“Alvarez made the cha-cha the conjoined twin of his no-el proposal.

Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez has been testing the waters quite often lately and has made another big gambit quite too risky to lose.

The top House leader, also chief of the PDP-Laban, is banking on the postponement of the mid-term elections next year to pursue charter change for the proposed shift to a federal system of government.

No elections, “no-el” in more popular parlance because it has been a recurring word since after the Cory Aquino presidency, has always been floated each time a cha-cha has been pushed.

Fidel Ramos once tried to tinker with the 1987 Constitution and failed. Cha-cha was unpopular then.

Cory marched and so did Erap Estrada, then the vice president to Ramos who was to succeed him as president albeit briefly as his term was cut short by another street uprising.

Estrada had also tried cha-cha on the premise of boosting the economy, but failed miserably. He did not complete three years of a six-year term and was ousted through a collusion among the country’s top elite leaders, the military and church.

Then Gloria Arroyo tried. She failed, too.

Their political leaders have floated no-el at one time or another. We all know the people rebuffed no elections and went on with their lives as usual.

Perhaps Alvarez thinks it is different now.

His no-el proposal is hinged on the popularity of President Duterte.

Alvarez could be seeing his no-el proposal as riding on the coattails of the Duterte rampage. But will it be able to cling tightly on Duterte’s flap or will it fall just like the other no-el scenarios the past leaders have also tried to advance?

Alvarez seems one of the few government leaders speaking about no-el. He is making a gamble, but it’s a lonely voice being heard.

Even his colleagues in the House, including his PDP-Laban partymates, are hot in their preparations for re-election. They have less than a year left before the May 2019 polls and dropping their guards for no-el may throw off their bids should no-el fail to fly.

Alvarez is too seasoned a politician not to be aware of this.

No-el also lacks the support of majority in the Senate. The Upper House has the advantage in shaping national thought and acceptance of issues compared with the Bigger House of Alvarez.

The Senators are geared towards the mid-term elections as 2019 will give the re-electionists an opportunity to refresh the electorate of their names if and when some of them decide to pursue a higher calling in 2022.

Many of the Representatives are also dreaming of one day joining the Senate. Some of them will try next year.

Alvarez wants the Representatives to bring the cha-cha issue before their constituents. They would. But we could not expect them to present cha-cha before their constituents wholeheartedly. They have their next terms to think about, too.

The people have also repulsed no-el quite a number of times already and it would take a lot of campaigning to reverse this thought.

But Alvarez made the cha-cha the conjoined twin of his no-el proposal.

If he is serious about cha-cha, Alvarez should do more than call for the postponement of the mid-term elections because not to many seems to be listening anymore right now.

The cha-cha proponents also admitted that a lot has to be done for the people to accept the proposals for change.

No serious tinkering of the Constitution would not require serious thoughts from the people. No-el only muddles up the issue.

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