Ang Kapatiran

By Antonio C. Abaya
Standard Today,
February 12, 2009

I gladly yield this space today to my dear friend, Nandy Pacheco, indefatigable champion of good governance and founder of Gunless Society and the Ang Kapatiran party.

Dear Tony,

You wrote in your column titled Vultures ‘R’ Us that “. . .to be a viable party with universal appeal, Ang Kapatiran has to outgrow its narrow Roman Catholic orientation and re-engineer itself as a secular and nonsectarian party.” We are very much aware of the points you have raised. I have good news for you.

Because Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP) is unique and different from the political parties that we have today, AKP finds universal acceptance from people - fed up with trapo politics - from people of good will, who thirst for justice, peace, and economic well-being, who are looking for change. Not just change for the sake of change, but real and authentic change for the better.

Good people are attracted to Ang Kapatiran Party because it is the only political party that promotes a prophetic politics of personal and social transformation, a platform-based politics with clear and specific policy objectives - all aimed at enhancing the common good. (Please visit our website: angkapatiranparty.org).

People from different faiths, including Muslims, have joined AKP. They have accepted AKP’s foundational principles in the Catholic Social Teaching which advances such principles as the common good; right to life and dignity of the human person; call to family, community and participation; rights and responsibilities, option for the poor and the vulnerable; dignity of rights and workers’ solidarity; care for God’s creation; peace, active nonviolence and progressive disarmament.

What makes AKP attractive is its focus on moral principles, not on political expediency; on the needs of the poor and vulnerable, not on those of the rich and the powerful; on the pursuit of the common good, not the demands of special interests; and on the culture of life and peace, not the culture of death and violence.

In a representative democracy such as ours, the people have the right and duty to tell the candidates and the political parties to which they belong: 1) What kind of society do we want to become and how are we to achieve that society? and 2) How do we propose to pass from our present condition to the condition we desire to reach? For example, if the people want the objectives written on the AKP platform to become a reality, all they have to do is to ensure the election of a Kapatiran President, a Kapatiran Senate, a Kapatiran House of Representatives, and a Kapatiran local government. Thus we put life and meaning to the political maxim “government of the people, for the people, and by the people.”

Good people are attracted to Ang Kapatiran Party because it is the only political party that has a built-in education component that promotes the politics of virtue and of duty, the politics of transparency and public accountability, the politics of good citizenship and stewardship. As proof, Ang Kapatiran Party has come out with the “Passport to a New Philippines”, a guide to political renewal and stability.

Ang Kapatiran Party attracts people because of its God-centeredness. Faith and life cannot be separated from each other. How we live should reflect what we believe, and what we believe should guide us on how to live. As Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Denver said, “A public life that excludes God does not enrich the human spirit. It kills it.”

You expressed doubt whether Chief Justice Reynato Puno, a Methodist, will be comfortable with a party platform specifically based on the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. Why don’t you ask him?

You also raised the question of viability. If AKP’s viability is to be measured according to trapos’ standard, then Ang Kapatiran Party is not viable. But the trapos’ ways are not Ang Kapatiran’s ways, the trapos’ thoughts are not Ang Kapatiran’s thoughts. Ang Kapatiran Party’s approach to politics is holistic and integral, with new fervor, new methods and new expression. We will fight big money politics with public support. We have to maintain the honesty and integrity of our candidates.

Ang Kapatiran Party believes in first things first. With the Passport to a New Philippines, we start with education followed by political action that starts from the barangay up to the council, municipal, provincial, regional levels and up to the national level. AKP promotes respect life attitude in society as a precondition for a consistent ethic of life. AKP is pro-life across the board. AKP’s yardstick is faithfulness not success. Nandy Pacheco

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AKP’s Passport to a New Philippines is a 62-page document the size of, well, a passport, and it encapsulates the political ideals of Nandy Pacheco and Ang Kapatiran. Foremost among these ideals is the introduction of prophetic politics of personal and social transformation” that dovetails with the call Reform yourselves and believe in the Gospels.” (Mark 1:15).

