the malolos constitution essay

The Konstitusyon Project

The malolos constitution: the best philippine constitution.

122 years ago today, the First Philippine Republic was proclaimed with the ratification of its constitution, the one we now know today as the Malolos Constitution . Unfortunately, this constitution, along with the republic, did not realize its full potential with the outbreak of the Philippine-American War a month later which led to the country falling under American rule by 1901.

Unfortunately, the legacy of the Malolos Constitution was forgotten as succeeding constitutions sought inspiration elsewhere rather than from the one the Malolos Constitution established. Thus as the discussions on constitutional reform flare up anew, it is time to reexamine this constitution and see if we can derive from it.

Best and compatible inspirations to draw from

According to the constitution’s primary author Felipe Calderon, he drew inspiration in crafting the Malolos Constitution from the Spanish constitution of 1812, the French constitution of 1793, as well as the constitutions in force at that time in Belgium, Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. This is in contrast with the succeeding constitutions of the country, which primarily drew inspiration from the United States constitution and not much else.

The fact that the Malolos Constitution took inspiration from such diverse sources indicated that the Malolos delegates were at the very least enthusiastic to learn from the examples of as many countries as possible. And they did not just look at random countries. They specifically looked at countries that share a history and heritage with ours, as was the case for Spain and various countries in the Americas that used to be Spanish colonies.

They also looked at those that have a well-established legacy of liberty and democratic values. And no, it is not the United States but France. Remember that the French Revolution is one historical event that piqued the interest of many Filipinos as they were beginning to consider the idea of independence from Spain, like Andres Bonifacio who famously had a book on that particular subject.

Suffice to say, the Malolos delegates were passionate about crafting a good constitution for the Philippines, one that espoused the ideals of democracy and liberty while meets the unique historical and cultural landscape of the country. And they weren’t shy of learning and taking inspiration from a variety of sources that they had available.

Concise and comprehensible document

Whether reading the original in Spanish or its translations in English or Tagalog, the Malolos Constitution is itself not a lengthy document. Granted the needs of a state were not as much then as they would be now and the constitution itself was vague or silent on important provisions, it was able to sufficiently cover what needed to be covered as concise as possible.

Also worth noting is that this constitution was written quite comprehensibly. Easy enough to read for even non-lawyers to appreciate. There were no legalese gobbledygook to baffle the common folk and it was as straightforward as it can get. That is an achievement in itself considering a sizeable portion of the Malolos Congress delegates were lawyers.

Foundations for parliamentarism

A striking feature of the Malolos Constitution is that while it envisioned a republican state with the President as head, it did not actually establish a presidential system that we have today. Instead, what it established was sort of a parliamentary government , in which the President of the Republic is actually to be elected by the legislature, which the constitution calls the “Assembly of Representatives of the Nation.” This also meant the President would be answerable to the Assembly ensuring greater accountability unlike in the present presidential system.

Interestingly, while the President of the Republic is considered the head of state, the executive powers of a head of government lies with him as well. However, he does not hold all the powers of the executive. Instead these powers are exercised by the Council of Government, headed by a President of the Council, which scholars consider as the equivalent of a Prime Minister, and the cabinet secretaries.

Another power structure established in the constitution is the Permanent Commission, which has some of the powers of legislature and that of a head of state. The commission’s powers include:

• Declare whether or not there is sufficient cause to take legal action against the President, the Representatives, the Secretaries of Government, the President of the Supreme Court of Justice, and the Solicitor General
• Convene the Assembly in “extraordinary session” in certain cases.
• Act on unresolved matters as may be determined accordingly
• Substitute the Assembly in performing the Assembly’s powers except in creating and passing laws.

One can imagine that had the First Philippine Republic survived longer, the structure of government have been amended further to make the structure somewhat simpler. It might probably go by the French example which had the full parliamentary system in place by then (before Charles de Gaulle made the French government a semi-presidential one). In any case, a parliamentary system of some form would have made the difference for the country.

No (restrictive) economic policies

Another sensible thing the delegates of the Malolos Congress did was to make sure there were no restrictive economic policies that were included in the constitution they drafted. Come to think of it, that constitution had no economic policies stated…at all. And that is because the delegates knew all to well that a constitution should focus on establishing the basic foundations of a state, particularly the identity of the state, the rights of the people, and the form of government that shall administer the state.

