority to provide information or answer questions before invoking cloture. The shadow minister has no power per se to compel the government to action, to successfully make requests contrary to government decisions, or to obtain information lawfully without having been previously permitted by the government itself.
To the extent that the opposition is able to meaningfully scrutinize and oppose government action, it is done so collectively, such as in defeating or delaying government legislation through votes as a whole, or within specific parliamentary committees. To the extent that the shadow cabinet serves a meaningful role, it would depend largely on the internal arrangements that constitute the opposition party or party coalition and on what broader arrangements are permitted to it by law, and not as an inherent constitutive part of the parliamentary system. A good portion of the seeming importance of the shadow cabinet is not so much its ability to grandstand against counterpart government ministers, but as a method of organizing the leadership of the opposition in preparation for assuming government. A leader of the opposition may place defeated yet powerful rivals in key positions in order to placate them (examples of this would be the 1994 appointment of Gordon Brown as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under Tony Blair’s shadow cabinet in the United Kingdom, or the 2006 appointment of Michael Ignatieff as Deputy Leader of the Opposition by Stephane Dion in Canada, where in both cases the appointed rival would end up succeeding the one who appointed them), all the while providing no guarantee that those appointed to the shadow cabinet would necessarily exhibit the necessary competence to serve effectively as a critic in the present and as a minister in the future.
Of particular importance here is to point out briefly how Westminster governments largely allow parliamentary opposition to affect or influence government legislation. To the extent provided by law and/or convention, all legislation is subjected to an up-down, yes-no vote after having received assent by the pertinent committees. Obviously, the opposition and its shadow cabinet would have very little ability to constrain such passage as such. It is in these committees within parliament that scrutiny is applied to legislation, whose composition is again agreed upon as part of parliamentary rules, and whose scrutiny mainly involves the usual process of reviewing specific articles of submitted bills, or by hoping that resource persons invited before committees would provide points that would favor their opposition, etc. before the majority party may decide to move forward with the bill, end the debate on its own, and submit it for a full vote by parliament. Note here that the process is largely similar and indistinct to what is practiced by presidential systems in their own legislative hearings, and that both systems also hold that the majority holds a dominant position in each legislative committee, thereby restraining what opposition members can realistically do besides questioning in order to constrain legislation. Interestingly, whether by convention or by parliamentary rules, legislative committees under Westminster systems may not include the pertinent minster or shadow minister in the committee responsible for their department or area of competency (in Canada, this restriction is explicit, ministers and their respective shadows are excluded from being part of the committee in which legislation for their field is decided; while in Britain and Australia, such is merely convention). Given this, the specific strength of any given Westminster shadow cabinet within existing sets of parliamentary arrangements is largely limited and dependent on the specific situation of the opposition as a whole.
As such, there is very little that would theoretically prevent a presidential system from adopting a method similar to parliamentary questions, as long as it remains within the realistic precedent set by actual existing parliamentary systems and not the vague intimations of certain advocates. The non-legal nature of shadow cabinets allows for presidential systems to make adjustments for their existence, with the same lack of actual power and absent the horsetrading inherent in existing parliamentary shadow cabinets. Through legislative committees, presidential systems provide similar methods of scrutinizing legislation, and may even potentially provide more of such oversight by way of bicameralism and the scrutiny of two co-equal branches of the legislature.
In any event, the onus is on the advocates of this system to prove that the political system that they are proposing is by itself sufficient and capable of achieving the goals which they themselves have publically stated will take effect by its adoption. Advocates must be able to demonstrate first that the shadow cabinet mechanism is truly able to compel and effect changes on government policy on its own, and not merely as part of a broader strategy of political pressure with components both in and outside the government structure. In as much as the government can provide at least a defense of controversial actions when questioned, the prerogative remains with the majority to relent or push through certain policies, and the opposition can only formally vote against the motion until at least such time that a change in government becomes possible and their own majority would make repeal of aforesaid actions necessary. That is the only effective challenge that can be meaningfully posed by any parliamentary opposition in an existing Westminster system, to replace an existing majority with their own. At the point where a government majority is willing to withdraw and replace a proposed policy, to what extent, if any, are opposition actions and questioning even relevant in terms of making such a decision to scrap legislation? Would it not be public discontent that would be the chief driver of such decision, and that this is driven from within the public’s own sentiments and/or the actions of a notionally independent media reporting on government actions rather than the expected and partisan complaints of the opposition frontbench? These are but a few questions that advocates have yet to properly answer.
6. Maalis ba po ang mga problema sa Pilipinas kapag nagpalit tayo sa sistemang Federal-Parliamentary? (Will the problems of the Philippines vanish if we change to a federal-parliamentary system?)
Walang magic pill or silver bullet para sa mga problema sa Pilipinas dahil ang mga problema sa Pilipinas ay napaka kumplikado at kailangan nito ng kombinasyon na solusyon. Ang panukala ng CoRRECT Movement, PDP-Laban, Centrist Democratic Party at People’s Draft ay kombinasyon ng tatlong reporma (Economic Liberalization, Evolving Federalism and Parliamentary System) bilang lundagan ng Pilipinas para masolusyonan ang iba’t ibang mga problema. (There is no magic pill or silver bullet for the problems of the Philippines because the problems of the Philippines are very complicated and need a combination of solutions. The proposal of the CoRRECT Movement, PDP-Laban, Centrist Democratic Party at People’s Draft, are a combination of three reforms for the Philippines to solve the different kinds of problems.)
This question strikes at the very root of the disputation being made here against the proposals being put forward. Firstly, while an acknowledgment is made about the complicated nature of the problems involved, little is spent in describing these problems so as to be able to ascertain if the solutions put forward would be up to the task. In effect, readers are being asked to take it on faith, faulty reasoning, and misused data that not only are the thin view of the existing problems to be correct, but also that the proposals would more than make up for this assessment and deliver effectively on the benefits being implied or explicitly promised. Another cause for concern is the lack of consideration for less extensive yet equally applicable remedies and solutions to the problems at hand. Taking the advocate’s position at face value, as indicated earlier, why would a parliamentary system be necessary if parliamentary questions (within actual existing precedents and limits) can be adopted within presidentialism?
8. Hindi ba magsusuhulan lang ang mga politiko para maipasa ang mga batas (Wouldn’t politicians simply bribe each other so that laws can be passed)?
Hindi na kailangang magsuhulan para maipasa ang mga batas dahil nasa loob na mismo ng lehislatura ang nakaupong administrasyon. Kung ano ang mga panukalang batas mula sa ehekutibo o sa iba pang mga mambabatas ay direkta na itong mapagtatalunan dahil nasa iisang kamara nalang silang lahat (There will be no need for bribery to pass laws because the administration is already inside the legislature. Whatever proposed laws would come from the executive or from other legislators would now be directly debated because they will all be in a single chamber.)