The New Government of 2010: by Election or Revolution?

by Charles Avila

The cyclical patterns of regime change

One question crossing many people’s minds as they hear talk of election failure in the wake of a new way of voting and counting is: where are we headed this time? The Marcos years are way back in the past, and who remembers them? Right after independence we had twenty-six years of elite democracy, followed by 14 years of authoritarian rule.

The past twenty-four years may yet be referred to by future historians as merely “the post-Marcos years” to emphasize that, in our country, as in a few others that have been swept by various waves of democratization over the past century, the pattern of regime change has often been “cyclical” or a mere alternation between so-called democracy and authoritarianism. Weak democracy gives way to authoritarianism only to be replaced in turn by seemingly stronger democracy.

Political legitimacy inevitably declines over time, and both authoritarian regimes and oligarchic democracies – the only political dispensations we’ve known in our country in our lifetime – have no mechanisms for self-renewal: hence, the cyclical patterns of regime change – with state power moving from a few holders to one main holder and back to a few thereafter but hardly to a real participative majority – not till now, unfortunately.

History has time and again demonstrated this iron law that without the empowerment of the majority populace – in other words, without social democracy or the rule of the many – that is, without people’s ownership of government and the means of production – oligarchy or the rule of the few always leads to monopoly rule. It may be time then to break the impasse and move out of this exasperatingly monotonous alternation that has only produced at best a poor Third World country.

The dismantling of the second republic by the Marcos auto-golpe (“coup-me” or the “revolution from the center”) was also the culmination of a longer political-economic process managed by international powers towards dependent “Development” as a goal, and the acceptance of external guidance such as the World Bank’s and the IMF’s as “the best method” of achieving that goal. Old-style imperialism had morphed into neo-colonialism. It is interesting to note that the countervailing power, in the famous studies of Harvard’s Samuel Huntington, was “Catholicism” or changes in the political alignment of the Roman Catholic Church that repositioned herself from accommodating authoritarian regimes to opposing them.

In fact, it was also this realignment that saved the Arroyo administration from collapse in 2005. Cory Aquino was calling for people power to get GMA to resign and Cardinal Sin was no longer in the political scene. Only the CBCP or the Catholic Bishops as a whole could make the crucial difference. Fortunately for Arroyo, the Bishops’ collegial decision was clear –not to favor regime change via extrajudicial means at that time. But what is the situation now?

The character of our political system

There is very little debate as to the essentially oligarchic character of what passes for Philippine formal “democracy”. Our democracy is more an instrument masking oligarchy or plutocracy than anything else. And the chief instrument of deception or the mask mutually embraced by both the ruled and the ruling class is our peculiar electoral system that never fails to excite the nation more than any national sport ever could. Despite the fact that people buy and sell, kill and die for electoral victory, they would never, for all that, in their heart of hearts and in their sober moments, deny that the whole electoral exercise is anything but a true manifestation of the people’s will. Philippine electoral politics, it can never be denied, is about so many Tweedledums and Tweedeledees telling the Filipino people how free they are to choose between anyone of their same kind.

In their studies political scientists tend to be more kind. They say that prior to 1972, the Philippines’ main political parties were “clientelistic” parties. This meant they were vehicles that merely reflected patron–client ties involving exchanges of favors between prosperous patrons and their poor and dependent clients. The system of exchange was always particularistic, non–programmatic, non–ideological, and often but not necessarily always personalistic.

After 1972, during the period of “constitutional authoritarianism” the political party system that was meant to underscore the regime’s “legitimacy” became a cruel joke. Political scientists invented another word: parties were no longer just “clientelistic”; they were now “patrimonialistic” deriving from the word “patrimony” because the ruling party did not only have effective monopoly over state power but maintained itself with the plunder of state resources.

The post-Marcos years “restored” democracy, i.e. brought back oligarchic democracy. Unintelligently over-reacting to the negative features of authoritarianism, we restored a “weak state” captured by the oligarchic elite whose open factional differences were baptized as democracy’s “freedoms” – of the press, of assembly, of court remedies and due process, etc. but excluding what Ninoy Aquino wrote about from his solitary cell – to be: “free from the imprisoning walls of ignorance, poverty and disease; free from the exploitation of a privileged and propertied few; free from the entangling webs of super-power hegemony, imperialism and neo-colonialism.” His dream was “of a community of liberated citizens enjoying the full benefits of a Free Society” including the freedom “to choose, criticize and remove our duly elected governors.”