It must also be noted that at the time, the Philippines was experiencing economic growth thanks in part to foreign-owned businesses that set up shop in the country. As an example, it was a British trading firm, JM Fleming and Co., that provided employment to Andres Bonifacio before he went on to establish the Katipunan. The influx continued after the Philippine Revolution ended, with the likes of Swiss businessman Frederick Zuellig establishing Zuellig Pharma in the country in 1903 .

Room for growth

While the Malolos Constitution itself was a short document and lacked some important provisions, it was neither a restricted nor restrictive constitution. In fact, there is room for further growth and evolution for this constitution had the First Philippine Republic managed to survive beyond the Philippine-American War. Considering that the First Philippine Republic envisioned the Mindanao, including the Moro-held areas as part of the country, it can be assumed that some arrangements would have to be made in order to fully integrate the area into the country. And a federal arrangement would have been one of the considerations to be made.

In fact, the federalism question was already raised during the time the constitution was being drafted, as the revolutionaries in Iloilo were keen on having a decentralized government in which Panay would be a federal state under the Philippine Republic. And while the Philippine Republic under President Emilio Aguinaldo did not oppose the foundation of that federal state that ould be known as the Estado Federal de Visayas on December 2, 1898, the constitution would not have a provision for a federal system. Eventually, the Malolos central government seemed to have instigated the fall of the federal state later in 1899.

Reevaluation

With all its shortcomings and its limited scope compared to subsequent Philippine constitutions, the Malolos Constitution remains the standard not only because it is the constitution of what is considered as the first republic in Asia. It was an example of a constitution that emulated not only the best of what the world had to offer but also the ones that were well-suited to the political, cultural, and economic conditions of the country. to the Moreso, it was a constitution that did not restrict itself and the country it is written for and made room for the continuing evolution and development of the country.

It is high time we look again at the Malolos Constitution and draw from its legacy a way for the Philippines to move forward and onward with a better constitution that we deserve.

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Church-state relations in the 1899 malolos constitution: filipinization and visions of national community.

Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr , Ateneo de Manila University Follow

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Publication date.

The most contentious issue in the Revolutionary Congress that crafted the 1899 Malolos Constitution pertained to the separation of church and state, which won by a mere one vote. Until now this episode in Philippine history has not received a satisfactory explanation, which this article seeks to offer. The debate in Malolos, as argued here, was profoundly divisive because the two sides were driven by differing visions of national community. A crucial point was the Filipinization of the Catholic Church, which the proponents of church-state unity championed and which their opponents sidestepped. Even as the debate raged, however, Aguinaldo's revolutionary government acted on the church-state issue out of political expediency. In the end, the issue that Filipino elites could not resolve was settled by US colonialism, which imposed church-state separation without Filipinization.

Recommended Citation

Filomeno Aguilar Jr. (2015). Church-State Relations in the 1899 Malolos Constitution: Filipinization and Visions of National Community. Southeast Asian Studies, 4(2), 279-311."

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Lessons Learned From The Philippine Language Policy of The Malolos Constitution

Being a multilingual country, the Philippines has been faced with the issue of promulgating a language for official use and a language that would represent national unity since time immemorial. This paper shall try to look into the root of the problem by studying the language policy of the first Philippine Republic, the Malolos Constitution. Insights from the constitution's language policy shall be given so as not to repeat the mistake of the past and to further the current language policies of the Philippines.

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We, the sovereign Filipino people, imploring the aid of Almighty God, in order to build a just and humane society, and establish a Government that shall embody our ideals and aspirations, promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony, and secure to ourselves and our posterity, the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace, do ordain and promulgate this Constitution.

