Six degrees of separation

 

Once upon a time during the tumultuous seventies in the Philippines, a year or two before the declaration of martial law, I walked with Jejomar “Jojo” Binay, now the country’s vice-president, in one of the violent student demonstrations against the popular object of protest at the time: U.S. imperialism. Jojo Binay then was an aspiring young lawyer. Also marching with us as the huge wave of demonstrators pushed us toward the U.S. Embassy on Roxas Blvd. were Edel Garcellano, a writer and currently a professor of literature at the University of the Philippines, Leandro “Mark” Marcos, a fraternity brother who now works as a Methodist pastor in Pasadena, California, Babes Calixto, a student activist who later on was killed in a military ambush somewhere in Panay, and the young and comely Imelda Nicolas, presently the Chairperson of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) under the Office of the President with the rank of cabinet secretary.

A typical rally of workers and students in front of the U.S. Embassy in Manila.
Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arn3lF5XSUg to view Empire or
Humanity: What the Classroon Didn't Teach Me About the American Empire by
Howard Zinn. Narrated by Viggo Mortensen. Photo courtesy of jackstephens.

Except for my brod Mark and friend Edel, probably no one else among those with us that night would probably recall when and how the rioting started. When the sound of gunfire from the riot police finally receded, three or more students were reported killed, the exact toll I can’t remember now. Edel would write a vivid account of that night in the Weekly Graphic, telling how we ended up buried in thick mud up to our knees in a dark squatter area close to the Pamantasan ng Maynila as gunfire was ricocheting above our heads. Instinctively it was Mark who kept imploring divine intervention to save us from harm, a clear sign early on that in his heart he was destined to the shores of Southern California to minister to the faithful. Edel never gave up his flirtation with Marxist literary theory which continues to inspire his writings and essays on literary criticism. As for myself, the unbearable political conditions in the country pushed me to search for a fresh start in Toronto where I would study and practise law.

 

As fate would turn out, Jojo Binay was the most successful in that group; in politics, of course. As former mayor of Makati City, he carved a political career on his passion for helping the poor and ordinary folk, introducing programs that would help them in their lives. He built a university for poor children who can’t afford higher education, a hospital to care for the sick and the needy, and parks to improve City of Makati’s urbanscape. But when his term limits expired, he passed on the mayorship to his wife Elenita for one term, then back to him, as their children grew older and became eligible to run for office. His son Jejomar Jr. was elected councillor and succeeded his father as current mayor of Makati City. A daughter, Abby, was elected as Makati’s representative in Congress and has now set her sights to become a senator. As for his next political career, Jojo Binay is never shy about his ambition to succeed President Noynoy Aquino, himself a beneficiary of his parents’ political legacy and popularity.

 

My acquaintance with Babes Calixto was interrupted as I have said when he died in a military encounter about three years after that rally. His older sister Lirio became a close friend of our family. Imelda Nicolas was only known to me as a campus personality at that time. It was Jojo Binay who most probably brought her along to that fateful rally. Imelda is the younger sister of Loida Nicolas Lewis, a well-known Filipino-American philanthropist and civic leader. Loida was married to Reginald F. Lewis, TLC Beatrice’s first chairman and CEO. TLC Beatrice was the successor to the international operations of Beatrice Foods. When her husband died, Loida assumed the leadership of Beatrice until the company was sold. Loida Nicolas is also the co-convenor of the U.S. Pinoys for Good Governance (US4GG), a group that actively supports President Noynoy Aquino and more particularly, the Philippine government’s claim over the Spratly Islands and a number of land formations in the South China Sea.

 

Loida Nicolas happens to be a bosom friend of Mila Magno from Toronto who helps the US4GG in mobilizing Filipinos in the Metro Toronto area whenever they decide to picket the Chinese Consulate in Toronto. Both Mila and Loida went to high school at St. Agnes Academy in Legazpi City, the same school that produced Dina Bonnevie and Janelle Manahan, two popular but controversial Filipino actresses. Mila is married to Filipino lawyer Oswald Magno, a friend and also my fraternity brother from university, who is currently mixed up in a running feud with Tess Cusipag, editor of Balita, a Filipino community newspaper in Toronto, and Romy Marquez, Balita’s associate editor, regarding allegations of financial irregularity in the beauty contests ran by Rosemer Enverga during her stint with Philippine Independence Day Celebration (PIDC). Rosemer is married to Tobias “Jun” Enverga, former PIDC president and now the first Filipino senator in the Canadian Parliament after being appointed by Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Senator Enverga, who has become the foil for ridicule by critics in the Toronto Filipino community press, also hails from a notable political family in the province of Quezon in the Philippines. Incidentally, the Envergas were my clients, so self-effacing and generous to kababayans in those days before they became the power couple among Filipinos here in Toronto.

