BORONGAN, Eastern Samar – Governor Ben Evardone calls for a national moral recovery program to complement the Charter change.
“The structural changes in the form of government would be meaningless unless it is coupled with moral revitalization,” Evardone stressed during consultations with some of the local leaders in the province.
In a separate gathering January 18 to 19, the Vice Mayor’s league and the Liga ng mga Barangay municipal presidents unanimously agreed for an expeditious passage of a resolution endorsing the call for a People’s Initiative to amend the 1987 Constitution.
“Let’s not only listen to what the national policy makers are telling us, instead let us give an avenue for the people to air their own vies and to decide fro their own fate,” Evardone said.
Majority of the local leaders who attended the said consultation have express their optimism that they will be able to get as much as 60 percent signatures from their respective constituents whenever the plebiscite would push through or in a move on whether or not Charter change will be initiated directly by the people.
“We have to go directly to the people because a number of legislators, especially in the Senate, are opposing the amendment of the Constitution,” Evardone added.
As one of the prime movers of the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), Governor Evardone is espousing that the people should really get involve, the calls for gathering of signatures of 12 percent of the population, or about 3 percent of the total registered voters in every congressional districts.
In order to show solidarity and full support to the administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the provincial leaders down to the barangay level of the province are set to go to Manila to join the nationwide gathering on February 2 at the PICC complex and are expecting an audience with the president so that their resolutions would be personally handed over.
