Dissent and other voices

 

 

Did anyone notice the style of cause in the recent case wherein the Supreme Court has struck down certain provisions of the Aquino government’s controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as unconstitutional? For those who may not be aware, the style of cause refers to the name of the case.

 

High on top of the list of petitioners is Maria Carolina P. Araullo, the chair of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, followed by individuals known to be left-leaning and representatives of civil society organizations committed to good governance and empowerment of the people. Who else but these much-maligned groups are the ones indisputably fearless to stand up to government’s abuse of power?

 

Those from the right and many rabid supporters of President Benigno Aquino III have easily dismissed the left as irrelevant and a big disappointment. One, who was presumably affiliated before with the left and now a born-again fervent defender of the faith in the Aquino government, questioned the modes of engagement that the left have continued to embrace—the effigy burning and sloganeering that demanded impeachment of the President.

Students from various universities raise their fists after filing a second verified
impeachment complaint against President Benigno Aquino III in the House of
Representatives over his unconstitutional Disbursement Accelaration Program
(DAP). Photo by Manny Palmero.

Araullo vs. DAP, the more popular short name for the Supreme Court decision, represents the victory of people’s dissent over the arrogance of some of our leaders in government, or even perhaps the triumph of the people’s parliamentary struggle over the smugness and cockiness of the raucous rightwing-mongers.

 

Many have confused parliamentary struggle as being confined only in the halls of Congress, a tactical form of engagement strictly reduced to legislative reforms. But parliamentary struggle is not limited to congressional initiatives. It embraces the whole gamut of expressing dissent through legal means such as protests on the streets, messaging on Facebook and Twitter, confronting government decrees or acts through constitutional challenges, and private petitions or complaints of plunder against government officials. Yes, even burning of effigies. Parliamentary struggle adopts all forms of protests and advocacies so long as they do not involve violence, or taking up arms against the government.

 

Under authoritarian regimes, dissenters are persecuted. Hitler executed them, and Stalin sent them to the gulags. Surely, no one, including President Aquino, likes being ridiculed or chastised by the Supreme Court and the public. But democratic societies tolerate dissent, a proof that freedom of speech truly exists.

 

It is also why Joe America, a former banking executive who lives permanently in the Philippines and blogs relentlessly, can continuously and without fear lavish the current government with praises while he paints the Aquino critics, especially the left, as being possessed with evil motives like destroying the government by any means. Or why other defenders of the Aquino dispensation flourish and are easy to find in major Philippine dailies writing their regular columns defending Malacañang, and those who roam the various forums on the Internet and flood them with their supercilious and pompous opinions about anything that appears critical of the government.

 

There is nothing wrong in the present public conversation between those who believe in the government and those who are critical of it. This is how a free market of ideas is supposed to work. Give a little and sometimes take a quick poke, the battle of ideas is not won by one side when it says that wrong is right because it says so, or simply because it has been allowed or done before.

 

Just like when President Aquino insists that the DAP is right because everything he does is out of good faith and will redound to the benefit of the people.

 

In a recent speech commemorating the 150th birth anniversary of a great Filipino hero Apolinario Mabini, President Aquino said that the implementation of the DAP was reinforced by their belief that the Supreme Court itself agreed with that kind of mechanism. The president was, of course, referring to the high court’s request for a transfer of funds for the construction of the Manila Hall of Justice and the Malolos Hall of Justice.

 

“They requested for the funds to be transferred to be able to construct buildings that will house the courts. We don’t see anything wrong with this because it speeds up the judicial system in the country,” President Aquino said. The high court’s request was eventually withdrawn after petitions were filed questioning the constitutionality of the DAP.

 

There is something wrong in the President’s judgment. Just because the Supreme Court requested the fund transfer doesn’t mean that the executive can do the same for highly dubious purposes, especially after the high court cancelled their request.

 

The President cannot keep justifying the DAP or whatever he does as being good for the people. As public servant, that’s a given presumption, his covenant of good faith. He cannot rationalize his actions only by their results. More so, when there are allegations that the DAP funds were used to bribe members of Congress in impeaching former Chief Justice Renato Corona, and that the funds were also used to compensate the President’s family for Hacienda Luisita and other landowners. Where is good faith if the allegations were proved to be true?

Members of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan point to a mascot of President
Benigno Aquino III when they declared him king of the Disbursement Acceleration
Program (DAP).

In his ubiquitous blog on the Internet, The Society of Honor by Joe America, Joe America endorses the DAP debate, “as the freedom to do that is what we fought for when we kicked out the Marcos dictatorship.” “We kicked out” is somewhat presumptuous, if not disingenuous. Joe America himself said he arrived in the Philippines in 2005, or eighteen years after the dictator was driven out of the country by the EDSA People Power Revolution. How did he become a part of the “we” who kicked out the Marcos dictatorship? Does Joe America even understand that the left greatly contributed to waking up the consciousness of the Filipino people against the oppressive Marcos regime?

 

Joe America is your typical opportunist who would dismiss the contributions of the left in building a national collective against oppression in the past, and undermine their role in the continuing struggle for people empowerment in governance. He is embraced by Filipino intellectuals, real and imagined, in their jeremiads against today’s left and the progressive movement. He now lives with his Filipino wife and son in a rural rice-growing area in the Visayas. Joe America says he is a retired banking executive with degrees in Mathematics and Radio and Television Arts. His 30-year working career was based in Los Angeles, California and he has traveled on business or personally to 21 countries. Sounds like someone who would fit the resume of an undercover political operative of an American intelligence agency.

 

Meanwhile, someone from a forum I know is already mouthing the same shibboleths as if they’re coming directly from Joe America’s pen. “Is it because parliamentary struggle requires a little more imagination and innovation, and hard work and marching to the streets and shouting to the top of their tonsils is an easier force of habit than innovating and thinking new things?,” she asks.

 

Like Joe America, she describes the left as political dinosaurs which have become obsolescent and alienated from the rest of the people. In the same vein, Joe America would caution others not to be dragged by the left into their agenda because they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.