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Criticisms of the national language policy of the Philippines began during the drafting of the1935 Constitution of the Philippines and still opposition continues to this day. What makes the arguments from the opposition interesting is that they question the assumptions of the policy makers,leaders and the general population regarding issues of Filipino nationalism and identity. The question of language and nationalism in the Philippines we find out is more than a cultural one, but as the early criticisms and the ongoing criticisms would show, actually is a political one as well. The most well-formed arguments against the national language come from two sides. The first we may label as the non-essentialist/utilitarian side which says that the correspondence between language and national identity is an exaggeration, that the essence of a person can be expressed in whatsoever language he or she uses. The second is from the regionalistic perspective, a much-maligned point of view among nationalist narratives. There is a continuing sense of marginalization that is felt by the various ethnolinguistic groups across the Philippines due to the perception of the elevation of one language among the numerous ones in the archipelago to the status of a national language. Though to a certain extent still essentialist, in that the advocates of the regionalistic point of view stress the importance of their ethnolinguistic identities, the feelings of marginalization still lingers and provides a major inspiration for serious criticisms of the national language policy which was and is still being seen as an imposition. To open new avenues regarding the issue, therefore, more than to rehash the old arguments,a new political consciousness must be realized. This is manifested by calls for changes in the prevailing Manila-centric political structure of the country, towards a more egalitarian orientation in the form of a federal decentralized government.

Marlon Mandane Gacis

This is a reaction paper regarding what has been happening in the field of Philippine education. We, Filipinos, had been aware of what certain groups like Tanggol Wika, were campaigning about, the hegemonic domination of "Filipino" over other Philippine languages. In fact, the language itself has been threatened by many changes in technology such as the Internet, rendering it and other Philippine languages undeveloped languages. Kindly read on this one and the historical revisions to justify their goal is exposed.

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The grip of English in the Philippines signifies an enduring and flawed image of national development that is monocentric with an English-dominant core. It traces the trajectory of this dominance of English in the Philippines from its introduction as the de facto medium of instruction in the public school system during the American colonial era to its incorporation as the indispensable competitive edge of Filipinos in the current era of globalization. This privileged position of English in the country’s linguistic economy has been reinforced by the Filipino elite’s symbolic struggles over power in the wake of post-colonialism and the country’s structural insertion at the margins of the global economy as a source of cheap, English-speaking migrant labor. The grip of English in the country may be mitigated by the introduction of mother tongue based multilingual education (MTBLE). The framework of MTBLE appears to conceive of national development in terms of widening access to valuable material and symbolic resources such as literacy and higher levels of formal education. As the MTBLE is still in its infancy, the extent to which it can live up to its promise remains to be seen

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The Philippines suffers an enduring linguistic problem that is not identified as such. Through the 20th century the goal has been to study a foreign language hoping for economical competitiveness in an Asian context. At present, this very context has revealed the fallacy of abandoning the education of the citizens in its own setting, if not pointed out the problem—Diglossia. By using an alien means of communication in the schools, the whole education has been alienated, and the result is a society that does not know their history (in Spanish), much less have a future other than to be manpower in a capitalist market (in English). Highlighting the experience of the multilingual European Union, the paper explains a model for the Philippine setting in the context of the “House Bill 162: The Multilingual Education and Literacy Act of 2010.”

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Presidency of the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines. D. Emilio Aguinaldo y Famy, President of the Revolutionary Government of the Philippines and Captain General and Commander-in-Chief of its Army. Know all Filipino citizens: That the Assembly of Representatives of the nation, by virtue of its sovereign power, has decreed and I have sanctioned the political Constitution of the state.

I command all the authorities, civil as well as military, of whatever class or rank, to keep it and cause it to be kept, complied with and executed in all its parts, because it is the sovereign will of the Filipino people.

Done at Malolos , on the twenty-first of January in the year eighteen hundred and ninety-nine .

EMILIO AGUINALDO

About: Malolos Constitution

The Political Constitution of 1899 (Spanish: Constitución Política de 1899), informally known as the Malolos Constitution, was the constitution of the First Philippine Republic. It was written by Felipe Calderón y Roca and Felipe Buencamino as an alternative to a pair of proposals to the Malolos Congress by Apolinario Mabini and Pedro Paterno. After a lengthy debate in the latter part of 1898, it was promulgated on 21 January 1899.

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Guest Essay

There’s No Such Thing as an American Bible

By Esau McCaulley

Contributing Opinion Writer

The presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, who weeks ago started selling shoes , is now peddling Bibles. During Holy Week.

What’s special about this Bible? So many things. For example, according to a promotional website, it’s the only Bible endorsed by Donald Trump. It’s also the only one endorsed by the country singer Lee Greenwood. Admittedly, the translation isn’t distinctive — it’s your standard King James Version — but the features are unique. This Bible includes the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Pledge of Allegiance and part of the lyrics of Mr. Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” Perhaps most striking, the cover of the Bible does not include a cross or any symbol of the Christian tradition; instead, it is emblazoned with the American flag.

