Saving face

 

 

The Filipinos’ knack to poke fun at themselves is beyond belief. Self-ridicule seems almost a justification for all and everything, whether it’s for misery or bliss.

 

We indict ourselves for our inability to follow the “rule of law” as the rationale for where we are now as a society or a nation, perpetually struggling to move up as others have already left us in the dust. As one blogger wrote: “Filipinos cannot progress if they cannot follow even simple guidelines.”

 

Where is the truism in this?

 

Yet, traditional Filipino culture reflects an enduring and time-honoured reverence for family values such as respect for elders and people in authority, in the spirit of bayanihan (cooperation), and the fruits of hard work. The Christian faith has also taught Filipinos to be eternally hopeful and to show their faith not only in the observation of church rituals but also in helping and serving others in need.

Manila compared to "gates of hell" by American author, Dan Brown.

With respect to laws, Filipinos have always lived under a regime of a law of rules since time immemorial, whether in the larger and narrower sense of the law as it relates to limits and sanctions on social and individual behaviour. Whatever violations or aberrations exist either as often or once in a while, these are common occurrences that are not solely endemic to Filipinos. After all, the crime rate in the Philippines is still lower than in Chicago or Detroit, for example. Or the chances of getting killed by guns are higher in Iraq or Afghanistan or even in the U.S. than in the Philippines.

 

Filipinos, in general, are slow to anger and not too easy to be aroused to rebel against their government to seek redress for grievances even if these would be sufficient to stir a civil war or widespread rioting in other societies. That despite corruption in government and dishonesty of its elected officials, Filipinos have kept their trust in their political system and continued to go through the periodic rituals of national and local elections even though these have not benefited them directly through greater access to social services such as education and health or to opportunities for a better life.

 

Where else in the whole world could we find people who are as easygoing as Filipinos, as if their social problems don’t really matter? Or where the capital city is described by a foreign writer like the gates of hell and yet would accept it as a matter of fact, not pure fiction, and even make fun of it? Or where the incompetence of their politicians is vividly displayed on television in competition with regular soaps but even this would not raise hackles enough to jolt the entire country?

 

Or where could you find various forums or discussion groups, whether on Facebook and other forms of social media, which provide an enlightened free-wheeling exchange of opinions on what ails the nation – from lack of sanitation and sewage system to urban planning? Or where else could you find so many pundits and newspaper columnists who never run out of ideas on how to run the government or change society in general?

 

Our society as a whole seems to have been infected by the virus of intellectualism that every hub where people gather or chat can boast of a discussion group bursting with good ideas.

 

Our country is an oddity in itself, an abnormal exception to the rule. It is not because Filipinos cannot follow guidelines or subject themselves to the grand imperial reign of the rule of law. But perhaps, because we have so much of these rules already, that we have been paralyzed to suffer in silence and acquiescence. Or is it simply, we are just a people who love to talk, talk, talk.

 

Because we love to talk, we also love to denigrate ourselves. We enjoy exposing our frailties and shortcomings; we don’t mind if foreigners like the writer Dan Brown would paint an ugly picture of our capital city, or Hollywood actors such as Claire Danes could dismiss Manila as “just f--king smelled of cockroaches,” or in more graphic terms, “There's no sewage system in Manila, and people have nothing there. People with, like, no arms, no legs, no eyes, no teeth.... Rats were everywhere.”

 

Our martyr complex numbs us to embrace these condescending remarks as the harsh reality of our fair city and forget that such horrible characterizations could also apply to other cities of the world, not just to us. But while other societies are apt to revolt, Filipinos would just shrug their shoulders and accept their travails as ordinary humdrum occurrences. If Manila were the gates to hell, then everyone passes through its gates before entering the afterlife.

 

Kidding aside, our country has progressed since we deposed that dictator Ferdinand Marcos. That’s a fact, not fiction. But not very much, though. The martial law years put our country back in the throes of the dark ages and we have not fully recovered from our false attraction for a strong leader. Little did we know that a leader could only be as strong as the people like them to be.

 

In 1987, the country ratified an important piece of document, a body of rules we ought to follow as a nation, which we call our Constitution. In this document, safeguards against a dictatorship or a return to an oppressive system of government were installed which are popularly known as the democratic provisions of the Constitution.

 

If we want change, we don’t have to start big, in the hopes that if we are successful, the many little things that we nitpick and grumble about daily will disappear. Neither do we have to be too ambitious.

 

Let’s just start with the basics. With what we have right now. Yes, with these so-called democratic provisions and see how far we could go. After all, it’s been 26 years since the 1987 Constitution was ratified and none of these so-called democratic provisions ever saw the light of day in the form of practical pieces of legislation.

 

What are these democratic provisions of the 1987 Constitution?

 

The Constitution speaks of prohibition against political dynasties in Section 26, Article II. There has been no successful initiative in Congress to define and implement this prohibition against political dynasties so far but it has been a hot political topic every election year.