 

Joe America and those who are like him do not represent the type of public intellectuals we would like to read and listen to. On one hand, they would pretend to encourage a robust debate, yet in truth they try to muzzle the genuine truth from coming out.

 

The voice of dissent, if we want it to be free, should be allowed to flourish without the cumbersome Joe Americas and his converts telling us that right is wrong or wrong is right just because they say so.

Deconstructing EDSA I

 

 

By his own admission, President Noynoy Aquino sought refuge in Cebu when his father, the late Senator Benigno Aquino II, was assassinated in 1983. It was also in Cebu where his mother, former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino, took shelter from the political turmoil in Manila during the February 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution that eventually deposed the dictator Ferdinand Marcos from power.

 

Now on the 28th anniversary of the EDSA Revolution, President Aquino is making a revisionist historical claim that it was in Cebu where his mother Cory planted the seed of civil disobedience against the Marcos regime. Thus, why the President was in Cebu to celebrate the anniversary of the EDSA revolt as he emphasized the role played by Cebu in the initial stage of the revolution. As President Aquino said, “If the last part of the protest happened in EDSA, the first part started in Cebu.”

President Noynoy Aquino contemplates the legacy of his parents,
democracy icons former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. and former
President  Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino on the 28-year anniversary
of  the EDSA I People Power Revolution.

Everyone who knows full well the roots of the people’s protest in EDSA is aware that President Aquino was wrong in claiming that his mother planned the protest while she was in Cebu. Cory Aquino was in Cebu at that time for her own safety just as her own son took refuge there when he was a young boy during his father’s assassination.

 

The people’s protest in EDSA was the tipping point in the civil society’s struggle against the oppressive Marcos regime. Long before EDSA, the Filipino people had already been waging their battle to depose Marcos from Malacañang. Thousands had been killed and imprisoned by the Marcos dictatorship in its effort to remain in power, but EDSA became the critical moment in the people’s movement against the repressive regime. It was in EDSA where the people’s protest reached a critical mass.

 

But whether Cebu actually played an important part in the EDSA revolution only downplays its significance. What is more important is for us to grasp the true meaning of the EDSA uprising, and whether it has accomplished its purpose.

 

EDSA was successful in driving Marcos into exile, but the landscape of political power was never altered. The so-called restoration of democracy in the Philippines in 1986 was simply a transfer of political power into the hands of the oligarchic elite. There was a change in the characters on the political stage, but the play’s storyline remained constant.

 

Twenty-eight years have passed since the EDSA revolution. Income inequalities continue to intensify despite growth in GDP because the economic gains meant bigger profits to corporations and mainly benefited a few wealthy families. The so-called economic growth under the Aquino administration did not translate to higher and gainful employment, thus worsening poverty among more than 25 percent of the population. In short, the quality of life for many Filipinos either worsened or remained unchanged.

 

On the political side, political power remains the monopoly of a handful of family dynasties. The Marcoses were driven into exile by the EDSA uprising but it did not prevent them and their followers from coming back to regain their political influence. Now, the Marcos family is in the political picture again, and if unchecked, it may spring its biggest political comeback by capturing the presidency in the very near future, relegating the EDSA revolution to a sad and insignificant footnote in the country’s history.

 

Public corruption has become a way of life for politicians, making politics the most lucrative of all careers. With its “daang matuwid” mantra, the incumbent administration promises to clean the government of corruption. Yet, looting of the public coffers remains rampant from congressional pork barrel to the President’s own presidential pork barrel, both disguised as earmarks for development assistance.

 

Notwithstanding the return of democracy and restoration of political and civil liberties after the EDSA uprising, repression of political dissent continues to a point where it is allowed as a permissible culture of impunity. While the Philippine press has been bandied around as one of the freest in the world, journalists continue to be easy prey for government repression. The Philippines had the third most number of journalists killed last year and has continued to be among the countries where press freedom is imperiled.

 

In an interview with reporters, President Aquino said that online libel is justified since it constitutes equal protection for those who are aggrieved by information through the Internet. It is easy to understand why President Noynoy Aquino would rather protect those he believes could be criminally libeled on the Internet than preserving the lives of journalists and their right to freely express themselves. Journalists scare Aquino because he does not want to be criticized. To President Aquino, protecting him and others from criticism either on the Internet or on traditional media trumps the right to freedom of expression. Thus, it is acceptable for Noynoy Aquino to punish critics for criminal libel rather than to protect and preserve the rights of journalists and other critics to their life and freedom of the press.

 

This is not to say that no remedy should be made available whenever one defames another. Libel has already been decriminalized in many jurisdictions because the civil court has proven to be capable of providing appropriate remedies for damages rather than imprisonment. Why is it difficult for the Philippines to follow the trend towards decriminalization of libel, but for the very thin skin of President Aquino, Senator Tito Sotto and others who are easily offended by fair criticism?

 

President Aquino’s disquieting aversion to criticism also demonstrates his lack of human compassion to empathize with the oppressed and the poor. Take for instance the victims of super Typhoon Yolanda when they recently travelled to Manila in order to air their grievances for the government’s slow response to their plight.

Survivors of Typhoon Yolanda joined the People Power celebration at the EDSA
Shrine to press their call for press relief for their fellow victims in the Eastern
Visayas region, and tied violet ribbons in many places at Ground Zero to protest
their plight. Photo by Manny Palmero.

Instead of meeting with the protesters, President Aquino snubbed them for coming to Manila. The President said: “To those who are saying that we have been slow in responding... it seems to me that if they are capable of attending to their trip to Manila, perhaps they can also attend to their livelihood.”

 

Aquino’s Social Welfare Secretary Corazon Soliman agreed with the President by saying “instead of coming here, they could have used the money to help themselves.”

 

Even much worse was the reaction of Rehabilitation Czar Panfilo Lacson who denied that the government had been slow in responding to the needs of the calamity survivors and dismissed the protesting typhoon survivors as pawns of communist agitators and leftist groups who wanted to destabilize the government. Here we go again with red-baiting which was a ubiquitous aspect of repression during the Marcos dictatorship.