 

Where is this story headed to?

 

Obviously, this only shows how we are interconnected to each other, that we are only a few steps away from the other person. As originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy, there are only six degrees of separation between us and the other person; that a chain of a friend of a friend, like our Facebook friends, can be made to link two people in a maximum of six steps. As John Guare, who attributed the value of “six” to Marconi, wrote in his 1990 play, Six Degrees of Separation, any two individuals are connected by at most five others.

Six Degrees of Separation. Photo courtesy of lukezhang. Click link to view
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcCpEf6_Ofg, A Documentary on Networks,
Social and Otherwise.

This is probably true of social networks. The Facebook era and rise of social networks has meant today that people are more closely connected than ever before, with four degrees of separation having become the norm. Other recent studies (e.g., Stanley Milgram’s “small world study”) would also show that people could be connected by approximately three friendship links on average. The popular phrase “six degrees of separation,” however, continues to be often used as a synonym for the idea of the “small world” phenomenon.

 

A “degree of separation” is a measure of social distance between people. You are one degree away from everyone you know, two degrees away from everyone they know, and so on.

 

But the Filipino concept of family dynasty, based on degrees of consanguinity, easily beats out this counter-intuitive notion of “six” or “three” degrees of separation. If you calculate beginning from the source, i.e., the first family member in political office, the possibility of perpetuity is enormous. Holding elective office is not only like rotation by musical chairs among family members but it could also be handed down to generations like a bequest or inheritance, thus there is no foreseeable end to it. While perpetuity is not allowed in estate law, politics is something else because elections must continue to be held although they could be rigged in favour of the family dynasty member.

 

Rotating elective office among Filipino family members is presently at best limited by practice up to the third degree of consanguinity, i.e., from the person holding office to parents, children and siblings. When all these family members hold elective office at the same time, whether as members of Congress or provincial or city local officials (like the Marcos family), a political dynasty is installed and entrenched when the cycle of rotation goes on and on.

 

As family members rotate holding elective offices with the exclusion of others because of term limits, it creates an obnoxious anomaly that could only happen in a dictatorship or a society without free elections. For example, senators can stay in office for two six-year terms (12 years), representatives for three 3-year terms (or 9 years) and local government officials, for three 3-year terms (9 years). In 12 or 9 years, these officials have established their names, reputation and influence, and amassed a great amount of wealth to assure their next of kin to succeed them while they wait again for another chance to run for the same offices.

 

Why then do we have to hold free and democratic elections when everybody knows the results have already been predetermined? Wealth and power decide who wins in an election, and only family dynasties have this enormous advantage over others.

 

Blood is thicker than water between members of the Filipino nuclear family; relations are so strong and deep-seated that they can’t just be broken easily. Even if members of the same family would break away and run for office against another family member, it is still the same family dynasty that wins.

 

It’s about time to break this ugly stranglehold of the family dynasty on Philippine politics. We can’t wait for a law to implement the constitutional prohibition against political dynasties because Congress will not act as it is against this ruling class’s self-interests. The people can enact legislation by initiative or referendum according to the Constitution, but this may also take an inordinate time granting it will be allowed. What the Filipino electorate can immediately accomplish is to reject in this coming May 2013 elections all candidates who are related to these political dynasties. This will send a clear and strong message that the people have had enough, that they want to put an end to political dynasties now.

 

To paraphrase A.C. Grayling, it could be good news to hear that almost everyone in the islands, whose great-grandparents were born here, is almost certainly related to almost everyone else in the whole of the islands. That we could claim our humanity from a single female—an “ur-great-grandmother” in the long evolutionary history of the human species.

 

But Filipino family dynasties will never consider us as kindred. They are an exclusive, elite group capable only of looking after themselves and their next-of-kin’s interests. Our citizenship or membership in the body politic matters only because we elect them to be our supposed leaders or representatives. To them, we are nobodies who can only vote, who cannot win if we run for office. But with our vote this coming May, we can prove them wrong. Let us show them power still belongs to us—the people. With the power of our vote we can elect them or unseat them if we so choose.

