plural power

What is happening to the government officials of our country? Is it really that gloomy for them to not fully understand the definition of initiative?

Initiative can be defined as:

The right and procedure by which citizens can propose a law by petition and ensure its submission to the electorate

A beginning or introductory step; an opening move: took the initiative in trying to solve the problem.

Well, initiative in its simplest term is taking the first step to do any action. When you say people’s initiative, the people of the state initiates an action that they fully understand towards a specific goal.

In the case of the recent solicitation of signatures of the government for the proposal of charter change, it is obviously not the people who took initiative.

I still can’t accept the validity of the signature votes. First, its veracity- The votes and signatures solicited are not ensured to e legal and accurate. The government has yet created an effective mechanism for this kind of voting. Second, it’s credibility- most people who signed for the petition have no full knowledge and grasp of the issue. They may have known cha cha, but they may have not understood it in its broader sense.

quoting from the AKBAYAN site:

This attempt violates the very spirit of PEOPLE’S INITIATIVE. The intention of the People’s Initiative provision in the 1987 Constitution is to provide citizens the right and an avenue to directly legislate laws which the legislature refuses to pass. It is a right given to the citizenry and not to the government. The government’s move, through the intervention of the DILG, mandating the local governments to collect signatures in support of the Arroyo-sponsored people’s initiative for their version of ChaCha is an attempt to usurp the exclusive right of the citizenry. The thinly-cloaked, Arroyo-sponsored people’s initiative is a violation of the very spirit of the people’s right as enshrined in the Constitution.


It makes my brain throb to think how plurality rules over democracy in our country.