The point is that it is dangerous to tinker with crucial economic provisions without considering the various contexts to which they are linked. There has been much pressure, for instance, to open up areas like health care and education to foreign capitalization and ownership. At first glance, it is hard to imagine how the infusion of additional investments into social services can possibly pose any harm to our people. But, picture a situation where a foreign-owned and operated medical facility specializing in organ transplants markets its services abroad and brings in its own patients. Will we have the will and the ability to enforce existing restrictions on the sourcing of organ donors? This is a question that needs to be asked if only because the biggest motivation for locating any such facility here would be the promise of an abundant supply of commercialized human organs.
The 1987 Constitution embodied the political hopes and anxieties of its time. However, the “rampant justicialization” of economic questions that we have seen in the past two decades seems to tell us that the existing Charter may no longer be an adequate map we can turn to for guidance as we seek the common good in these turbulent times. It is thus appropriate that our political leaders are revisiting its text from the perspective of today’s realities. But for this effort to yield any enduring social good, it has to be guided not so much by a fixation with global competitiveness as by an unwavering commitment to end the mass poverty and the sharp inequalities that have ravaged our people.
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