‘Ask a Filipino what’s wrong with governance and chances are he will lament the corruption, from which all other ills flows.’
MANY times in my life I’ve always wondered why the Americans didn’t take pains to carefully leave behind the foundations for civil service and civil society.
Maybe it’s because early on they realized that the Filipino “character” was not apropos for the ideals of Jefferson and Madison, even Lincoln. Maybe they saw that if they had instituted a jury system, there will be no fair outcome that can result because our network of blood and non-blood relations will kick in — plus you can’t really isolate Filipinos enough that they can’t be reached by chismis, especially about controversial matters.
Maybe also because the timetable for our eventual independence was interrupted by the Japanese occupation of 1942-1945. And because the Americans had to stick to the 1946 schedule there was no longer enough time to make sure between the execution of Yamashita in Los Banos and the lowering of the Stars and Stripes at the Luneta that everyone was ready. Because we weren’t. We were reeling from the damages of the war.
Making us more dependent on Uncle Sam rather than less so.
Or maybe that was the very reason?
Many have come to the same conclusion I have come to after living more than half a century in our islands and watching politicians come and go. The system is flawed. The ideals do not match the reality. The end result does not “ennoble and enable” (words of Sen. Dick Gordon); rather it aggravates the “death spiral” (my description).
Ask a Filipino what’s wrong with governance and chances are he will lament the corruption, from which all other ills flow.
I tend to agree but only to a certain extent. My view is that what’s wrong with Filipino governance is that it has been corrupted by the melding of two systems: the political, on the one hand, which is anchored on the principle of every man is equal (thus one man, one vote) and the business system anchored on capitalism and free enterprise and its “he who has the gold makes the rules.”
When you mix both together you get the Philippine political system. And the US system as well, except that there are still a few safeguards existing over there than here.
The result is one where one man has one vote but some men have far, far more influence because they fund everything. Businessmen everywhere do not give money to politicians out of an act of Christian charity. Being the successful big businessmen that they are, every expenditure is a well calculated investment which could pay off over the next three years, or six years, or even more following the elections they have decided to “invest” in.
And because Philippine election laws do not have the same safeguards as US or European election laws in trying to reduce the influence of big money, what happens on Election Day is you and I vote for a list of candidates who have been, effectively, pre-selected by their funders. No matter how much they say they are one of us and owe us their now exalted positions, they cannot escape the fact that they have debts to pay. Big debts.
One prominent Philippine politician showed signs of promise while a student leader in UP (don’t most do?) when he was thinking of proposing a way of public funding for campaigns.
This is not foolproof (again, the US) but the world is not bereft of models to study and adapt.
When he moved out of the campus to become a national leader, that plan slowly fell to the wayside. And I couldn’t blame him. It would require a radical overhaul of a system which so many vested interests would prefer to perpetuate, and he must have calculated that he has less time to challenge the windmills than to try to become part of it all.
A very common progression for erstwhile idealistic UP student leaders, yes?
But again, can you blame him? He cannot by himself alone undo the system that has taken roots since 1946, maybe even before that. It will require a major overhaul with unwavering public support.
But for a public that prefers a politics that entertains rather than ennobled and enables?
What are the chances that anyone who tries will succeed?
The system has been corrupted. At its very core.