Philippine politics: All in the family

 

 

Sometime ago, an article in The Economist posed an interesting query that is so relevant to the politics of our times: “Is politics in the blood, or in the genes?”

 

Every country in the world has its share of political dynasties, but political families in the Philippines are an anomaly in this age of meritocracy. Instead of a system that gives opportunities and advantages to people on the basis of their ability and achievement, the ascendancy of political families in the Philippines is purely motivated by blood relations and the instinct for self-preservation once they have secured elective offices. Elective positions in government have found their way into the family’s gene pool, as if children of elected politicians have the putative right of succession.

President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III follows the legacy of his parents,  Senator
Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino III and President Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino. Photo courtesy
of rickysy. Click link  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-TrkbyIHWE to view
Noynoy Aquino's acceptance speech to run as president of the Philippines in 2010.

Of course, the undertow in the blood compact among members of these families is their privileged economic status. Most political families in the Philippines belong to the propertied class. They own vast agricultural lands and thriving businesses. They are members of the elite, the ilustrados, the rich and the educated. It was no historical accident that the Spanish colonizers favoured these families by appointing them to political positions like the gobernadorcillo or the alcalde mayor whose jobs were primarily to collect taxes and tributes from the people.

 

When the U.S. colonized the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, they took these ilustrados under their wings and trained them for the practical affairs of popular government. The first American civil governor of the islands, William Howard Taft, believed that the rudiments of self-government would easily be transferable to these ilustrados, the oligarchic elite, because of their social and economic status. So, it was the fault of the American colonizers that spawned the political dynasties we have now.

 

A new political system was imposed by the Americans but they did not change the Filipino social structure which allowed the oligarchic elite to gain and preserve its political power. During this period, family names such as Cojuangcos, Lopezes, Marcoses, Osmeñas and Aquinos became household names.

 

Taft’s idea of letting society’s affluent members constitute the Philippine Assembly in 1907 and Congress in the ensuing years resulted in the formation and circulation of elites that perpetuated their hold on political offices. A truly representative democracy failed to flourish, shattering the hopes that the country would now be able to draw upon all classes in Philippine society in electing public officials.

 

As oligarchic as the government officialdom was in its early years, today it is not that all different. Nothing has changed. With the enactment of term limits, political dynasties have become even more entrenched as family members simply rotate among themselves the opportunity to hold public office. As Brian Fegan, an American anthropologist would later describe in his book An Anarchy of Families, the Filipino family is the most enduring political unit in Philippine society. The transfer of power among family members is now considered normal and natural in order to preserve political continuity.

 

Take the Aquino family of Tarlac, for example. From 1928 until 20o7, there have been five senators from the Aquino family, which does not include the family’s patriarch, Servillano “Manong” Aquino who served as a delegate to the Malolos Congress. The first senator in the family, Benigno Aquino Sr., served as Speaker of the National Assembly from 1943 to 1944. Ninoy Aquino (Benigno Jr.), elected senator in 1968, was gunned down by his political enemies in 1983 upon his return from exile in the United States. His younger brother and sister, Agapito and Teresita, were elected as senators in 1986 and 1998, respectively. Noynoy Aquino (Benigno III), Ninoy’s son, was elected senator in 2007 and his term was cut short when he ran for President of the Philippines in 2010. The family has also produced two presidents, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, Ninoy’s widow and their son, Noynoy, the current Malacanang occupant.

 

Now, there is a new and rising bright star of the Aquino dynasty, 2013 senatorial aspirant Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV. Only 36 years old and the youngest candidate in the May 2013 elections, Bam is not shy of his affinity to the Aquino lineage of senators. His father, Paul Aquino, is Ninoy Aquino’s youngest brother who managed Cory Aquino’s snap election that catapulted her to the presidency after the Edsa People Power Revolution in 1986.

 

When asked about his powerful political connections, the young Bam Aquino answered without hesitation: “If people like me are willing to serve, we shouldn’t just stay on the sidelines.” He would be the sixth Aquino family member in the Senate, if elected. Bam Aquino was also alluded to have said in the past that Aquinos don’t have to become President whenever the country is in a political crisis. At this very early stage in his political career, there is already a foreboding sign of what Bam Aquino really hopes to be in the future.

