FederalizingthePhilippines:The FinalSolutionwithin Reason

[Keynote address of Sen. Nene Pimentel at the seminaron Federalism in Carmona, Cavite, April 23, 2008]

FederalRepublic of thePhilippines

Seminal in ‘82

Our formal espousal of the proposal started whenthe PDP-Laban was organized in 1982 to provide ourpeople a third way of getting out of the mess thecountry was in. Or, if you please, give them analternative to both the dictatorship of President Marcosand the armed rebellions that opposed it.The federal idea that we espoused was seminal inmany respects.We did not like the dictatorship and theconcentration of government power that was implicit init. Neither did we want to spill so much Filipino blood inthe undertaking to oust Marcos from power.

Disperse power

We thought that thesolution was to dispersepower – political andeconomic – throughout thenation.

F e d e r a l i s m

The most concrete way of doing it in our mindwas to convert the country into a federal republic.I will now take up with you the most recent formof our federal advocacy.