Lately, however, quite a few have realized that the Philippines is not all elite politics. The Philippines is a contested democracy where the oligarchic elite is being challenged by the lower and middle classes: “elite democracy” versus “democracy from below,” or – in other words – “liberal democracy” versus “social democracy.”

The insatiably predatory elite look for ways, say, via manipulations in the electoral system, to maintain the dysfunctional type of formal democracy that it can always dominate. On the other hand, adherents of broader or social democracy desire not just good governance and transparent, accountable government, but also popular empowerment and social justice. Formal democracy must be reformed to become more substantive, to deepen it into a more participatory and egalitarian democracy. How is this going to happen?

The ways of change

The normal way is through a long process of gradual change in the systems and subsystems of Philippine society, bringing us, say, to a level of social justice, political sovereignty and economic prosperity that characterized Ninoy’s “Malayang Lipunan” which is equivalent to becoming a First World country of our own type. This presumes the presence of a strong state backed up by the support of an enlightened citizenry who have organized themselves into strong social organizations.

The extraordinary way is through a non-violent revolution as a fast-track entry into the universe of change. We went through this methodology twice the past four decades occasioned by certain ruptures in the “normal” process of Philippine politics. And we also blew it twice. Can we hit a home run on the third attempt?

Our first experience of such rupture came with Presidential Proclamation 1081 in 1972. Marcos’ second term as president would have ended in 1973, but, having hijacked the ongoing Constitutional Convention, he did not transfer the reins of government at the end of his term in 1973. Proclamation 1081 “legalized” his continued stay in office. He did all this before the scheduled elections in order to forestall any claimant to the presidency.

This “revolution from the center” was simple although long prepared for: Marcos informed the Filipino people that there were, in existence, lawless elements intending to overthrow the government and supplant it with one based on Marxist-Leninist-Maoist teachings and beliefs and that these lawless elements had organized and established an insurrectionary force known as the New People’s Army (NPA) to pursue a relentless and ruthless armed struggle against the duly constituted government of the Philippines. Earlier, he had suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus and commanded the armed forces to suppress lawless violence; however, he supposedly found these two courses of action insufficient in order to end the chaotic situation, citing Supreme Court cases to attest to the existence of rebellion and insurrection in the country; thus, he said that his only remaining option was to declare martial law.

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested upon me by Article VII, Section 10, Paragraph (2) of the [1935] Constitution, do hereby place the entire Philippines as defined in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution under martial law and, in my capacity as their commander-in-chief, do hereby command the armed forces of the Philippines, to maintain law and order throughout the Philippines, prevent or suppress all forms of lawless violence as well as any act of insurrection or rebellion and to enforce obedience to all the laws and decrees, orders and regulations promulgated by me personally or upon my direction.”

Marcos overthrew liberal democracy “to save the Republic and to form a New Society”. Not having accomplished either after so many years, people became restive. Here was a real chance to have mounted a revolution with very little bloodshed – but Marcos blew it.

Our second experience of rupture happened in 1986. The snap election that Marcos was forced by the United States to call in February that year paved the way for Cory Aquino’s unexpected rise to the presidency. Ninoy’s widow did not draw her mandate from the election, but rather from the people’s urban insurrection that broke out in the aftermath of that stolen election.

Her “Proclamation No. 3,” which equaled Marcos’ Proclamation 1081 fourteen years before, was about “DECLARING A NATIONAL POLICY TO IMPLEMENT THE REFORMS MANDATED BY THE PEOPLE, PROTECTING THEIR BASIC RIGHTS, ADOPTING A PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION, AND PROVIDING FOR AN ORDERLY TRANSITION TO A GOVERNMENT UNDER A NEW CONSTITUTION.”