 

Certainly, this is not the kind of heartless government we wanted after the EDSA revolution. We threw out a repressive regime but coddled another cruel government that suffers from a lack of consideration and empathy to people’s problems. And if we don’t agree with their demands, we call them communists, as if the end of the Cold War in the 1990s did not already erase that stigma of communism.

 

People in high echelons of government like President Aquino and his cabinet should be more sensitive to the needs of the people. If people criticize the government for being slow in responding to their problems, like the victims of Typhoon Yolanda, the best thing for the President or his staff to do is to sit down and listen to them, not to scold them for coming to Manila. After all, these people are also part of the constituency the President calls his boss. Unless, calling the people his boss is just another insincere publicity stunt.

 

The protesters who gathered in EDSA in February 1986 came in droves, armed only with the courage of their words and songs to show the genuineness of their intent and spirit to revolt against repression. They all knew full well that in the event of gunfire, their cause would be lost in a matter of minutes. But the dictator’s minions dithered and avoided the risk of action, in the end betraying their own loyalty to the cruel regime. In a few hours, the Marcos dictatorship crumbled without firing a shot and the entire country and the world begun to embrace the idea that a peaceful revolution was possible.

 

That was the essence of EDSA I, which was lost in the years of succession from one president to another. The only trouble is that every president after Ferdinand Marcos tried to outdo him, to become better or even greater. They all failed, even the current one.

 

Instead of transforming the narrative of the peaceful revolution of EDSA into a story of the making of a new country, a new constitution, a new world—every leader after Marcos emulated the dictator’s predilection for punitive action against the voices of dissent, for rewarding his capitalist cronies and members of the oligarchic elite, for reinforcing political dynasties, and for committing petty and grand corruption in all levels of government. The ordinary masses who persevered in the struggle for a better life actually never figured in the country’s democratic renewal after EDSA. They were victims of the old society under Marcos and they have continued to be the sacrificial victims of one regime after another of excess, extravagance, and small-mindedness.

 

Is it any wonder that those aching for the return of another Marcos in Malacañang are never in doubt that this reality is not any further away? This is a brutal simplification of history after EDSA I, but the fallibility of our memory makes the upcoming narrative almost frightening.

Measuring greatness

 

 

In his book, King of the Mountain: The Nature of Political Leadership, University of Kentucky emeritus professor Arnold M. Ludwig studied virtually all the rulers in the world during the previous century who had a major impact on their countries, as well as those who had not. Ludwig observed that whether it is a democracy or a dictatorship, people eventually want one person at the helm whom they can identify as their leader.

 

There is nothing fanciful in putting so much importance to a single leader. Ludwig, who is a psychiatrist by profession, asserts that this seems biologically and psychologically rooted in our being. “It is part of the genetic blueprint that governs our lives,” Ludwig writes.

Professor Arnold M. Ludwig in his book, King of the Mountain, writes that leaders
of nations tend to act like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern,
and rule.

We probably inherit the desire for a single ruler or leader from the apes who could be man’s closest relative in his evolution. In his classical study of mountain gorillas, G. B. Schaller has demonstrated the central role of the leader in the gorilla community, and the importance of a leader to mountain gorillas also applies to humans.

 

We have just gone through another election in the Philippines and, by the looks of it, people are already speculating who would possibly run for president in 2016 when President Noynoy Aquino steps down. At this early stage, a rematch is shaping up between the frontrunners, incumbent vice-president Jejomar “Jojo” Binay against President Aquino’s anointed heir apparent and losing running mate in the 2011 presidential elections, Mar Roxas.

 

But another big name from the past looms large in the horizon. Bongbong Marcos, now a senator of the Republic and the only son of the previous dictator and his namesake, has also been the subject of speculations on presidential wannabes. Whether Ferdinand Marcos, the son, also rises on the political chain has already aroused some serious and emotional debate on the legacy of his father’s presidency.

 

Ferdinand Marcos, the senior, was president of the Philippines from 1965 until 1986, when the first so-called EDSA People Power Revolution toppled him and forced him to go on exile in the United States. The older Marcos ruled with an iron fist, declared martial law when he could not legally run for a third term as president until he could install what he conveniently called a regime of “constitutional authoritarianism” under the auspices of a New Society.

 

It appeared to be the trend that had swept the region during his time that Ferdinand Marcos took advantage in establishing a government based on authoritarian rule. Other countries like Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and Thailand were all being governed by one-man rule.

 

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s prime minister for thirty-one years and whom many have considered a great leader and a paragon for others to emulate, had been successful in overseeing its separation from Malaysia in 1965. Lee was able to transform the new nation from an underdeveloped colonial outpost of the British Empire despite its lack of natural resources into a “First World” Asian Tiger. Compared with the older Marcos, Lee’s dictatorial methods appeared benign and less contemptible because of his ability and success in tending to the economic welfare of his subjects.

 

What others didn’t know, however, as Ludwig described in King of the Mountain, was Lee believed that governing a nation was too important to be left to the uninformed and ignorant populace. Lee didn’t buy into the conventional notion that too much powers corrupted leaders. Instead, he subscribed to the reverse notion that ordinary people could not be entrusted with powers because it corrupted their judgment as voters.

 

Despite ushering Singapore to prosperity in three decades, Lee’s legacy has been tainted by authoritarian rule and intolerance of dissent. He would sue political opponents and newspapers who expressed an unfavourable opinion of his government. One of Lee's abiding beliefs has been in the effectiveness of corporal punishment in the form of caning which he has utilized in a range of crimes. Lee also introduced caning in the Singapore Armed Forces, and Singapore is one of the few countries in the world where corporal punishment is an official penalty in military discipline.

 

While Lee succeeded as an authoritarian ruler, Ferdinand Marcos was a dismal failure, not due to his lack of stomach for dictatorship but because of runaway crony capitalism, wanton government corruption, and widespread human rights abuses that reached a tipping point in the EDSA People Power Revolution in 1986. It’s true that Marcos built more infrastructure like highways, hospitals and schools than his predecessors and successors combined, but that is not a true measure of greatness. We cannot certainly ascribe the genuine greatness of leaders like Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi to the number of construction projects or lack of it that they pursued and forget the lofty and noble ideals they fought for.

