Flawed democracy

 

 

We always hear from politicians, especially during elections in America and in Canada, about the disappearing middle class and the need to restore, rejuvenate, and reinforce it. But the American concept of middle class is really an anomaly, if not a distortion of social reality. To make it more expansive because this is obviously where the votes are, politicians even include the working class in their definition of what the middle class is. Yet this is untrue, for the middle class is not the new proletariat.

 

This anomalous or perhaps opportunistic description of society’s majority as somewhat middle class in economic terms is self-betraying, especially when the political and business elite attempt to promote their social agenda. It is not exactly the greater masses or the so-called middle class that members of this highly privileged upper class mobilize or appeal for sympathy to their causes. It just happens that they are the greatest in number and they count most during elections, a time which the upper class could exploit to get them elected or to obtain the necessary stamp of public approval for their agenda.

American workers rally against capitalism. Photo by eyewash design - A. Golden.

The real issue is whether the opinions of the average folks count. Or do they really count in the so-called bourgeois democratic forum, and that it is not only the elite’s voice that truly matters?

 

This seems to be at the heart of the lament of the chair of the Toronto Star, John Honderich, on the lack of outrage among Toronto’s elites over the scandalous and disgraceful behaviour of its mayor, Rob Ford, which was well-publicized in both the news and social media late last year.

Honderich was particularly surprised why Toronto’s elite were rather silent, as if their voice was not significant anymore. Truth to tell, to Honderich and his fellow members of the elite, the opinion of the Toronto average folks doesn’t weigh as much as theirs. This is why Honderich was deeply disturbed that the elite never spoke up to register their disgust over the mayor’s public display of shame and embarrassment.

 

But to his dismay after his newspaper canvassed their opinion about Mayor Ford’s behaviour, close to half of the respondents who replied declined to comment, with four sending comments that neither criticized nor defended the mayor.

 

Was this kind of validation exercise from the so-called elite necessary in a democratic forum?

 

Toronto’s mayor was already disrobed, his cocaine snorting publicly admitted, together with his association with known criminals. What did Honderich need more in order to secure public validation of the elite’s disgust over their mayor? The municipal elections are looming in a few months and they are the most effective means of rejecting a politician who is both a national embarrassment and a disgrace to public office. Or is Honderich afraid that Ford might get re-elected?

 

This is a dilemma that commonly afflicts bourgeois democracy. While it claims it is representative of all classes in society for they can choose their government and leaders by means of the ballot, the matter of popular representation is easily manipulated by the elite who control the economy. Free election is an important feature but the results indicate that the system is largely dominated and rigged by the powerful elite, leaving the poor and greater masses really powerless and unrepresented by people from their ranks. Thus, elections in a bourgeois democracy become no more than a cynical and systemic attempt to deceive the people by permitting them to endorse one or other of the bourgeoisie's predetermined choices of which can best represent and advocate the interests of capital.

 

A major Philippine newspaper, for example, reported recently that in a survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS), majority of Filipinos (about 11.8 million families) would consider themselves as poor. This is a slap on the face of the incumbent Aquino government which has been promising to achieve inclusive growth, an improvement that it claims would trickle down to the greater majority of the population.

 

However, the Aquino government dismisses this self-rated poverty by the population on the simple ground that the government uses a different set of benchmarks to determine poverty statistics. The government commits the most brazen form of self-denial in ignoring the people’s self-assessment of their impoverished condition. It is the same as saying the people’s true condition does not really matter to the government for as long as their parameters show otherwise.

 

Could there be any better indicator of poverty than the self-assessment of the people of their true condition? Wherein lies the truth: from the voice of millions who acknowledge their own impoverishment or from official government pronouncements that poverty alleviation programs are working and incidence of poverty has been significantly reduced?

 

If your own government does not care about your suffering, do you continue to regard the people you have elected as representing your interests and welfare? When poverty alleviation programs like the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) have become dole-outs that encourage mendicancy and entitlement, until when will this government admit that its policy of inclusive growth is flawed?
 

Filipinos protest Aquino government's anti-people policies. Photo by Marya
Salamat/Bulatlat.com

This government has been implementing policies and decisions that are essentially against the people. The electricity rates in the Philippines are the highest in the world today. Twelve years ago, the Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) was enacted to give consumers a choice of service providers so they can take advantage of lower electricity rates. The premise behind Epira was that free market competition would flourish and it is for the benefit of the consumers.

 

But Epira was a big joke and privatization of electric power has failed miserably. The Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) continues to be the only utility distributor that matters, making more than 5.3 million consumers powerless to oppose ever-increasing electricity bills.

 

Competition among power generators has not resulted in lower power costs. The Wholesale Electricity Spot Market (WESM) is no more than a mechanism to create the illusion of competition.