Who could quarrel with that kind of policy statement? The people were asked to forget the election that had just happened. A revolutionary situation, objectively speaking, had at last obtained in the country, and the Filipino people seemed to have been more than ready to oblige. They set aside legalisms and looked again at the WHEREASES of Proclamation No. 3 and were properly impressed for they were all non-controversial and factual:

“WHEREAS, the new government was installed through a direct exercise of the power of the Filipino people assisted by units of the New Armed Forces of the Philippines [insurrection, not election]; WHEREAS, the heroic action of the people was done in defiance of the provisions of the 1973 Constitution, as amended; WHEREAS, the direct mandate of the people as manifested by their extraordinary action demands the complete reorganization of the government, restoration of democracy, protection of basic rights, rebuilding of confidence in the entire government system, eradication of graft and corruption, restoration of peace and order, maintenance of the supremacy of the civilian authority over the military; WHEREAS, to adequately respond to the mandate of the people and to achieve a transition to a government under a New Constitution in the shortest time possible and WHEREAS, during the period of transition to a New Constitution it must be guaranteed that the government will respect basic human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

The clear mandate of the people’s insurrection was for change, and urgent change. Under the circumstances Aquino could not institute change without first dismantling and demolishing the entrenched apparatus. If the President had to follow the normal constitutional and legal procedures contemplated “by law”, change would never happen or could only come too late. Anyway, the revolutionaries argued, the true spirit of all constitutions in the world recognizes extraordinary situations calling for dispensing with the niceties of law.

In any case, while the majority populace tended to always side with their “Tita”Cory, some military conspirators did not. Seven failed military coups, including two very serious ones, challenged the new president’s right to govern and prevented her from focusing on governance so that it sometimes looked like her biggest achievement was her political survival.

A third rupture in the offing?

Today’s election fever actually had an early start last year, months before the death of Cory Aquino. As wannabes took front stage, people were often heard to say, ““We cannot have ‘more of the same’ because ‘the same’ has been tried too many times and It simply doesn’t work.”
That is why they could not even get excited over ‘opposition’ posturing in any given crisis. And heaven knows how many crises we have had for the opposition to take advantage of.

Long ago people had developed a natural aversion to false change, where they saw that the more something changed the more it remained the same… the same poverty if not worse, the same corruption, the same insensitivity to both human and non-human rights, the same inadequate infrastructure, the same escape from misery to work in distant lands, the same Third World conditions when all the other nations we had helped in the past had now reached First World status.

After Cory died, however, the initial election fever became yellow fever. In whatever manner it came about, people must have thought Ninoy and Cory good (“mabait”) and great (“dakila”) and concerned for them (“para sa kanila”) because they were so very sad when he was killed and she died. They felt orphaned.

So, there they were…under the rain, hungry, thirsty, walking, walking for hours on end, praying, experiencing the living unity of individual persons who, thus bonded, felt nothing less than the peace and unity of Be-ing. This was a socio-religio-cultural act, not necessarily a political approval of all that Cory was and had done in the political realm but a unitive act transcending the finitude and divisiveness of partisan politics among a people who had had enough of cynicism, nihilism and despair – a people who, through centuries of oppression, had been habituated to periodic hope and undefined faith.

This explains the Noynoy phenomenon today that seems to persist against all advertising odds. But how is all this going to convert to electoral victory when the rules of the electoral game may have been changed enough to almost guarantee no winners?

Some three months ago, the COMELEC had reported to the nation the existence of 44,009,069 registered voters, up more than seven million from the last national election. They projected the figure to rise to an estimated 47,000,000 in all, plus or minus. It turns out that the plus is a lot more. There are 50, 723, 734 voters registered for the May 10 elections. These voters will be organized into 329, 389 voting precincts organized further into 75,471 clustered precincts in 37,226 voting centers. Now the total Philippine population per official NSO report is 88.57-million as of August 1, 2007. If it were an estimated 93-million now, which is what we read all the time, we are being asked to believe that some 55% of all living Filipinos are now registered voters, including the big majority under the voting age of eighteen (18). And we thought the Garcis of the world had gone extinct?! Wanted -honest mathematicians. There’s a few million “registered voters” around ready for an electronic “dagdag-bawas” such as has never been imagined heretofore. A former COMELEC Commissioner privately claims there’s some ten million in all padded for the “plus-minus” exercise that will be occasioned easily by the COMELEC-acknowledged 30-percent rejection of votes cast in the automated manner.