While part of me wants to laugh at the absurdity of it — and marvel at the sheer audacity — I find the messaging unsettling and deeply wrong. This God Bless the USA Bible, as it’s officially named, focuses on God’s blessing of one particular people. That is both its danger and, no doubt for some, its appeal.

Whether this Bible is an example of Christian nationalism I will leave to others. It is at least an example of Christian syncretism, a linking of certain myths about American exceptionalism and the Christian faith. This is the American church’s consistent folly: thinking that we are the protagonists in a story that began long before us and whose main character is in fact the Almighty.

Holy Week is the most sacred portion of the Christian calendar, a time when the church recounts the central events of our faith’s narrative, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus. That story, unlike the parochial God Bless the USA Bible, does not belong to any culture.

Holy Week is celebrated on every continent and in too many languages to number. Some of the immigrants Mr. Trump declared were “ poisoning the blood” of America will probably shout “Christ is risen!” this Easter. Many of them come from the largely Christian regions of Latin America and the Caribbean. They may have entered the country with Bibles in their native tongues nestled securely among their other belongings.

One of the beauties of the Christian faith is that it leaps over the lines dividing countries, leading the faithful to call fellow believers from very different cultures brothers and sisters. Most of the members of this international community consist of the poor living in Africa, Asia and Latin America. There are more Spanish-speaking Christians than English- speaking ones .

If there are central messages that emerge from the variety of services that take place during Holy Week, for many Christians they are the setting aside of power to serve, the supremacy of love, the offer of divine forgiveness and the vulnerability of a crucified God.

This is not the stuff of moneymaking schemes or American presidential campaigns.

It was Pontius Pilate , standing in as the representative of the Roman Empire, who sentenced Jesus to death. The Easter story reminds believers that empires are more than willing to sacrifice the innocent if it allows rulers to stay in power. The church sees Christ’s resurrection as liberating the believer from the power of sin. The story challenges imperial modes of thinking, supplanting the endless pursuit of power with the primacy of love and service.

Easter, using the language of St. Augustine, represents the victory of the City of God over the City of Man. It declares the limits of the moral reasoning of nation-states and has fortified Christians who’ve resisted evil regimes such as fascists in South America, Nazis in Germany, apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States.

For any politician to suppose that a nation’s founding documents and a country music song can stand side by side with biblical texts fails at a theological and a moral level. I can’t imagine people in other countries going for anything like it. It is hard to picture a modern “God Bless England” Bible with elements of British common law appended to Christianity’s most sacred texts.

I am glad for the freedoms that we share as Americans. But the idea of a Bible explicitly made for one nation displays a misunderstanding of the story the Bible attempts to tell. The Christian narrative culminates in the creation of the Kingdom (and family) of God, a transnational community united by faith and mutual love.

Roman Catholics , Anglicans and Orthodox Christians, who together claim around 1.5 billion members, describe the Bible as a final authority in matters of faith. Evangelicals, who have overwhelmingly supported Mr. Trump over the course of three election cycles, are known for their focus on Scripture, too. None of these traditions cite or refer to any American political documents in their doctrinal statements — and for good reason.

This Bible may be unique in its form, but the agenda it pursues has recurred throughout history. Christianity is often either co-opted or suppressed; it is rarely given the space to be itself. African American Christians have long struggled to disentangle biblical texts from their misuse in the United States. There is a reason that the abolitionist Frederick Douglass said that between the Christianity of this land (America) and the Christianity of Christ, he recognized the “widest possible difference.”

And while Christianity was used to give theological cover to North American race-based chattel slavery, it was violently attacked in places like El Salvador and Uganda, when leaders including the archbishops Oscar Romero and Janani Luwum spoke out against political corruption.

The work of the church is to remain constantly vigilant to maintain its independence and the credibility of its witness. In the case of this particular Bible, discerning what is happening is not difficult. Christians are being played. Rather than being an appropriate time to debut a patriotic Bible, Easter season is an opportune moment for the church to recover the testimony of the supremacy of the cross over any flag, especially one on the cover of a Bible.

Esau McCaulley ( @esaumccaulley ) is a contributing Opinion writer, the author of “ How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South ” and an associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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