Why choose 12 senators?

Last Monday, the whole country voted to elect 12 senators to be in the Senate. I have absolutely nothing against having 12 senators be elected. I have an issue with how we're voting for them.

Let's flash back to three years ago. Who remembers the campaign promises of Drilon? Or Villanueva? Or De Lima? Recto? Gatchalian? Hontiveros? Pangilinan? Paquiao? Zubiri? Gordon? Lacson? Sotto? Exactly! Me neither.You may remember one or two of their stances on certain things but never do you remember their main reason for running. Why is that?

Compare that side to side with Duterte or Robredo. People remember their campaign promises and can (at this junction) judge how well these two have either kept or not kept their promises. We even have re-electionists now who we don't even know if they stuck to deliver what they promised. Thing is, it's much easier to remember the promise of one person than the promises of different people. Considering, we had to choose 12 out of 62 senators is enough to have the average Filipino just say, "I'll vote based on name recall."

Because the senate is composed of so many people, we can't reasonably expect everyone to keep track of how every single senator voted on a particular issue. Can you remember who voted for the RH Law? Me neither! So for or against it, we simply can't keep track of who we should be supporting for these positions. So what's the solution?

People should really just be voting for one senator every election cycle. One president, one VP, one senator, one representative, one governor, one mayor, etc. That way, it's much easier for Filipinos to keep track of the one person elected into that position. Senators should run in local elections and not nationwide elections. Let's assume the rough proposal that Region 7 will have its own senator. Senators need only campaign in their own local regions to gather votes as opposed to having all candidates spend so much on a national campaign. This way, you can even have a more representative Senate.

So each region has 2 senators, one elected during the presidential elections and one elected during the mid-term. This way, all any Filipino will ever have to look out for is how their own elected senator voted in certain key legislation. This also prevents people from winning purely on name recall alone. It will help but will only get you so far.

Note what happened in the mayoral races in Lapu-Lapu, Mandaue, Cebu City and the Gubernatorial race of Cebu province. We had prominent names losing to less prominent figures? The reason? The people are more familiar with one person and his promises as compared to the promises of 12 individuals. I assure you, by next week, people won't remember what any of the winners promised. I can't even remember what the people I didn't vote for promised anymore. All I remember was I didn't agree with them.

It's that simple. Two senators per region to be elected one at a time in their own region. So if Region 1 wants to elect Imee Marcos to represent them in the senate, so be it as long as I can vote for my own Region 7 senator without worrying about how Region1 would affect my own vote for my own senator.

Now, you may be wondering at this point where I got this scheme from. Those familiar with US politics might say I go it from the US but this is actually one of the provisions of the charter change movement which is now in congress. This system actually allows the smaller regions like CAR or ARMM or many of the Mindanao regions to have more of a voice in National Policy making. It prevents their voices from being overruled by more populous regions like NCR, Region 3, 4A, or 7.

We need this now. We need to give the smaller regions a bigger voice in the national arena and we have the opportunity now. Like it or not, most of the winners this cycle are for Charter Change. Charter Change will push through and will be the next battleground. We need to make sure we get that one right.