 

Yet this government continues to trumpet the commercial success of the Malampaya natural gas project in Palawan which promises to deliver the country from dependence on importing foreign oil for power generation. The Malampaya Project is supposed to fuel three natural gas-fired power stations with a total generating capacity of 2,700 megawatts that could provide 40-45% of Luzon's power generation requirements. Apparently, the government is simply satisfied with the annual $US 1 billion royalty payments it gets from the project operators, a large sum of money that goes to the president’s social fund, otherwise known as the president’s pork barrel.

 

In addition to natural gas power, the Philippines since 1983 has also become the second largest producer of geothermal power in the world. The Energy Development Corporation (EDC), founded under the Philippine National Oil Company (PNOC) in 1976, has been generating electricity for Ormoc and nearby towns in Leyte. Ormoc was recently on the cross path of super Typhoon Yolanda which hit the Philippines late last year. EDC, which became a private corporation in 2007, also has three other operating power plants in the country, all designed to generate energy from indigenous sources and lessen the country’s dependence on imported fuel.

 

Although initially operated as public utilities, all local sources of power generation and distribution, natural gas project explorations and geothermal energy production have all been transferred in the hands of the private sector. All in the misguided belief that privatization would somehow be more efficient because of free competition in the market. The trouble with privatization is that unregulated monopolies have entrenched a regime of limited choice at the expense of consumers and taxpayers.

 

And if you have a government that is powerless and would rather throw its hands in capitulation to the private sector, when does this government become a genuine advocate for the interests of the people?

 

Liberal or bourgeois democracy under the capitalist or free enterprise system can never truly be democratic or representative of the greater population. Ultimately, politicians fight only for the interests of their class. Popular elections in a bourgeois democracy are nothing but the appearance of having the power of decision of who among the ruling classes will represent the people in running the government and enacting legislation.

 

Thus, a liberal newspaper like the Toronto Star would rather prefer the elite to have a voice in issues that affect the city and treat the greater masses as important only when they turn out to vote during election time. Honderich and other elitists like him don’t care about the opinions of the average folks. They keep the masses from realizing that their will is irrelevant in the political process, while at the same time maintain a conspiracy for making them restless for some political agenda

 

In the same manner, the democratic process in the Philippines, despite its so-called free elections and political representation, is just as flawed and as deceptive because the government that has been installed by the majority of the electorate ignores the conditions of the people when it comes to governance, and ultimately works only for the interests of the privileged few and the entrenched elite.

Delusional talk

 

 

Speaking before the general commencement exercises of the University of the Philippines for its Class of 2013, Senator Edgardo Angara, also a former president of the university, told the graduates that they belong to the middle class that “is emerging as a potent force in the Philippines’ social transformation.” Angara compared the young graduates to the ilustrados of the Spanish colonial period who spearheaded the failed reform movement for a more equitable role of Filipinos in the political and economic life of the colony.  

Of course, it’s a historical myth to liken the middle class to the ilustrados of the 1800s. These ilustrados represented the highest class in the Philippine social system at that time. Together with the lower class called the taos, both the ilustrados and the taos comprised the entire social spectrum. There was no middle ground during the Spanish colonial times, either one belonged to the rich upper class or the poor lower class. 





Filipino ilustrados in Madrid during the Spanish colonial period. Photo courtesy
 of Wikipedia Commons. Click link to view Protest Action at UP Graduation 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=883zqRBGOfo

The taos were peasants and were in greater number, while the ilustrados or caciques as they were sometimes called were large landowners or persons of influence. They were small in number, well-educated and cultured, thus they comprised the ruling class. Dante Simbulan called this class the principalia which was the origin of the present-day oligarchic elite in the Philippines.

 

The concept of the middle class is a latter-day phenomenon although it was historically referred to in the past as the bourgeoisie that was responsible for the success of the French and American revolutions. In contrast, the socialist revolutions in Russia and China were not led by the bourgeoisie although their leaders were intellectuals from this class who forged ranks with the masses of workers and peasants. While today’s liberation movements, like the wars in Algeria and Vietnam and in other parts of the world could also be considered revolutions in the popular sense, they are not necessarily bourgeois in nature and origin. The recent Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were hastened by street demonstrations of disgruntled youth, students and ordinary citizens, not by the middle class.

 

Perhaps, Senator Angara was talking tongue in cheek when he graciously described the UP Class of 2013 as part of the new middle class that could be harnessed in the social transformation of the Philippines. The reference to “social transformation” seems an obvious attempt to dissociate it from the 1896 Revolution, a radical and an armed struggle that took over the reform movement.

 

In talking about “a strong middle class as the backbone of civil society,” Senator Angara refers to this class as “the voice of reason that moderates vested interests, the force of change that compels societies to invest in their own future.” This sounds like a line lifted from the political platforms of American political parties which both stress the vital importance of the middle class in responsible political governance and in promoting economic growth.