 

To finance his grandiose economic development projects, Marcos mortgaged the country for large amounts of loans from international lenders. The country’s external debt ballooned from $360 million (US) in 1962 to more than $28 billion in 1986, with a sizable amount going to the Marcos family and his business cronies. These loans were assumed by the government and are still being serviced by taxpayers up to today and several generations into the future.
 

Known as the conjugal dictatorship, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda,
ruled over the Philippines from 1965 to 1986.

In the 2004 Global Transparency Report, Marcos appeared in the list of the World's Most Corrupt Leaders, ranking second behind the late President of Indonesia, Suharto. Marcos was said to have amassed between $5 billion to $10 billion in his 21 years as president of the Philippines.

 

In the face of an imminent candidacy of Ferdinand Marcos, the son, for the presidency of the Philippines in either 2016 or 2022, there are now attempts toward a revisionist interpretation of the Marcos years in power and the impact of his vision of a New Society. All this talk about how great the presidency of Ferdinand the elder is obviously aimed in rehabilitating the Marcos name and portraying him as a benevolent autocrat who made the country great again. This would pave the way for the popular election of Ferdinand the younger when his time comes up in 3 or 6 years.

 

There is still a legion of Marcos followers who are in awe and greatly impressed by the so-called achievements of the Marcos presidency, especially when they compare him to his mediocre and middling successors. These Marcos diehard loyalists, however, refuse to accept that the damage Marcos had inflicted on the country is still very much with us.

 

Ludwig wrote that the problem in judging the political genius of rulers is knowing what they should get credit for. It is very difficult to judge the merits of one’s presidency even if we can identify the achievements that bear their personal stamp – laws, construction projects, executive decisions, or economic policies, for example.

 

Unlike the creative works of artists, we can evaluate them by their originality, compositional structure, narrative quality, usefulness, beauty or universal appeal. The validity of scientific theories can be tested through experiments. Or we can measure the performance of athletes by their times, distances or scores, or the skill of surgeons in mortality rates.

 

There are no universally agreed-upon ways to assess the accomplishments of rulers. People of different political persuasions often interpret the results of these policies differently. Even if they agree at one point, they may disagree at another, which has been the crux of debate among intelligent members of a social and political forum that I know. Up till now they are still debating whether Ferdinand Marcos is the greatest president the Philippines has ever had. Edifices vs. democratic governance: which is a full measure of success?

 

According to Professor Ludwig, people may choose to ignore their animal heritage by believing their behaviour is rational and socially purposeful, all of which they would account to the fact of being human. But people also masticate, fornicate, and procreate, much as chimps do. Thus, there is no cause for people to get upset if “they learn that they act like other primates when they politically agitate, debate, abdicate, placate, and administrate, too,” says Ludwig.

 

If there’s any consolation, the results of Ludwig's eighteen-year study suggest that leaders of nations tend to act remarkably like monkeys and apes in the way they come to power, govern, and rule. That perhaps would explain in full what the legacy of Ferdinand Marcos is all about.

Mad against dynasties

We have been unbelievably seduced by democracy’s self-fulfilling prophecy that it will always prevail in the end. That during times of crisis, the electoral process will measure up to our expectations and deliver the kind of men and women who will lead us to democracy’s promised land. This has always been the public perception manufactured by government and those in power every election year. For so long we have counted on democracy to check the excesses of our political process, and it seems the long years of exposure have made us numb, almost like zombies who would do and think(?) whatever is told them.

 

Why vote when it counts for nothing? Or to the seasoned cynic, why vote when your vote will not be counted? Maybe it will, but not for your chosen candidate but added to the votes in favour of another. This is the Filipino state-of-the-art counting of votes: “dagdag-bawas” or add-substract. Whatever new election technology the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has, there’s always a counter technology to subvert it, a product of Filipino ingenuity.

Article 2, Section 26 of the Philippine Constitution provides: The State shall guarantee
equal access to public service and prohibit political dynasty as may be defined by law.
Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hV5Xra6f0s to view Dynasties in
Democracies: The Political Side of Inequality.

We have been for so long focused on the wrong problem. It’s not counting the votes that matters but the kind of people to choose from. But in the final analysis, the deficiency could also be our fault for why after all do we keep voting for the same families and their relatives? Or why are we easily persuaded by the glamour and fame from acting or boxing in the ring that it can translate to serious political responsibility? Or why do we thumb down our noses on people who honestly care for the poor, those whose sterling record in serving the people is an exemplar for the kind we must elect in office?

 

Wealth and power determine the outcome of the electoral process. Political dynasties have accumulated wealth and power over a long period of time. Elections are important, not so much for the masses, but mostly for these families to keep their stranglehold on political power. As a result, our democracy is flawed, not a truly representative democracy.

 

If the government is really serious in reforming the electoral process so that democracy works and becomes more truly representative, the solution is not in simply automating election results but in retrofitting our mindset with radical ideas of reform and change. We can be experts in counting beans or even the stars in the sky, but we need to see the beans as being nutritious supplements or the stars lighting the darkness above us. Even before we can ensure that counting votes is quick and accurate, the people must be ensured that the candidates are not only qualified but will serve the public with integrity and honesty. No election apparatus can give this assurance; thus, any improvements in the electoral process must come from the people’s elected representatives to enact the necessary and relevant legislation.

 

But here’s the catch. The real problem looms even bigger because our representatives in Congress will naturally refuse to make laws that run counter to their interests. After their election, victorious candidates tend to suffer from loss of memory, forgetting the people who elected them and the promises they made. Such is the nature of the human condition. That is why we need to be forever vigilant even if we have to launch a kind of fugitive democracy, or what is sometimes referred to as democracy without politics.

 

We can’t just sit still and do nothing. One obvious way to prompt our elected representatives is being irritating. Mark Kingwell, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, likens this to a lump of foreign matter that enters a complacent system and induces a kind of internal instability. Kingwell analogizes it to the abrasive grain of sand that slips inside an oyster’s shell and in attempting to stabilize itself, the oyster creates something new and beautiful.