 

Rep. Joseph Victor “JV” Ejercito echoed Bam Aquino’s reply to the political dynasty reference when he said that this issue is only invoked by opposing candidates who feared they have no track record to run on. According to JV, anyone who has a distinguished public service track record can win over a member of the so-called political dynasty. Running for senator in this coming May 2013 elections, JV is not ashamed of his familial ties to his father, former senator and President Joseph “Erap” Estrada, with his father’s wife, former senator Luisa Pimentel Estrada, half-brother and currently sitting senator, Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, and with his mother, Erap’s paramour, Guia Gomez, currently mayor of San Juan City.

Former President  and Senator Joseph "Erap" Estrada who is running for mayor of
Manila with his sons, Senator Jose  Jinggoy" Estrada, left, and Rep. Jose Victor "JV"
 Estrada, 2013 senatorial aspirant, right. Photo courtesy of AFP. Click link to view
"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cqWT2SGlCM Erap crack a joke about the
 criticism that he was not a "Manilan."

“I cannot help it if the Ejercito-Estrada clan has chalked up a long list of accomplishments in government service, which makes the public appreciative of its members. I have nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I'm proud to carry the name,” JV said.

 

Members of the family of the late and infamous President Ferdinand Marcos have also regained the clan’s former political foothold. The Marcos family shows that holding public office among family members easily trumps the term limits enacted by Congress. Political dynasties are more anomalously prevalent in the local level. Like playing musical chairs, family members of political dynasties in the provinces and towns simply rotate the opportunity to hold public office among themselves when the term of one family member expires.

 

Although the 1987 Philippine Constitution prohibits political dynasties, Congress has not enacted the enabling law needed to implement this constitutional prohibition. There have been pending bills in Congress that either define the scope of a family dynasty or limit the election of family members to public office within the second degree of consanguinity or affiliation. The proposals in Congress, however, only intend to cover local level elective offices and not those on the national level, which only fuels the skepticism on whether Congress would realistically pass any legislation prohibiting political dynasties because it will be contrary to their natural inclination for survival and self-preservation.

 

However, until an anti-political dynasty law is passed, a scenario which may not possibly see the light of day, there should be other alternatives through which the people can be included in the political process. In 1989, Congress has passed Republic Act No. 6735, “The Initiative and Referendum Act,” which empowers the people to directly propose amendments to the Constitution, and to enact laws, ordinances or resolutions, through a system of initiative and referendum. The Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP) has already petitioned the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to prescribe the form of a petition for a people’s initiative for the enactment of an Anti-Dynasty Act in accordance with the Initiative and Referendum Act. To date, however, the Comelec is either taking so long or purposely refusing to act on the AKP petition.

 

The system of initiative and referendum has been a popular tool in advanced democracies in enabling the people to directly enact legislation, especially on issues that are quite urgent but unpopular and controversial, or issues some may find radical in nature. Several states in the United States, for example, have passed through their respective referenda laws allowing same-sex marriage and the use of marijuana. Plebiscites are another form of alternative political method of expressing the voters’ will on matters that are vital to them and to the nation.

 

R.A. 6735 requires that a certain percentage of the total number of registered voters in a legislative district must sign any petition to enact and approve a law, or to initiate amendments to the Constitution. This is equivalent to a direct political empowerment of the voters instead of waiting for Congress that seems uninterested in passing an anti-political dynasty law. Except that the major stumbling block at present is the continuing failure of Comelec, supposedly an independent constitutional commission, to prescribe the necessary petition forms to proceed with the initiative.

 

While Comelec continues to delay or neglect to act on the people’s initiative for an anti-political dynasty law, there is one concrete and immediate political action the Filipino people can pledge to do in the coming May 2013 elections. By simply rejecting a candidate whose surname is the same as or related to an incumbent elected official, the voting public can send a message that political dynasties must end now. Beyond that, the Filipino people must persevere in their effort to enact an anti-political dynasty law by people's initiative or referendum, not to trust Congress to pass such law, and in exploring alternative political spaces for engagement and inclusion in the political process.

 

Since political power is also closely linked with economic power, there is no denying that political dynasties corrupt the political structure and restrict the liberating potential of the democratic process. The Filipino people can no longer allow the anomalous concentration of political power in the hands of a few notable families, and by rejecting candidates from these families in the forthcoming May elections, they would signal the beginning of the end to political dynasties.

PLEASE VIEW AND SIGN PETITION "POLITICAL DYNASTIES MUST END NOW" AT:
http://www.change.org/petitions/end-political-dynasties-now