 

Senator Angara’s middle class, however, is about as American as apple pie: a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy, and with a college education that helps to sustain themselves. But the American middle class is not the same middle class we find in other economies or cultures, especially those which are poorer or backward. So, all this talk about creating the middle class patterned after the American model is only as aspirational as a fairy-tale dream.  

Philippines' poverty map. Graphic courtesy of Emil Mercado, rappler.com. Click
link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOcua4apIlY to view NCSB: Poverty
Incidence Almost Unchanged.

This is like the kind of surprise President Noynoy Aquino elicited when reality strikes you on the face. To the president’s chagrin, his own bureaucrats, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), reported that the poverty incidence in the Philippines stood at 27.9 percent in the first semester of 2012, practically unchanged from the same period in 2009, which was 28.6 percent, and in 2006 which was 28.8 percent. They must be referring to old population data, not 2012, the president could only gripe. President Aquino must be wondering as to what happened to the high credit ratings the Standard & Poor, Fitch Ratings, and Moody’s Analytics recently gave the Philippines, which all pointed to a robust economic growth in 2014. Or to the president’s much-ballyhooed Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program which he was hoping would rescue the poor from their misery.

 

Is it a paradox that poverty in the Philippines continues despite high expectations of economic growth?

 

There is really no paradox. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a liberal economic institution, “the benefits of strong economic growth have not spilled over to the people because they still cannot find a job.” The country’s rate of unemployment stood at 7.1 percent in January 2013, with a further 20.9 percent underemployed or those working fewer than 40 hours a week. About 41.8 percent of the underemployed are in the farming sector. Norio Usui, ADB senior country economist, said that the government must solve the problem of jobless growth if it hoped to reduce poverty.

 

This also means that only the rich and the educated have benefited from growth the economy is experiencing and not the poor and uneducated, which also explains why there is a pervasive income inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

 

Similarly, President Aquino’s flagship anti-poverty initiative, the CCT Program wasn’t also enough to significantly mitigate income inequality in the first semester of 2012. Because the CCT budget accounted for only 25 percent of the amount needed to eradicate poverty, the NCSB said. Besides, with the corrupt nature of pork barrel politics, it is highly likely that the money could have been shifted around instead of spending it for the alleviation of the targeted poor.

 

The model of economic growth that the present government adopted depended on increased levels of consumption, strong remittances from the country’s large overseas workforce, and the outsourcing industry which the Philippines is currently number one in the world. Half or even more of the UP 2013 graduating class, the new members of the middle class as Senator Angara would like to call them, will probably join the growing outsourcing industry which employs highly educated workers, if they don’t migrate to work or settle overseas.

 

The Philippines has a weak industrial base compared to the other economies in the region. Without durable industrialization, highly educated college graduates or even high school graduates will not be able to get jobs. Their only choice is either to become underemployed as call-centre workers or go overseas as part of the contingent of the country’s cheap exploitable labour.

 

National industrialization is one of the key issues that the National Democratic Front, the umbrella group for communist organizations, has been insisting to be on the peace negotiations table with the government panel. Edwin Lacierda, President Aquino’s spokesperson, said the problem with the NDF is it continues to use ideas that had become passé, such as “national industrialization,” which makes negotiations for peace impossible.

 

“National industrialization? I mean, we’ve moved on. They seemed to have not moved on. So how does one talk in a present setting with people who are still in the ’50s or in the ’60s perspective?” Lacierda asked.

 

Perhaps, President Aquino and the staff that surrounds and protects him, including our politicians like Senator Angara, should go on a retreat for some serious soul-searching. The country will never be able to gain a significant headway in attempting to solve its economic and social problems if our elected leaders and their coterie of experts continue to ignore realities that their own bureaucrats and other respected institutions have objectively identified.

 

It is not enough that the country is favourably regarded by international credit rating agencies. High ratings are not the true measure of a country’s economic performance if the growth in the economy does not trickle down to the benefit of the greater majority of the population. The outsourcing industry is not a real industrial boon that would spur an increase in jobs, beyond the minimal expansion in consumption patterns of those employed in this sector.

 

Senator Angara in his speech before the UP Class of 2013 called on the new graduates to take advantage of a nascent Asian regional economy that would allow the Philippines “to finance our own growth from our people’s own savings, without having to levy new taxes or borrow from other nations’ savings. We can build schools and hospitals, roads and bridges from our own pockets—investments for the people, by the people.” This is the rising middle class, he said.

 

Talk is really cheap, especially if it is not reflective of reality, historical and present, and the actual choices the people must confront. It’s probably time for our leaders in government not just to think outside the box, but perhaps by going beyond and away from their traditional mindsets.