The
ballyhoo over the ongoing drive to either revise or amend the constitution
through people’s initiative (PI) echoes the continuing exploitation of the
governed by those who govern.
To use the
people as tool to legitimize the exercise of power has for a long time been a
fixture of Philippine political landscape.
To cite
John Carroll, SJ, my late and former boss at the Institute on Church and Social
Issues (now John Carroll Institute on Church and Social Issues), a research
non-government organization based at the Ateneo de Manila University, in an
article titled “The Philippines: Forgiving or Forgetting?”:
In the
year 1900, following the Spanish-American War and the American occupation of
the Philippines, William Howard Taft arrived in Manila as the head of the US
Government's Philippine Commission which was to decide the future of these
islands. The story is told that he was met by a delegation of prominent
Filipinos, ilustrados, who pressed for immediate independence. Their argument
was that for a people to be self-governing all that was required was a minority
capable of ruling and a majority willing to be ruled, both of which the
Philippines had. Whether or not the story is historically accurate, it does
reflect the elitist mentality of the cosmopolitan and educated Filipino upper
class of the time, and perhaps today as well.
Today, 124
years later, our decision-making processes as a nation remains largely reliant on
structures being controlled by the minority that also remains exclusively composed
of modern-day ilustrados. At the foot of these structures is a flawed
system of representation and a metastasized version of democracy. Our
democratic system regurgitates rubbish: we continue to elect to public office
members of the elite and traditional politicians, even those who had been
publicly shown to have compromised their integrity. In a book published in
1997, Frank Golay commented on the kind of exclusive unity among traditional
politicians (compromised or not) since the post-independence period: “The
coherence of the elite was not surprising, for their mandate to rule had been
repeatedly renewed by the Filipino people.”
It is easy
to turn our eyes to the average voter for this social malady. However, the
problem must be understood correctly. Unlike the learned few, the average voter
has limited access to information that empowers analytical thinking and
liberates from inaction and ignorance. Instead, the average voter is exposed
through mainstream and social media to the constant pounding of manipulative
information.
Yet the
problem is not solely about most voters not having access to quality
information. (Otherwise an effective system of representation where elected
politicians work for the interests of the majority would suffice to address it.)
Rather the problem is about people who manipulate the truth to control
other people. At the hands of politicians, powered by wealth and patronage,
manipulation is a tool to exploit the basic weakness of the people—which is their
collective inability to make sense of open paths to reforms due to lack of
liberating information.
The 1987
constitution promised a way to break the stranglehold of political power by the
elite which, in a twist of wonder and irony, now risks being re-written by way
of a PI.
That
promise is far from being realized, however, as decades of trying to implement
its liberating and people-centered reform provisions are at best enacted into
laws in their most feeble of forms, or, at worst, remain untouched, doomed to
be trashed and sadly oblivion-bound. These reform paths include agrarian
reform, anti-dynasty provisions, and participatory governance.
While
Congress has passed an agrarian reform law, it did not provide for adequate
measures to ensure its positive impact. Worse, the executive arm of government
has nothing much to show for success in implementing that law in terms of, for
example, the number of farming families that have been lifted from poverty. It
is easy to see that the system of representation is conflicted, as many members
of Congress and political appointees in government are landowners who would be
adversely affected by a genuine land reform program.
The
anti-dynasty provisions promise to democratize the opportunities for public
service through the electoral process by levelling the arena for contending
political candidates. The prospect of inviting competition hurts the interests
of established players of the game, who are thus justified to never seriously
consider this constitutional lobby.
Probably emboldened
by how “people power” had ended a dictatorship, the framers of the 1987
constitution must have deemed it uplifting to promote people participation in
running the government. Novel approaches to promote participatory governance include
local autonomy, a party-list mechanism, and legislation through PI.
A local
government code was enacted in 1991 (one of a few redeeming achievements of
Congress in the post-Marcos1 era), but its powerful tools that aimed to promote
inclusive and participatory governance through institutionalization of
broad-based local councils and community-driven processes remain largely unharnessed.
The
party-list system is a mess. Initially intended to bring the basic sectors from
the margins of society to the elite-dominated center, the party-list
representatives in congress are now mostly dominated not by the marginalized
sectors but by the same crop of traditional business and partisan interests.
The
enactment of laws through PI has been a practical impossibility—perhaps until
now. Behind an organized ploy by yet unknown but suspected powerful politicians,
the hyped-up charter change drive through PI appears to be gaining traction,
despite protestations from certain sectors, notably a number of sitting senators.
The Commission on Elections, which is tasked with verifying the signatures in a
PI process, has reportedly received several copies of those signatures already.
Like the
party-list system, the PI route is being highjacked by powerful vested
interests. Previous attempts to fiddle with the constitution failed largely
because of distrust in the ulterior motives of politicians. It seems there is now
a shift in strategy. Some politicians hide behind the PI to make it look like
there is public ownership of constitutional issues. Politicians in general win
the vote by exploiting our messed-up political culture; and now they seem
poised to win even more. Exploitation has gone overdrive, from winning the vote
to possibly perpetuating themselves in power.
Ferdinand Marcos Sr. tried to perpetuate himself in power. The government that supplanted “Bagong Lipunan” facilitated the writing of a new constitution that would have made it harder for succeeding administrations to perpetuate themselves in power. But another Marcos with his “Bagong Pilipinas” battle cry is now up in arms, rallying his troops of no less than 31 million voters to fight for his cause. Filial duty suggests that Bongbong Marcos should undo the remnants of what undid his father. Would the ends of the PI suit him? Is he the one behind it?
