THE OPPOSITION never accepted the presidential election results, which had Arroyo's main rival, popular action star Fernando Poe Jr., in second place. Poe filed an election protest with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal, but his death in December 2004 rendered the process moot and academic.

When the so-called "Garci" tapes surfaced in June 2005, both the administration and the opposition went into tailspins (albeit in entirely different directions). Those who had questioned the 2004 presidential contest shifted to high gear while Arroyo's camp put itself into political-survival mode, where it seems to continue to be stuck.

Political and electoral reforms became the immediate casualty. The proposal for the shift to a parliamentary system was pursued by the president and her allies through an accelerated process involving a "people's initiative" and a "constituent assembly." She dropped her previous support for a constitutional convention and appointed a presidential commission to propose her own version and an "advocacy commission" to sell the latter to the public.

Reform advocates condemned this hijacking of the constitutional reform agenda. A consensus then steadily developed among them to resist these two initiatives emanating from Malacañang. Last October, the Supreme Court rejected the farcical "people's initiative" and called it "most likely a deception, and can operate as a gigantic fraud on the people." Just several days ago, a Church-led people's protest had the House majority putting its resolution to form a "constituent assembly" in the archives.

But the constitutional proposal for a federal system and even the proposal for a shift to a parliamentary system have suffered heavily from all these and may have a hard time bringing back public interest in them, if not public support for them. Even the mode of constitutional convention, which had been endorsed previously by a broad consensus, needs to be revisited so it could be acceptable once more to the people. Too many have simply been turned off by the desperate use of it by the majority in the House. Constitutional reform itself has to be brought back on the right track because of the damage wrought on it by the present administration's political-survival strategy.

Ironically, though, electoral reforms have become more urgent as a by-product of the struggle in the constitutional front. The main factor that drove people into an angry resistance against the cha-cha train of President Arroyo and Speaker Jose de Venecia was the specter of a constitutional change to prevent the 2007 elections and to give incumbents longer terms. Demands for a revamp of the Comelec, the modernization of the electoral process, and prevention of cheating and fraud are on the table right now. Demands for other major electoral reforms are bound to join those soon.

In the end, however, it boils down to a question of constant vigilance and watching out for the threats and opportunities in advancing the political and electoral reforms. The one constant here will be the people as they embrace these reforms and change the Philippine political landscape forever with their heightened sense of democracy. Democracy, after all, is the one big lesson of the current political crisis.

Ramon Casiple is the executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform (IPER) and chairperson of the Consortium for Electoral Reforms.