When the framers of the 1987 Constitution finalized, approved, and submitted the draft charter  to the people in a plebiscite for ratification, they forgot to reckon with time and the fast-changing, technology-driven  world.

And so more than two decades later, some key economic provisions have been rendered irrelevant, if not counter-productive to the country’s economic growth and development.

For a historically capital-starved nation, these unrealistic provisions hinder the entry of foreign investments and stunt the growth of job-generating industries.       

And it is a good new year start that there is now a growing congressional consensus to address the problem.

The only obctacle  is that lawyers, lawmakers, and constitutional experts can’t agree on how to proceed with what is  largely a sovereign exercise. 

At least incumbent lawmakers have gotten the ball rolling in what is concededly a very contentious exercise. 

In fact, changing the economic provisions of the Constitution will be one of the priorities of the Senate in 2012, Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile has said.

“We need that because it’s about time,” he said of the need to amend the Constitution particularly the economic provisions to allow more foreign investors in the country. “[Let’s] open the country to foreign investments in order to create jobs,” he stressed.

Aside from amending the  economic provisions of the Constitution, Enrile said the Senate would also prioritize the proposed anti-trust law, among others.

House and Senate leaders revived proposals to amend the Constitution in the first legislative assembly organized by both chambers late this year.

Senator Franklin Drilon proposed that constitutional amendments be taken up through a bicameral constituent assembly wherein proposals will be individually taken up by the respective committees of both chambers.

Questions on the validity of amending the Constitution through a bicameral constitutional assembly ought to be left to the Supreme Court, Drilon said.

He said it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide “whether or not this fourth mode would be a valid way of amending the Constitution”.

Resource speakers who attended the public hearing asked Congress to maintain instead the “good policies” written in the present Constitution.

Eighty-two of the Philippines’ 130 constitutional provisions still have no enabling law; for the economic provisions in particular, at least eight articles still have no enabling law up to now, said Philippine Constitutional Association’s Manolo Gorospe during a  hearing in congress.

The economic provisions that have no enabling law, Gorospe said, include Articles 2 to 4, 8, 14, 16, 20, and 22.