 

In my previous blog I wrote about democracy without elections and this is possible if the people can just be irritating enough to compel their representatives to implement the democratic provisions of the Constitution that allow the people to directly enact laws by initiative and referendum. Rule of or by the people is ingrained in the 1987 Philippine Constitution. Section 1, Article II states that “sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.” Under Section 2, Article XVII, amendments to the Constitution may be directly proposed by the people through initiative, and under Section 32, Article VI, the people can also directly propose and enact laws or approve or reject any act or law through a system of initiative and referendum. In 1989, Congress passed Republic Act No. 6735, “The Initiative and Referendum Act,” the enabling legislation to the aforementioned constitutional provisions.

 

Interestingly in 1997, the Philippine Supreme Court on three occasions examined and rejected RA 6735, but only insofar as the law was supposed to implement the system of initiative on amendments to the Constitution. In its decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress downgraded the importance or paramountcy of the system of initiative as envisioned in the Constitution and merely paid lip service to it. The original decision declared RA 6735 incomplete or inadequate in spelling out the essential terms and conditions for implementing the system of initiative on constitutional amendments.

 

The Supreme Court would revisit the same law in 2006 after the Comelec junked a proposed initiative by the Sigaw ng Bayan Movement to amend the Constitution which would change the government into a parliamentary system. Comelec dismissed the petition of Sigaw ng Bayan and the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines to verify signatures they have gathered in support of their petition. Malacanang was rumored to have backed the petition and even government funds were allegedly used in procuring the supporting signatures.

 

Again, the Supreme Court voted to uphold its previous ruling in 1997, this time arguing that the proposed changes being sought by the petitioners would constitute a major constitutional overhaul. According to the Supreme Court, the “people’s initiative” as envisaged in the Philippine Constitution can only be used for lesser amendments. The high court also took notice of the alleged deceptive signatures gathered to support the petition and ruled that it cannot therefore allow such constitutionally infirm initiative to desecrate the Constitution.

 

Arguably, the Supreme Court’s decision was obviously politically motivated, but the onus should really rest on the proponents of the initiative to show they have satisfied the constitutional requirements and that the proposed parliamentary system was not motivated by selfish interests. The stakes were high in 1997 and 2006 because both the initiatives were intended to amend or revise the Constitution. Instead of stoking the divisions that were breaking the country apart as to whether to proceed with the revision of the Constitution, the Supreme Court decided to thread its grounds very lightly by preserving the status quo.

 

Apparently, the provisions of RA 6735 regarding the system of initiative and referendum for the people to directly enact legislative proposals were saved and not invalidated by the Supreme Court decision. This is now the new battleground, and it has already started with proposed initiatives by civil society organizations for the people to enact a law prohibiting political dynasties in accordance with the Philippine Constitution. Members of the multi-sectoral Movement Against Dynasties (MAD) have started gathering signatures for their campaign. The Kapatiran Party has filed a petition with the Comelec to hold an initiative for the people to enact a national legislation against political dynasties. AnDayaMo (Anti-Dynasty Movement) has also filed a petition with the Comelec to disqualify certain candidates who are members of known political clans. Meanwhile, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) threw its support to the growing anti-dynasty movement through a pastoral letter read in all their parishes entreating all Filipino Catholics to support the people's initiative to enact a law against political dynasties.

 

At present, two anti-political dynasty bills are sitting in Congress, one in the Senate authored by Miriam Defensor Santiago and another in the House of Representative authored by Teodoro “Teddy” Casiño. Both bills, which are identical and cover only locally elected officials, are in limbo and unlikely to see the light of day as members of Congress are not expected to pass legislation that endangers their own selfish interests.
 

Since more that 75 percent of its members are from political dynasties, Congress
passing a law to implement the constitutional prohibition against political dynasties
is next to impossible. Click link to view and sign petition, End Political Dynasties
Now!,  http://www.change.org/petitions/end-political-dynasties-now



More than half of the 33 senatorial candidates on the official ballot in the coming May 2013 elections are scions of notable families who have long dominated the landscape of Philippine politics. One Filipino senator, who is not linked to any political dynasty, has called the Philippines the “world capital of political dynasties,” with 178 active dynasties. They are the “equivalent of Mafia crime families,” she added, who have carved a monopoly of political power over a long period time, some for more than 30 years.

 

Enough. No more. Tama na! This must be the people’s rallying cry. The genuine rage against the entrenched elite and families dynasties is real. It’s like the Occupy movement that infuriated Wall Street financiers in the United States during the fall of 2012, but much better because here the people have a clear purpose of what they want to achieve. They have leadership and organization. This is the clear first step on the road to democratic recovery, and it is historically correct since it is the mass movements that are generally responsible for fundamental changes in society, not a small group of politicians elected because of their social class, wealth and power.

America’s arrogance

 

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States has remained the last one standing among the world’s superpowers. The U.S. is still in a class of its own, economically and militarily. Though more powerful than ever, the U.S. has never been more reviled however.

 

Majority of the people in the Middle East, for example, believe the U.S. war against Islamic terrorism is in fact meant to secure oil or even achieve world domination. The American invasion of Iraq and the consequent grand plan to promote freedom and establish democracy has long been suspected by other countries, including America’s allies, as a convenient smokescreen to control Iraq’s oil resources.

 

Former U.S. President George W. Bush used to say “that the terrorists hate us because of our freedom.” But that is not true. People in the world have always admired the American free society. Everyone wants to be in America as the song suggests in West Side Story. What they don’t like is American arrogance and indifference to world opinion that is inherent in so much of its foreign policy, and which some of the time is also hypocritical and unjust.

 

This is not just a modern-day gripe against America. Early on during the 1950s to the 1960s, it is exactly how countries in Latin America had felt when their people were treated by Gringos sent to oversee American banana plantations or other American interests. There was hostility everywhere against the Americans – not just because of the size, wealth and good fortune of the United States. D. H. Radler called this the American talent for offending people in his article in the 1961 issue of Harper’s Magazine.

 

“With few exceptions, they (Americans) usually manage to make enemies instead of friends,” Radler wrote. “We do this acting as if we are better than anyone else,” he added.

