Something just sounds strange each time Manila-based national papers report about how Malacañang (presidential palace) and the House of Representatives would insist on a Constituent Assembly as a first step to their game plan of changing the Philippine constitution. Reporters have invented Con-Ass as a short for Constituent Assembly in the same way that they coined Cha-cha for Charter Change. Cha-cha sounds harmless and I often associate it with tango or even with waltz and other ballroom dances.
But Con-Ass? It just sounds like con man or con artist. And Con-Ass, particularly the “Ass” part, sounds not only slang, but vulgar, a term that should not be used because one of our unwritten rules as writers is decency. But somehow the acronym has become a regular fare in our newspapers.
I tried to do my homework by searching the Web for some definitions of con man and con artist, and, to my surprise, the definitions gave me some insights into the Con-Ass.
One website defines con man or con artist as “a confidence man or a swindler who exploits the confidence of his victim.”
So I asked myself, “Granting that Con-Ass is the confidence man, are we, the ordinary Filipinos, the victims?”
According to reports, the Lower House of Congress and may be a few senators would be convened into a Con-Ass and would engineer how it could amend the Constitution and form an interim parliament. They already have in mind a timetable for a plebiscite and elections for parliament in 2007.
Some senators, including Senate President Manny Villar and administration Sen. Miriam Defensor, have rejected the Con-Ass move. But the big guns in the Lower House are still optimistic that they can still go on with the Con-Ass because they have the numbers. So the proponents of Cha-cha via Con-Ass are relying on numbers, not on the sound reason of their moves.
In pushing for Cha-cha via Con-Ass, House Speaker Jose de Venecia said: “We are on the eve of a constitutional revolution because we’re destroying the old, oppressive structure and creating a new, and hopefully more liberating, political system. It’s now or never.”
We had heard similar pronouncements from the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos when he changed the 1935 Constitution and created his new Constitution to pave the way for what he called “a new society” through martial law. And to give his iron-fist regime some sweet icing, Marcos called it “constitutional authoritarianism.”
For a time, the “New Society” had remained as new as the bell-bottom fashion in trousers at that time. But Marcos’ “New Society” eventually became a tired refrain as it failed to bring the paradise it promised. And during his reign, Marcos drowned the country with US$30 billion foreign debt, which, together with the foreign debts of succeeding regimes, we are paying up to now and which our children will continue to pay after we, their elders, are gone.
From Ms Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, we also heard about her “
There’s no argument in aspiring to build a new society, a strong republic, or even a new world. We should keep on dreaming and hoping. But still I can hardly comprehend whether or not Cha-cha through a Con-Ass can be the means to bring about what De Venecia calls “a new, and hopefully more liberating, political system.”
Another website, meanwhile, defines a confidence trick or game, which it says is con for short, as “an attempt to intentionally mislead a person or persons (known as the mark) usually with the goal of financial or other gain. The confidence trickster, con man, scam artist or con artist often works with an accomplice called the shill, who tries to encourage the mark by pretending to believe the trickster…”
Again I asked myself, “If Con-Ass is a confidence trick, who are the con men or the con artists? And who are the shills or accomplices who are trying to hoodwink us by believing the tricksters in this Con-Ass game?”
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