photo from http://www.philstar.com/metro/2016/07/31/1608339/ltfrb-bans-uv-express-vehicles-edsa
IN
2010, Noynoy Aquino's party intimated, that is to say by implication, the rise of a wangwang-less
social liberal society. This social liberal society, so the message
went, should constitute the President's bosses, not his subjects. However, as
the years progressed, people saw more neoliberal and corporate liberal
interests in the "liberal" of the Liberal Party than social liberal
ones. Sure there were social liberal directions that remained, the CCT
(qua CCT), for instance, as well as the expanded TESDA skills program
(very social liberal, being in the service of both the working class and
the employers' class at the same time). In the long run, though, what
remained embedded in people's minds were these: hardly could someone see
a social liberal direction in the elitist DAP arrangements with
politicians, as against what they might see had it been a participatory
DAP arrangement with the people (the former produced such crap as a
convention center, while the latter might have produced such useful
efforts as a market bazaar space for vendors, more mangrove projects, or
solar power for villages). . . .
But
that's the past, and now we're in the present. So now let's talk about
the election campaign of 2016, wherein Digong Duterte did not just
imply, but explicitly described himself as, being a Socialist. He
boasted of his projects in Davao City as manifestations of a Socialist
mayor's sensibility in relation to choosing which provisions are
priority to his community (sophisticated healthcare, women's centers,
heavily-protected LGBT rights, etc.).
So
when Duterte won the Presidency and we saw such appointments as Lisa
Maza's for the Anti-Poverty Commission, no one was shocked. Nor that
another leftist was given the post of Agrarian Reform secretary to
hasten decades-old go-aheads for land redistribution. Nor were the
leftists among his supporters shocked to witness the appointment of a
scion of a wealthy family who now mans the Department of Natural
Resources, because her profile as a pro-people anti-mining activist
seems to go beyond mere show for "corporate social responsibility" and
is familiar to all as being so (moderate though it may be to the
radicals).
There
are other sensible little diktats that display this Dutertean socialist
sense, as when the President messaged NAIA people to avoid another case
of laglag-bala victimizing ordinary passengers (or be ready for airport
personnel cleansing). That diktat was a breath of fresh air from the
era of Noynoy Aquino that kept on denying that such a racket existed at
Aquino's cousin's turf, that kept providing everyone in the process the legalist
argument that there are existing laws governing such cases and that all
that needed to be done was merely to follow what the laws said.
A breath of fresh air. Until yesterday, when this news came out.
NOW under the Duterte government, the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), along with the traffic-planning and -enforcing Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), announced that all UV Express vans would henceforth be banned from
Epifanio de los Santos' avenue because, as legalism goes, the UV
Express franchise does not include the vehicles' entry into Epifanio de
los Santos' avenue of traffic ill-repute. Now, I remember the time when,
despite the Aquino government's neoliberal lack of empathy towards the
common commuter, we would still be shocked by a Mar Roxas blurting out
such classic lines as "heavy traffic is a sign of industrial progress", or something to that effect.
Discussions during that time, especially among socialists, touched on
the ultimate solution: the nationalization of the EdlSA bus route and
the provision of a ceiling for the number of private transportation using the main avenue during the rush
hours.
One
would have expected such an ultimate nationalization solution to come from a socialist
Duterte. Surprise, surprise. Instead, the UV Express of the lower-middle
and upper-lower classes are taken out, so that the cars and Ubers of
the middle and upper-middle and upper classes can continue to hog the
traffic of EdlSA. Meanwhile, we can only conjecture on why the buses---also the mode for the
lower-middle and upper-lower and lower classes---are being permitted to remain on EdlSA (and remember that buses use the entire length of EdlSA). We can only think of two reasons: there's the legalist rationale (the buses' franchise do specify where they are allowed to roll), and then what the rumors say (that the buses are
mostly franchises owned by retired generals and reigning politicians friendly to the Duterte government). Totoo kaya 'tong rumor na 'to? Sana naman hindi.
Pero the basic question for now is this: what
comfort does this memorandum provide to the UV Express-using working
class? Well, this niche of the working class would now have to ply the
heavier rush hour traffic of other avenues, and then be dropped off
corners or UVE stations 200 meters or more away from their connecting
MRT stations. Thank you, LTFRB, for the Aquinoesque inconvenience.
Isn't
it funny? Aquino would start his administration with a lie using elements of public transport as overall metaphor: that his social liberalism would be displayed through a non-elitist wangwang-less and counterflow-less traffic. Duterte just started his public transport administration with a truth: that his lopsided socialism would be demonstrated through a traffic legalism one can't make heads or tails of---if it is, on the one hand, indeed socialist and pro-working class commuter, or, on the other hand, pro-bus owners and car-owners or what. Have the buses and some colonels' taxi lines become the newly-reborn wangwangs?
On this uncategorizable memorandum, at least, I suspend my labeling pen till the next shocking (mostly to the socialists) public transport diktat. [S / -I]
photo from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2011_Philippine_State_of_the_Nation_Address.jpg
THE President is giving us a dressing-down for flagging his
statements that favored a Con Ass over a Con Con for the drafting of a new Constitution. He says that this
distrust towards our senators and congressmen in Congress is too much.
And he says nobody has a monopoly on good wisdom.
We understand
the President's concern about the huge resources that would be needed
for a Con Con. However, the President must indulge us our continuing
distrust of these people in Congress along with their wisdom. We might
like to note that they mostly derive from the wealthy class of our Republic, as do their wisdom (or wisdom absent from their knowledge).