But whose Gospels? Christianity is divided into an infinite variety of sects and denominations, who each profess their own, exclusivist interpretation of the Gospels, from the ultra-conservatives like the Evangelicals who do not believe in Evolution – according to them, the physical world as we know it from the Gospels is only 6,000 years old – to the free-wheeling Unitarians who draw their philosophical inspiration not only from the Christian Gospels, but also from the Holy Books of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.

And what about those who do not accept the AKP’s choice of Christian Gospels – the Buddhists, the Muslims, the Hindus, the agnostics, the atheists – are they therefore out of the loop and deemed unworthy to embrace the AKP’s ‘prophetic politics?’

We all know that many of those who piously profess the majority Roman Catholic faith are also the most corrupt crooks and the most insatiable practitioners of irremediably materialistic lifestyles. On the other hand, there are any number of agnostics and atheists who live noble lives of humanistic moderation, without being attached to any organized religion.

Since, prominent among all present political groupings, AKP emphasizes ‘belief in the Gospels’ as a necessary sine qua non for its ‘prophetic politics,’ how does it reconcile these disparate and dichotomous world views?

To be relevant to the present socio-economic-political discourse, AKP also needs to state its position on the various issues of the day. Does it support or reject the use of artificial methods of birth control? Why or why not? Does it support or reject a shift to the parliamentary system and/or the federal form of government? Why or why not? How does it propose to solve the economic and financial meltdown that is ravaging the world, including the Philippines? How does it propose to reduce the incidence of graft and corruption in this country? What electoral reforms would it support (or reject) to make the electoral process honest and fair? What judicial reforms, to solve the problem of corrupt judges and justices? What economic reforms, in order to create more jobs. Etc.

These mundane questions, ultimately, are more relevant to our continued existence as a nation than the matter of which Christian Gospels candidates should profess.

AKP received Comelec accreditation as a political party in May 2004, a few days or weeks AFTER the presidential elections of that year. Previous to this, Nandy had flattered me by urging me to run for president in the 1998 and 2004 elections, which I declined for several reasons that I gave him..(One of which was: Naloloko ka ba?)

In the 2007 senatorial elections, AKP fielded four candidates, the best performing of whom was the Fil-Am physician Manny Bautista, who managed to garner about 750,000 votes. (Bautista has since parted ways with AKP over the issue of birth control.)

This was a moderately successful showing for a neophyte party with no money and little organization. But it pales in comparison to the 11 million votes won by Navy Lt (sg) Antonio Trillanes III, who campaigned from the brig or jail in the Marine barracks.

This should tell us and the AKP that to make a bigger splash in the coming 2010 elections, it must field a candidate or candidates who manage to catch the popular imagination and fill a keenly felt vacuum in our political culture, no matter which Christian Gospel, if any, he or she professes

The Passport to a New Philippines names the role models of the AKP:: St. Thomas More, the Catholic lawyer-archbishop who defied pressure from King Henry VIII on the matter of divorce and lost his head in the process, and Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay

The Passport itemizes the party’s founding principles, its declaration of a consistent ethic of life, its vision and mission, all of which center on a recurrent theme of Godliness, which may turn off those who want a more secular world view.

In its section on the party’s political and social platforms and good governance, the Passport gets down to the nitty gritty, championing specific advocacies such as abolishing the pork barrel, abolishing all forms of gambling, banning the death penalty and the use of torture, banning nepotism, even banning the tinting of car windows:

One can disagree with some of the points raised in the Passport that can be criticized for being too “motherhood” or too unabashedly “religious” , or sometimes too minutely detailed (e..g. the strictures against the carrying of firearms, as can be expected from the founder of Gunless Society),

But Nandy Pacheco and Ang Kapatiran are one or more steps ahead of the dozens of organizations – many among concerned, Filipinos abroad - that have sprouted like mushrooms in the run-up to the 2010 elections, and are often one-issue groupings with the fervor of snake-oil salesmen who have the one and only solution to this country’s myriad problems.

In the final analysis, it will be the credibility of their chosen candidates which will determine the success or failure of these parties or quasi-parties. For the present and the near-future, it will still be the singer, not the song, that will make the Big Difference. *****