‘Ask yourself: how much do Filipinos trust the political system to work in their best interests and not in the narrow selfish interests of the people they choose to run the affairs
of state in their name?’
THERE will never be enough rules to govern all possible areas of human activity and endeavor, even if every legislature in the world tried. And this is the reason why, over the course of human progress and development, the concept of traditions has risen to fill in part of the gaps in the totality of human endeavor that law and regulations could not cover.
Traditions help smooth out the bumps and help address the gray areas that rules and regulations cannot. Especially because human civil civilization evolves; times change; outlooks change; and the law is not as flexible to adapt every time this happens.
In the conduct of business in legislative bodies, for instance, traditions are as revered as rules. Like rules, traditions remain in force for as long as parties believe it in their interest to observe them. But for decades, institutions like the Congress of the United States respected many traditions as important elements in trying to establish a smooth flowing governance process, whichever party was in control of Congress, or the White House, or both.
It also made for an air of civility even amid partisan tensions.
Over the last two decades, however, this air of civility has given way more and more to rabid partisanship, driven by the deep divide in the society between liberals/Democrats and conservative/Republicans, and even within the liberals and the conservative camps themselves. A victim of this has been such traditions on the Senate as the swift convening of the Senate Justice committee to evaluate a Supreme Court nominee, even one being nominated by an outgoing US President. In the twilight of the Obama administration the Republican-controlled Senate refused to call hearings on Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to replace the late Justice Antonio Scalia, a conservative. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opined that it would be more proper for the next president to fill the seat, gambling that there was a 50-50 chance that Donald Trump and not Hillary Clinton would win the November 2016 elections and therefore appoint a conservative. The gamble worked.
The same Senate then took a reverse course when liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg died in the waning months of the Trump presidency. This time, McConnell and the Republicans swiftly approved the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett even with a presidential election looming; this time the Republican Senate did not wish to gamble and wait to see who would be elected in November 2020. So they replaced a liberal Justice with a conservative one, sending shockwaves throughout the legal establishment due to the dramatic shift of the Supreme Court in terms of number of conservative vs. liberal justices.
But just as profound was the damage these twin moves have done to Senate traditions.
Traditions help establish trust — the most important currency in a democracy, just as in free enterprise. The system works best when people trust that it will; when people in public office act in the public’s best interest and not primarily on the basis of crass partisanship.
But when traditions are trampled upon, trust itself is the victim — and when trust in the system goes, the descent to rabid partisanship is swift. As we see in America today.
But make no mistake about it: the political “phenomenon” called Donald Trump and the havoc he has wreaked on institutions in the US can happen anywhere. Even here in the Philippines.
Ask yourself: how much do Filipinos trust the political system to work in their best interests and not in the narrow selfish interests of the people they choose to run the affairs of state in their name?
If America and its institutions are in trouble, we are not so far behind.
Assuming we are in fact behind.
