{"id":9175,"date":"2024-03-19T01:00:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-19T00:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/?p=9175"},"modified":"2024-03-18T11:08:59","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T10:08:59","slug":"marcos-plans-constitutional-amendment-for-midterm-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/marcos-plans-constitutional-amendment-for-midterm-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcos plans constitutional amendment for midterm elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly before his state visit to Australia at the end of February 2024, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared that he intends to hold<\/a> a national referendum on the planned amendment to the country’s constitution in parallel with the mid-term elections in May 2025. This constitutional<\/a> amendment aims to attract foreign investors and boost economic growth. In an interview, President Marcos Jr. emphasized<\/a> that the unchanged 1987 constitution, which came into force after the ousting of his dictator father, Marcos Sr., “was not written for a globalized world.\u201d The “Cha-Cha” – as constitutional amendments are also called in the Philippines – is highly controversial, as Marcos Sr. amended the constitution to extend<\/a> his term in office, which was shaped by serious human rights violations.<\/p>\n

Since taking office in June 2022, President Marcos Jr. has been trying<\/a> to put his father’s dictatorship into a positive light and rewrite his family history. As early as September 2023, the Ministry of Education decided<\/a> to remove <\/a>the name “Marcos” from the 6th grade curriculum, where the period of martial law (1972-1986) under Marcos Sr. is referred to only as a “dictatorship.” In October 2023, the Marcos Jr. government also removed the anniversary<\/a> of the “People Power Revolution” (Epifanio de los Santos Avenue\/EDSA) on February 25 from the public holiday calendar. This meant that for the first time in 38 years, the non-violent civil protest movement in the Philippines, which led to the overthrow of dictator Marcos Sr. from February 22 to 25, 1986, was not<\/a> officially celebrated.<\/p>\n

Despite the absence of the EDSA People Power anniversary, many civil society organizations still celebrated on February 25, 2024, the ousting of the two-decade dictatorship and protested<\/a> against the Marcos J.r’s “cha-cha.” Civil society groups fear<\/a> that the planned constitutional amendment will be a threat to democracy and human rights.<\/p>\n

The opposition is currently with Risa<\/a> Hontiveros only weakly represented in the Senate. On February 22, 2024, former senator<\/a> and Liberal Party spokesperson Leila de Lima named<\/a> some of the opposition’s senatorial candidates for next year’s midterm elections. Among the candidates were<\/a> former senators Kiko Pangilinan and Bam Aquino as well as human rights lawyer Chel Diokno. Leni Robredo, the former vice president of the Philippines, is still open to running<\/a> for the opposition in the 2025 elections.<\/p>\n

Although the 1987 constitution prohibits political dynasties, the Marcos family’s influence in Philippine politics continues to grow<\/a>. Currently, at least 16 people related to the Marcos family are represented<\/a> in the chambers of the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as at local government level.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Karapatan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly before his state visit to Australia at the end of February 2024, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared that he intends to hold a national referendum on the planned amendment to the country’s constitution in parallel with the mid-term elections in May 2025. This constitutional amendment aims to attract foreign investors and boost economic growth. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-human-rights-news","category-internal-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9175"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9245,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9175\/revisions\/9245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amp.ngo\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}