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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider Aspiring president Gonzales to push for political reforms via Cha-Cha

Aspiring president Gonzales to push for political reforms via Cha-Cha

Published Jan 31, 2022 07:07 pm

Presidential aspirant Norberto Gonzales will immediately push for Constitutional change, particularly by changing the country's political system, if elected in the highest seat of the government.

For Gonzales, the "problem with the country, politically speaking, has become the system."

Therefore, to fix it, he said "there is a need to change it" and that is one of the things he will probably ask "as early as possible."

During Manila Bulletin's "MB Hot Seat" aired Monday night, Gonzales said he is considering either adopting autonomy, federalism or parliamentary as the system of government.

Although the presidential candidate said "we're not adopting all of these," top of his choice is making each of the country's 17 regions an autonomous state, which he said "will have great impact in a lot of things."

"If we declare all our regions to be autonomous regions, our infrastructure design will change. Kasi diba (Becasuse) every region will now have a capital, then pagdudugdutingin doon yung ibang mga capital... ang daming infrastructure works na mangyayari dyan (Then their capital cities will be connected with each other. So there will be a lot of infrastructure works)," he said.

"Why are we offering autonomy only to Muslims? Why can't we offer autonomy to all regions of the country. That is a possibility," he added.

While Gonzales' wants the Philippines to become a federal country, he said it cannot be done so for now because of "some economic issues."

"We're being dominated by what is called imperial Manila, and now, imperial Davao," he said in Filipino.

Perhaps, Gonzales said, what is more ideal is for all ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian nations) countries to become a federal country, so "big countries will be afraid" of us.

"I think federalism is about different countries getting together to become one state. Kaya (So) if you will ask me about federalism, I'd like to dream that," the aspiring president said.

"Can you imagine if ASEAN becomes a federal state, we will be more than 600 million people," he added.

But for now, Gonzales said, the country should allow autonomy per region before we can make "arrangements towards federalism."

Related Tags

Federalism Presidential candidate norberto gonzales parliamentary autonomy chacha
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