The Comelec expects a relatively high voter turnout—80 percent or 40.5 million voters. Assuming this number turns out to vote, will all their votes be counted not only properly but expeditiously? In the mock polls (a simulation of the voting, counting of votes and transmission of results) conducted by COMELEC in various places the past few weeks, the rejection of ballots cast by the machine was rather high. In fact the Comelec earlier put the percentage of voters who might have problems because of the machines at a “mere” 30 percent!! That’s a mere 12, 150, 000 votes: perfect window for the electronic dagdag-bawas of the alleged ten-million reserved.

This can only mean trouble. This means the high probability of a revolutionary situation. This means, therefore, the great probability of a rupture that may lead to the declaration of a revolutionary government for the third time in recent memory. Who will make the declaration – towards what ends? And will such a revolutionary or provisional or transition government (choose your phrase) be able to govern – and for how long? Will it run right smack into “people power” or fuse with it or be born of it?

Some political analysts have pointed out that over the past three years no less than the current Secretary of National Defense and National Security Adviser, Norberto B. Gonzales, has been unapologetically “conditioning” the public (in the words of Ramon Casiple) for a possible transition government if the automated elections in 2010 won’t be successful. Casiple himself admits that if the elections won’t be credible, there would be no president-elect, thus the possibility for a caretaker government.

The sudden altercation between Villar and Enrile was really not about the Senate Presidency per se – for how many more days would they be in session? Rather it was about the probability of election failure and the crucial role the Senate President may play in a transition government. Defense Secretary Gonzales who is also Chairman of the Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas has been unabashedly proposing a transition government in 2010, reiterating his assessment that the way the nation does politics is the “greatest threat” to its future.

“Because of our dysfunctional politics, which is also the mother of corruption in government, many of our people are going hungry, our children are poorly educated, the poor do not have health and social securities, and the desperate are driven to crime or rebellion,” Gonzales time and again has said in many official statements. “We need Charter change, but we will never get to doing it until we have a transition president who is willing to carry it out and call for a new election under a new political system afterwards,” Gonzales has repeatedly said, adding the transition period may take two to three years.

“But the way I see things, we just may have more of the same in 2010. We will not have the societal change that we need to finally put an end to our recurring political crisis and to move our people on the path to a new Philippines,” Gonzales also publicly stated many times. “One big reason is our electoral system. It is almost useless to have elections if your electoral system continues to be flawed. Yes, because I am a member of the cabinet, some people think that my proposal is about extending the term of the president. No, my idea has nothing to do with her. And I don’t think this president is seeking an extension. I think she’s not that stupid. My idea goes beyond this administration. The Philippines has to move toward social democracy to satisfy the people’s hunger and slake their thirst for justice and the common good, for peaceful, productive, and meaningful lives with frugal comfort.”

Whatever – the questions won’t go away. In the highly probable election failure brought on by defective automation, isn’t the role of the AFP high in the mind of the Defense Chief? There is no stronger or more powerful institution in crisis situations than the AFP because, gross as the statement may sound, in such situations political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

Now, however, Gonzales would have us believe that “the AFP, while it participates in its own way in the national crisis, can also be an important part of the remedy and it can play a major role in the social democratic transformation of Philippine society. The recovery and transformation of society is a national task that requires the broad unity of all key guardians of democracy and other democratic forces as well. The importance of the AFP in this task stems from its more than considerable human and material resources, its capacity to employ force, if necessary, in pursuit of its purposes, and its significance as the strongest symbol of the nation,” said Gonzales in a recent speech.

He also stated: “Most of the men and women of AFP are born of the ordinary people—the peasants, fisherfolk, urban and rural workers, and small professionals and businessmen. As such, they are sensitive to the conditions of life of the majority of our people. There is much hope that the AFP will contribute in a major way to the reform, renewal, and transformation of Philippine society, thus fulfilling the hopes and aspirations of their fellow patriots.”

Need we say more? There will be a new government for the Republic of the Philippines in just a few more months. But will it be the result of an election or the product of a revolution that was necessitated by an objective revolutionary situation?