Published in Mindanao Times 8/12/08
The Philippines is the first republic in Asia. It has also repeatedly claimed to have taught the world a great lesson in democracy when it toppled the dictatorial government of Ferdinand Marcos through “People Power.” The term was a neologism then, precisely coined to embody that peaceful uprising in February 1986 along Epifanio de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) that eventually led to the ouster of Marcos.
That pivotal moment would serve as a springboard for the Philippines’ re-democratization. Yet 22 years had elapsed, the Philippines is still hard put to correct the maladies that Marcos’ rule had wreaked on this country. Complete with essential elements of democracy—popular accountability of the government, alternation of power, political equality, popular representation, right of dissent and disobedience, free press—the Philippines can always claim it’s democratic. But this claim becomes untenable in the light of the events after 2004, the year Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA), in Susan Roces’s words, stole the presidency.
If the Philippines is not yet on its way towards genuine democracy notwithstanding its repudiation of the dictatorial government of Marcos, where does it stand today?
The answer is that it is caught up in a “political gray zone.” In the essay of Thomas Carothers entitled “The End of the Transition Paradigm,” which is written in 2002, he characterized countries that have entered the zone as “neither dictatorial nor clearly headed toward democracy.” Although these countries “have some attributes of democratic political life including at least… regular elections and democratic constitutions,” Carothers says, “they suffer from serious democratic deficits, often including poor representation of citizen’s interests, low level of political participation beyond voting, frequent abuse of the law by government officials, elections of uncertain legitimacy, very low levels of public confidence in state institutions, and persistently poor institutional performance by the state.”
He says that the nature of gray zone politics is yet to be fully assessed. There are, however, “two broad political syndromes” that are common in the gray zone: “feckless pluralism” and “dominant-power politics.”
Democracies of countries afflicted with ‘feckless pluralism,” though having some positive features like regular elections, remain “shallow and troubled,” Carothers says. “Political participation, though broad at election time, extends little beyond voting. Political elites…are widely perceived as corrupt, self-interested, dishonest, and not serious about working for their country…Overall, politics is…stale, corrupt, elite-dominated domain…[T]he state remains persistently weak. Economic policy is often poorly conceived and executed, and economic performance is frequently bad or even calamitous.”
On the other hand, “countries with this syndrome [dominant-power politics] have limited but still real political space…. [The] key political problem in dominant-power countries is blurring of the line between the state and the ruling party (or ruling political force).”
In the heat of the NBN-ZTE controversy, the Catholic Church, except for some of its intrepid members, refused to call GMA’s resignation—a gesture considered by many as implausible, considering the decisive role the Catholic Church, then headed by the late Cardinal Sin, played in the two previous “People Power Revolutions.”
Thus, when GMA delivered her 8th State of the Nation Address (SONA), she gave an implicit cold shoulder on the Reproductive Health Bill, a proposed legislation on the burgeoning population of the country. That very same legislation is vehemently opposed by the Catholic Bishops because of its purported espousal of abortion, which runs counter to the Catholic Church’s precepts. Lest she’ll reap the bishops’ ire, she said that “more couples, who are mostly Catholics,” should “know about natural family planning” instead.
It was a strategic move. GMA cannot afford to anger the bishops lest they withdraw their support, which has time and again been proven useful in critically turbulent situations. In GMA’s fragile government, the bishops’ backing becomes a sine qua non to her survival.
Should it surprise everyone to see this government being conveniently cowed? There is no reason to be so. Remember, the Philippines is in a “political gray zone,” which means it is but normal that it manifests the syndromes of “feckless pluralism” and “dominant-power politics.”
But it is time to ask these pesky questions: Is there a way out of this quagmire? Can we ever expect something from our leaders who in the first place benefit from this kind of political order?
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