 

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is one fine example of American arrogance. He wanted President Barack Obama to be more bellicose in showing outrage and condemning the recent attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and to stop apologizing to the perpetrators of the violence that killed an American ambassador and three of his staff. The “apologizing” stuff was a misleading staple of the Romney political campaign attack for nowhere did Obama apologize for the Libyan incident or in any of his foreign policy remarks in the past.

Violent Muslim demonstrations have spread in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia over film
mocking Islam and its Prophet Mohammed. Photo by Abd Raouf/Associated Press.
Click link to view "Martin Luther King Jr.'s Speech About America's Arrogance,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY82kmlaWH8

Romney like all recent Republican presidential wannabes seems to suffer from the “Tolstoy syndrome.” In the 2007 issue of Harper’s Magazine, Scott Norton described this group of war-hungry individuals as claiming to have a vision but is in fact blind. “They think they know all the answers, so they neither see nor listen. And the consequences of their misrule have been staggering,” Norton wrote. Norton was criticizing the Bush war in Iraq at that time and the belligerent positions of the Republican presidential primary aspirants over jihadist extremism, from the hawkish John McCain to the auditioning fear monger-in-chief Rudy Giuliani.

 

Fareed Zakaria of Time Magazine wrote that the problem with America today is not because it is too strong. But rather the U.S. is seen as too arrogant, uncaring and insensitive. There is a popular feeling that the United States is too obsessed with its own notions of terrorism and has stopped listening to the rest of the world.

 

Our recollection of the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq can’t be effaced from our memory during an interview of then Vice President Cheney by ABC News’s Good Morning America. Cheney was reminded that the American public, by a margin of two-to-one, opposed the war in Iraq. Showing his arrogant indifference, Cheney responded, “So?”

 

Mitt Romney’s criticism of Obama’s response to the Libyan incident is not so much different from his friends in the Republican Party. It is perfect arrogance, plain and simple. When criticized afterwards for his inept remarks, Romney would evade very serious question and let his spinmeisters repair the obvious damage by referring to the overall weakness in Obama’s Middle East policy, a tenuous criticism as well.

 

There have always been extremists in the Middle East, before and after the Arab Spring revolution that toppled three long and brutal dictatorships. Through foreign aid, the United States has attached strings to countries that will embrace American values, and reward them for protecting political and religious freedom. But much of the U.S. foreign assistance was either hijacked by the ruling despots to build their personal cache or spent in strengthening their military might. This includes humanitarian aid which hardly went to the people who were direly in need of assistance such as food, water and medicine.

 

To most Arabs, particularly among the youth, the appeal of fundamentalist Islam was intoxicating. Religion became a powerful medium to express their anti-American sentiment. While there was love-hate relationship between these young Arabs and the United States, nevertheless they have also embraced even some American political ideals of liberty and democracy, which became hugely popular during the tumultuous Arab Spring uprising. Even the former radical Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has mellowed and adopted the democratic promise of parliamentary reforms over continuing their violent confrontation with the state. The ouster of Gaddafi was a boon to America for it gave the flicker of hope that democracy was possible in Libya.

Anti-American demonstrations by Muslims have caught fire after killing of
American Ambassador Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya. Photo by
Hatem Moussa/Associated Press.

 Writing for The Independent, Robert Fisk wrote that “With the help of our wonderful new technology, it only takes a couple of loonies to kick off a miniature war in the Muslim world within seconds.” Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his diplomat colleagues in Benghazi have paid the price for those provocateurs for choosing to raise the ire of the Muslim world through a deliberately abusive film that denigrated Islam’s prophet. That Muslims around the world are so culturally averse to criticism of their religion is not the issue. It is not the Muslim religion that is on trial, but to allow the work of some crackpot to be used by extremists to light up the flames of anti-Western sentiment just crosses the line.

 

Sometimes America’s arrogance in international relations has also rubbed off on the minds of a few zealots who would behave like they have been bestowed with America’s power, like its allies in Southeast Asia. The Philippine government, for one, has taken the high road in pushing its sovereignty claim over territories in the South China Sea by renaming the sea as the West Philippine Sea, delineating the waters and islands in the sea as part of Philippine territory. President Benigno Aquino III and his foreign policy advisers know full well that such a unilateral move could be taken as provocative and not in keeping with its demand for an official code of conduct between the claimant countries. For one thing, the dispute is not about who has sovereignty over the waters, but the land formations over and under the water which are still unresolved.

 

The Philippine government is behaving as arrogantly as the United States which has recently announced its pivot to Asia and the Pacific as the focus of its new foreign policy and military strategy. Part of the new American initiative are basing rights and rotating military presence of U.S. troops in the Philippines, which by all means is a surrender of sovereignty. Has this foreign policy pivot and military realignment by the United States strengthened the defence of the Philippines? Is this what is prompting the Philippines to be more assertive of its claims in the South China Sea (or in the West Philippine Sea as it prefers to call it), having been reassured of U.S. military support?

 

But as it stands, all claimant countries in the South China Sea are on equal footing. No one claim is superior or more valid than the other. If there is a window for a diplomatic solution of the impasse, the Philippines should stop behaving arrogantly like its former colonial master.

Manufacturing public opinion

Very often we are asked to have our say on matters of state policy, such as the ongoing consultations with the public by Citizenship and Immigration Canada. All levels of government – federal, provincial and municipal – always stress the importance of feedback to government proposals in changing policies or regulations. Whether useless or effective, duplicitous or sincere, these public consultations create another layer in the decision-making process, in addition to our elected Parliament and local councils, and the army of technocrats in the government bureaucracy.

Canada Immigration, for example, conducts public consultations to “generate greater public understanding of the difficult decisions involved in managing a global immigration system.” According to its recent press release, “There are competing visions and diverging goals for the future of the immigration program, and there are no easy answers. Engaging stakeholders and the broader public is key to CIC’s development of an overall strategy for Canada moving forward.”

According to a press release from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the purpose
of immigration consultations is to "seek feedback on immigration levels, including
the appropriate level of immigration for Canada, and the most suitable mix between
economic, family class and protected persons." Click link to view "Many changes to
immigration under Jason Kenney,"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UXER3dLjto

The purpose of Canada Immigration’s ongoing public consultations is to seek feedback on immigration issues, including the appropriate level of immigration for Canada, and the most suitable mix among economic, family, and refugee and humanitarian classes.