 

Article 5 of Article VI provides for a party-list representation, a mechanism of proportional representation in the election of representatives to the House of Representatives from marginalized or underrepresented sectors of society. Although this provision has been implemented as early as the May 14, 2001 elections, the party-list law is so murky and unclear that its implementation by Comelec is far from being adequate and effective or questionable if it truly serves the mandate under the Constitution.

 

A system of initiative and referendum is provided under Section 32, Article VI whereby the people can directly propose and enact laws or approve or reject any act or law passed by Congress. This provision apparently recognizes the effectiveness of referendum in advanced democracies, but so far, this remains untouched and has not been translated into law.

 

Another popular innovation in advanced democracies—a mechanism of recall—found its way in the 1987 Constitution, Section 3, Article X, but is only applicable to local government-elected officials. It is a positive step towards democratization of local politics but Congress has remained silent or simply uninterested in enacting an enabling law.

 

Lastly, and this has been controversial and has raised several questions before the Supreme Court, the 1987 Constitution in Section 2, Article XVII has allowed for amendments of the Constitution through a people’s initiative, in addition to calling a constitutional convention or holding a constituent assembly.

 

All these provisions are in the Constitution. They are there to recognize and uphold the bedrock democratic principle of government that sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them, as declared under Section 1, Article II of the Constitution.

 

If President Noynoy Aquino is r-e-a-l-l-y serious about his presidency and historical legacy, he could direct his attention to these democratic provisions in the Constitution for the remainder of his term. The demand and public clamour already exists, but our leaders in Congress have remained deaf or intentionally playing dumb to listen.

Philippine President Noynoy Aquino ponders about the legacy
of his presidency.

It was during President Cory Aquino’s tenure that the 1987 Constitution was ratified, an important milestone in the country’s history. The country had just been liberated and was rising from the ashes of repression during the martial law years. President Noynoy Aquino, the son, could now complete the country’s ultimate return to democracy, if only he has the political will to do so. Completing his mother’s greatest legacy could be a crowning achievement of his presidency rather than the vacuous “daang matuwid” philosophy of government he’s been selling from day one.

 

If nothing of this sort happens, then the Filipino people should put President Aquino on notice, that they are seceding from the republic and forming a new government. The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is about to form their own Bangsamoro nation, thanks to President Aquino, so why can’t the people do just the same? If nothing happens, we might as well all head to the hills and join the rebels.

 

President Noynoy Aquino can still save his derrière by acting as a true leader now—meaning, TODAY.

Elections not measure of real change

 

 

In his recent column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Conrado de Quiros talked about the wisdom behind universal suffrage. According to de Quiros, had the right to vote been limited to those who have education, we would not have reforms or change, in government or in society at large. “Wealth and power would have remained with the landowners, the slave-owners, the gun-owners, the caciques, the compradors, the owners of fabricas and companias, with no end in sight,” de Quiros wrote.

Election festival in the Philippines. Click link to view "Politics as Entertainment:
Covering the 2010 Philippine elections," a project of the University of the Philippines
Open University, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST39L7jqFg0 

That’s putting too much unnecessary weight on elections being the most predominant feature of Western democracy. We have often heard American politicians pontificate that the United States should spread the concept of free elections in countries where democracy has not yet gained its foothold. As if elections were the only thing that matters in a democracy.

 

Before elections became fashionable, political reforms or social change, as history would tell us, was only achievable through the barrel of a gun, not by the ballot box. The revolutions in France and America and the U.S. civil war brought about radical changes that have become the bedrock of their democracies, and models for the rest of the world to adopt. New independent republics were born through people’s armed uprisings against their colonizers or despotic rulers. Wealth and power, in the political and economic sense turned to be more easily redistributable once revolutions changed societies and restructured the ordering of social relations.

 

But of course, as nations became more civilized, the rule of law has been established as the foundation of governance, for the majority of countries that have opted for the democratic system. So we have elections to select our leaders and representatives, and this process constitutes the hallmark of our democratic government.

 

Whether modern-day elections continue to serve the purpose of achieving great political and social reforms remain questionable, however, or at least dependent on how the process is put into practice. The gruesome Maguindanao massacre on November 23, 2009, that was perpetrated by the Ampatuan clan is a grim reminder of how political warlords could subvert the electoral process by means of their private armies, wealth and power. That this kind of aberration in a democracy had actually happened and its recurrence still threaten the so-called free electoral process in the Philippines only shows that elections are a double-edged knife, that it could be both a good or bad thing depending on how it is used.



The massacre of 34 journalists in Maguindanao in November 2009 shocked the
world. What really happened that day; why has so little light been shed on the
killings? Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dbvgyS6dms to view
"Turning a Blind Eye -- Philippines."