Are we really that ignorant to be duped by the current Conservative government that our input matters in policy decision-making?

Early this year, Canada Immigration Minister Jason Kenney decided to cancel out all immigration applications submitted prior to February 27, 2008. Close to 280,000 applicants are affected by this decision. Minister Kenney rationalized his decision by arguing that the Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) Program is hampering Canada’s ability to respond rapidly to changing labour market needs. Kenney said: “Having to process applications that are as many as eight years out of date reduces our ability to focus on new applicants with skills and talents that our economy needs today.” This was a draconian shift in government policy, yet did Canada Immigration ask for our feedback before they decided to go ahead with their new policy?

Prior to Minister Kenney’s decision to close the door to these early immigration applications under the FSW program, he also imposed a moratorium on the sponsorship of parents and grandparents, thus denying new permanent residents the opportunity to bring their families to Canada. With a stroke of the pen, Kenney is rewriting the objective of family reunification under the existing law and making it even more difficult. Was there a consultation with the public, especially those affected by the change in policy?

Last July, Minister Kenney put a temporary hold on all new applications under the federal skilled worker and investor program until July 0f 2013. Kenney said he needed to “reset the button” in deciding on the moratorium on Canada’s skilled labour program. This decision was necessary, Kenney said, to enable the government to develop an effective backlog elimination strategy. In addition, Minister Kenney also reduced health care benefits – including support, to refugee claimants in Canada. Again, was there public consultation before Kenney made this decision?

Every major policy decision made by Jason Kenney bears the imprint of his impatience to overhaul Canada’s immigration system, which the opposition can only criticize but to no avail. Even these so-called public consultations will amount to nothing but photo ops that the people were consulted and heard before the government decided to change its policies. The obvious truth is: the government has already made up its mind.

The process of public consultations emerges from the basic belief that legitimate governments are those that listen to their citizens. After all, democratic government is tested by the capacity and opportunity for citizens to engage in enlightened debate. But how much information is deliberated in public consultations and what influence do these consultations have over the state are questions which may not be answered directly by the outcome of this process.

Access to the public consultation process by the ordinary citizens may have in fact been limited, whether by design, the targeted audience or ulterior motives. For one, these consultations are politically controlled; as such, they are ultimately used as tools by the ruling government for advertising rather than the medium from which the public gets their information on vital political matters.

Take for example the 2012 Immigration Levels Plan (from the 2011 Annual Report to Parliament on Immigration) that is attached supposedly for discussion during the public consultations. This is Canada Immigration’s blueprint for determining immigration levels and mix, prepared by the department’s bureaucrats. One wonders how much can be expected from the public in terms of revisions or additional issues which Canada Immigration bureaucrats may consider in setting the final immigration levels and mix.

But the most important question to ask is how sincere is this government in canvassing public opinion in its policy decision-making?

All the press releases, all background information attached to the public consultations, and several pronouncements by Minister Kenney and his bureaucrats may in the end all sound like junk mail or a telemarketing call, which the ordinary citizen usually sets aside for good. Not that information is unimportant. Too much information is also not very useful because it simply leads the public consultation to a glitzy show of government statistics, not to a substantive debate on the government’s strategic priorities.

Writing about the lost art of political argument, Christopher Lasch wrote in Harper’s Magazine:

“Let us begin with a simple proposition: What democracy requires is public debate, not information. Of course it needs information too, but the kind of information it needs can be generated only by vigorous popular debate. We do not know what we need to know until we ask the right questions, and we can identify the right questions only by subjecting our own ideas about the world to the test of public controversy.”

When the process of public consultations becomes an extension of the town meeting, then we can say we truly have created a public forum. Not when the government calls for public consultations to advertise planned policy changes, and not actually to allow the public to debate the substance of the proposed changes. Not when public consultations are held in order to display an appearance of transparency or create the impression that the ruling government also listens.

There seems to be so much preoccupation with publicity nowadays. Publicity in terms of having good public relations or a positive public image. This is the new danger to democracy, less direct but more insidious than that of the tyranny of majority as we have now in Parliament by the ruling Conservative Party. Because it ultimately leads to the decisive influence of certain insistent and powerful minorities – those who are intent in limiting access to the public sphere since this is how they operate and thrive in a competitive political environment.

This public consultation process, the kind embarked by Canada Immigration, may very well be an effort to create public opinion that simulates the existence of a general feeling in favour of a cabinet minister, his policies or his party’s eagerness to disembowel the whole immigration system. It’s clearly ironic that the deference to this kind of manufactured public opinion may be greater than that the ordinary citizens may yield to, one which they believe to be the genuine sentiment of the majority.

EDSA I is not a revolution

We Filipinos love romance. We always love a story that ends well. That’s what EDSA I is to many of us, a revolution without bloodletting, and the ultimate triumph of spirit over evil in its most romantic sense.

We shudder at the thought of more than a million people gathered on one long street demanding the end to a despotic regime, and when we recall how they achieved their purpose without resistance from the government’s army, we shudder even more.

Twenty-six years have passed, yet we have not recovered from the euphoria of EDSA I. Every year we celebrate its anniversary, even much bigger than our Independence Day parade. To many Filipinos, EDSA I was the real thing.

Filipino People Power. Photo courtesy of manilamommy. Click link to view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL0lM3abUQE&feature=fvst, "26th EDSA
People Power Anniversary Rally."

Never again, we tell ourselves, shall we allow one dictator to rule over us. As if this were the magic bullet that we need every time we face a crisis. Just gather about 2 million people and get them to march on the street. Let their voices be heard, that would be enough. That’s the miracle of EDSA I.

Why did we become so enslaved to this romantic notion that EDSA I and all its derivatives of display of people power would be enough, that it is the end-all to our problems?

Was EDSA I a revolution?