It was in this context that Senator Miriam Santiago made her sardonic commentary on Filipino voters in a talk before a Manila university which then became the subject of Mr. de Quiros’s column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Senator Santiago did not mince her words when she said that majority of Filipinos are “not educated for voting.” That majority of candidates are “not educated for serving” too, she added. The lady senator gave the example of movie stars getting elected in Congress because of the “ignorance of the Filipino electorate.”

 

Senator Santiago, however, was wrong to ridicule the Filipino masses for being not educated (or schooled, perhaps) for voting, which Mr. de Quiros rightfully debunked. But if Senator Santiago was referring to a level of education (completion of college education perhaps) which she thought every Filipino voter must have achieved before being allowed to exercise the right to vote, then, she could probably be right. With the pervasive level of poverty in the Philippines, way more than a majority of the population have not reached tertiary education or have completed at least a secondary education. But criticizing them for not knowing how to vote only reveals how ignorant even a highly-educated senator like Miriam Santiago could be in appreciating the limits of the electoral process.

 

The right to choose leaders or representatives in government is not predicated on one’s possession of higher education. If the right to vote is inherent in a democracy, it should be given to all those who have earned that right, regardless of whether a voter is a moron or an intellectual. Every citizen of voting age is a member of a democratic society and should be given the right to exercise the right to choose his or her leaders or representatives in Congress. Attainment of legal age and residence should be enough to qualify a citizen to the right to a democratic vote, all other factors are irrelevant.

 

This talk about Filipinos not being educated enough to vote is akin to the concept of voter suppression, or disenfranchisement. It has happened during the recent U.S. presidential elections. In Florida, the Republican-dominated state legislature tried to reduce the number of days for early voting, prohibit Sunday voting, and impose a 48-hour time limit on third-party voter groups to register new voters. It was criticized as making voting more difficult, a decision meant to disenfranchise African-Americans and Latinos who were leaning to vote for the Democratic Party. The decision backfired against the GOPs on Election Day as thousands and thousands of voters lined up to vote and had to be accommodated until the following day while the rest of the votes from the other states had already been counted. When the final vote was counted, Florida ended up voting for Obama instead of Romney, but the Florida vote didn’t matter anymore because the election had already been decided by the other states.

 

In Pennsylvania, the state legislature passed a law requiring voter-identification, which was criticized by some civil rights groups as having the effect of suppressing mostly poor or minority voters—a demographic more inclined to vote Democrat. Photo ID requirements have been opposed by minority, handicapped and elderly voters who don’t normally maintain driver’s licenses.

 

Senator Santiago is barking at the wrong tree. Instead of putting down the electorate with her condescending remarks, she should sponsor a law in Congress that would tighten the qualifications of candidates for public office, prohibit political dynasty as envisioned in the Constitution, impose stricter and effective term limits, and limit campaign financing to level the playing field. Every candidate for public office must not only be beyond reproach, but must be able to represent or mirror the needs and issues of his or her constituency. If we must have a functioning representative democracy, the leaders and representatives we elect must stand and speak for the interests of their constituencies, not for their own selfish reasons or for the wishes of the special interests that help them get elected.

 

We have a dysfunctional electoral system that could easily be manipulated by special interests and professional politicians or “trapos.” The level of apathy or a disengaged electorate is a result of the ability of the elite and special interests to control the elections; it’s never the by-product of an uninformed or uninvolved electorate because it is not well-educated enough to vote.

 

In The Idea of Justice, the Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen wrote: “… in understanding the roots of democracy in the world, we have to take interest in the history of people’s participation and public reasoning in different parts of the world. We have to look beyond thinking of democracy only in terms of European and American evolution. We would fail to understand the pervasive demands for participatory living, on which Aristotle spoke with far-reaching insight, if we take democracy to be a kind of a specialized product of the West.”

 

The old Athenian democracy, where balloting emerged in a particular form, used a process called sortition where nearly all government offices are filled by lottery of full citizens rather than by election. Women, slaves and aliens had no say. Candidates were almost always male, Greek, educated citizens holding a minimum of wealth and status. Yet, even Plato attacked this system which he criticized as putting the state into the hands of ignoramuses unable to distinguish between right from wrong.

 

How is this different from the system we have now?

 

We have a senator who plagiarizes and unabashedly maintains his innocence, senators who are children elected on account of their father’s “splendid” legislative record, a congresswoman who was wife to a former dictator and mother to a sitting senator, or movie stars who continue to “act” in their roles as representatives of the people, or a “know-nothing” or “can-do-all” president (depending on which side of the aisle you stand on) elevated to the highest office in the land on the political legacy of his parents. Is this circus the desire and hope of the people who elected them?

 

“Democracy’s capacity to shock has been its own demise,” wrote A. C. Grayling. We could only wish, for heaven’s sake, the kind of revenge our democracy will bring upon us next time. Perhaps not through the electoral process, and we could just imagine how those who abuse or shamelessly make a mockery of their democratic responsibilities will enjoy being out of power or less in control than they used to be.