EDSA I was a popular protest of close too to 2 million Filipinos against authoritarianism, against almost 20 years of despotic rule, of wanton corruption, of abuse of power, of crony capitalism. Although the protest was staged only in Manila, it was considered a collective entreaty by the nation to the dictator to step down and let a new government take over. A new president was elected, and the people vowed not to tolerate any more cheating and fraud. It was a united plea for change. But even that idea of change was so vague and nebulous.

EDSA I represented a cleansing of the heavy cheating and fraud during the presidential elections held in 1986. It was the penultimate event to the declaration of the genuine winner, Mrs. Cory Aquino, who was catapulted to the role of a reluctant national leader after her husband Ninoy was assassinated. Cory Aquino was immediately embraced as the symbolic leader of a peaceful transition to genuine democratic reforms. But even the idea of democratic reform was alien to Cory Aquino’s state of mind, so she left everything to her advisers to chart the map towards building a new government that is supposed to be responsive to the people.

EDSA I meant the restoration of the old oligarchy that was removed and transplanted by Ferdinand Marcos with his own political cronies. It meant that Cory Aquino’s family would recover their old economic foothold, in the same way as it did for the oligarchs of the past.

EDSA I changed the leadership structure of government, but not the structure of society. The poor remain stuck in the quagmire of poverty. The new leaders and the new politicians are all members of family dynasties bred by the oligarchs. It was a replication of the old Marcos government, except that the people who ran the government are now allies of the restored oligarchy. Where did the poor and downtrodden masses figure in the new government after EDSA I? They became significant only during elections, when it was time to buy their votes. Their disenchantment toward their government continues to the present.

EDSA I was the culmination of the people’s revolt against 20 years of Marcos dictatorship. It didn’t happen just because Marcos cheated Cory Aquino during the snap presidential elections in 1986. It didn’t happen because the people were angry at Ferdinand Marcos for the assassination of Ninoy Aquino three years earlier. It happened because the timing was right. Marcos was frail and already dying. The disgruntled elements of the military seized that opportunity to rally their members who had long been dissatisfied with the military establishment, the Roman Catholic Church and its multitude of followers, and the disaffected business sector to come out to the streets and join the popular protest. Members of the leftist movement who were the most militant and who bore the brunt of repression of all groups in opposing the Marcos rule during the 20-year period, had no choice but to join the wave of protesters as well. EDSA I happened because the United States government supported the idea of disposing Marcos and replacing him with a new one.

EDSA I elevated the military to a hero’s status. After being sworn to office, instead of prosecuting those in the military for violation of human rights and the basic legal right to express a contrary opinion and for being responsible for the many who were extra-judicially killed and disappeared, Cory Aquino pardoned the perpetrators. No effort was made to establish the truth and seek reconciliation as other countries under similar circumstances had done after their political upheaval was over.

To the media and moderate Filipino intellectuals, EDSA I was a revolution. They were responsible in propagating this myth that people power had effectively spoken and that EDSA I was instrumental in restoring democracy in the Philippines. True, the dictator was deposed and forced to exile in Hawaii. But democratic institutions like popular elections, the free press, Congress and the judiciary were all in existence, albeit subject to the whims and caprices of the strongman Marcos.

Military as shadow government

Nothing very dramatic or revolutionary happened after EDSA I. It simply installed a new leader, someone who did not meet the basic requisites of a national leader but symbolic enough to lead the country from dictatorship. This is the singular achievement of EDSA I, the proclamation of Cory Aquino and the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos, the passing of the baton from a dictator to someone more moderate and compassionate.

Cory Aquino’s lack of political experience was tested early by malcontents in the military. Staging a series of coups against the government, the military kept reminding the new president that they were a crucial and integral force in the new balance of power. So Cory had to assuage a more serious military opposition to her administration. The military had become the shadow government, and the eternal threat to succeeding presidents like Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo and now, Noynoy Aquino, the son who also rises.

Restoring the old oligarchy which Marcos destroyed was also a priority for Mrs. Aquino, who herself hailed from a landed class with a vast array of economic and financial interests that were held back by the old Marcos regime. Together with the old oligarchy, the new power-holders cemented their firm grasp of political power. To those with the economic means and resources goes the concentration of political power. They bred and continue to multiply political dynasties who control different positions in national and local governments. Politicians and their relatives have controlled political power since the time of Marcos, and Cory Aquino made sure this arrangement would remain. An emerging breed of politicians such as movie, TV and sports celebrities was encouraged to relieve the growing discontent of the masses so these favourite celluloid heroes were added into the mix.

Same same

This was the very same oligarchy that the American colonial period ushered in from the landed elites in the 19th century. The development of these families as the new oligarchy was important to the American colonisers, and these families were able to dominate the country’s political and administrative apparatus and shape it to serve their own ends.

So EDSA I ensured the continuation of an oligarchy that would always remain in control of the levers of the economy and the powers of government. What revolution are the media and moderate darlings of the Philippine intelligentsia talking about?

A revolution is always followed by fundamental changes in socio-political institutions after the struggle for state power. A revolution does not have to be violent. It could be extra-constitutional and in the form of a popular but peaceful upheaval like the Dandi Salt March led by the pioneer of nonviolent resistance Mahatma Gandhi in 1930. EDSA I did not alter the socio-political landscape after Marcos was deposed. In fact, EDSA I reinforced the oligarchy and its control of the economy and politics of the country.

If the exercise of people power is to be considered relevant, then we should expect some profound changes after all the public fuss is over. We should wait for something more drastic than a mere change in leaders, like prosperity for all, for example.

With Filipino people power as in the case of EDSA I, you could almost expect everyone to join with or without a cause. To be meaningful, a real mass movement must have an unmistakable expression of resentment and desperation. That’s why the call for a new people power or revival of EDSA I to oust Corona as Chief Justice will easily fall on deaf ears, except for the few who are the clear beneficiaries of such public uproar.

The Filipino masses are in a desperate condition all right, but unfortunately there is no sign that they feel the slightest resentment against the Chief Justice. Probably, they would just sit this one at home and blame the President for his penchant for playing political games.

Eventually, however, change of some sort must be made. Not through another EDSA I or a similar expression of people power. That won’t cut. New forms of structure need to be set up, and old forms must be destroyed. This is the critical moment which is properly called revolution.