As a self-described Socialist, the President might understand where
people's distrust is coming from. In fact, he might recall that his campaign
leaned on this very distrust towards the wealthy political class. He used
this distrust to push for a more trustworthy alternative, and in fact
continues to use it as a rationale for many of his freshly-launched new or rehashed
policies, the anti-illegal drugs drive being one of them. After all, this is the
same wealthy political class that would never give up its access to the pork
barrel (of whatever name) and rid us of a pork-barrel-run system of executive-legislative governance.
This is the same wealthy political class that would like to continue to
use the "epal" tradition of putting their names on every government
project or vehicle or structure that they can appropriate as products of their generosity. Therefore,
it is this very same wealthy political class that would likely avoid a
furtherance of power-sharing areas with the people through stronger direct
democracy instruments such as the initiative, the right to call for
referenda, the right to recall elections, among others. Thus our fear that this Con
Ass could very well decide to get rid of the people's initiative clause
in the 1987 Constitution (instead of strengthening it).
Sure,
it's possible that delegates to a Con Con might be just as suspect to
our nation's eyes. There would be the gamble. But the President must understand that our fears in relation to most politicians in Congress are
not totally without grounds. The President might remember that most, if not all, of his new
policies, and the people's support of them, all come from fears. So that if he
can trust that our larger fears against the proliferation of illegal drugs in
our neighborhoods are what is keeping us from fearing his police state
methods against illegal drugs more, then he must trust our expression of fears in other
areas.
Who knows: he who rules by fear just might be able to help
this nation further in exploiting and defeating one other fear: the fear of reinvigorated
old privileges among wealthy political class elements when they go unchecked by the people
who may have just been further excluded from their government via a more fake democracy in a new Constitution. [S / -I]
photo from http://www.elitereaders.com/naia-source-disclosed-how-scammers-pick-their-targets-at-the-airport/
PRESIDENT Duterte's order to stop all "tanim-bala" arrests comes from the presumption that all past instances of finding single bullets in passengers' luggage came from an extortion scam practiced by airport personnel (with likely consent from their officials). Will the order stop the scam? No. The extortionists at the NAIA will move on to harder methods: planted drugs, for one.
Duterte's order, which some legalist media elements and anti-Duterte citizens would point out as ignoring a law (never mind that they didn't holler a bit about Aquino's having ignored a thousand laws, the anti-DAP ruling chief among them), is---I believe---just a temporary fix and a probe. I believe that Duterte knows that the ultimate solution to the complex set of NAIA's problems is to replace the very elements that man this airport's security department and its systems, or replace the system that doesn't allow this police to be policed. Sure, erring personnel (and their defenders sympathetic to the previous government) can cite once again certain laws that may legalistically protect their positions. But we should remember that toying around with legalism is playing with fire, with the possibility that some people's frustration with laws that seem to only protect the erring will birth the death of Law itself.
Simply because the intelligent powerful have been more concerned with the letter of the law (the intent of which concern had been to protect certain interests) more than with the spirit that birthed good laws (the intent of which had been to protect the people) does not mean that that is the only way to treat laws and keep ourselves from getting into utter trouble. In fact, we ought to be careful with what we're sowing by that very legalist culture. For when people get frustrated with laws, because our legalist thinking have been turning a blind eye to the legalist effects of these laws' usage (waiting for Supreme Court rulings to reprove those legalisms), God knows if it might be too late to realize that it had been our very legalism that farmed that crop that cropped a lawless monster. [S / -I]
I get it that many would rather get news about more serious tragedies and expect the news media to offer them precisely those. But I think they just miss the point and significance of all media coverage on the life and hours of Kris Aquino.
For here's what else I think:
I guess the point of all this Aquino-centric journalistic coverage is Kris Aquino herself as a vehicle for her unconscious self-promotion regarding her selfhood and selfness and therefore as a royal figure who has got all our attention but really no different than the average citizen who has to tweet on everything that he's doing right now. Such tweets, for instance, as "I'm kissing our dog's asshole right now."
That unabridged character of hers should make Aquino everyone's Facebook friend, then. Not that all Facebook friends are true friends, but you get the idea. The concept of the "selfie" cannot be limited to self-held cameras and must now be extended to the shooting off of words that resemble the spirit of the selfie. The selfie, of images and words, thence will be seen not just as a simple gesture by individuals qua pointless individuals but as a symbol of their communing with the community of selves interested in each other's selfhood and selfness.
If media coverage on KA, whether Boy Abunda-instigated or not, manifests a royalist pop culture, then indeed this mini-essay of mine is a Facebook thumb-up to all our little counter-royalisms. I see nothing wrong with either this media obsession with the stars nor with our own little forays into self-promotion on Facebook. I think we should all be stars to each other in the star system we design for ourselves according to each of our (narrow and broad) ideas about the universe. [S / -I]
First, ugly politics is alive and well again. And we, the people, are being drawn into it again. You and I are again being sucked into the agenda that there can only be black and white, and the propaganda that our very own white backyard cannot have brown stains on its many paths. And so we are being asked to choose once again if we want to continue to side with white or if we're already beginning to side with black (or gray or green), after being told to weigh an "obviously" continuing virtue in white against the proven dirt of everyone in black. So, some of your allies make pronouncements that they are opting to stay, while some slowly begin to blurt out brief sermons akin to the enemy's. You, meanwhile, choose to put your faith in white. But your present devotion blinded by white's light is making you forget what once was your original side, the side that had an original loyalty to a cause that then offered the same to a loud political color only because that color supposedly wanted to serve this cause of yours. And, having been convinced by its blinding light, you closed your eyes to the fact that that color can anytime choose to side with causes other than yours, causes conflicting with yours. Not necessarily the enemy's cause but simply another conflicting cause. A cause within. Which, as the others see it, can be a bit similar to the enemy's. But you are not blind, you say. Perhaps. But, you see, because you have chosen to pin your prime loyalty to that color that preached the side of your cause, you have been blinded to the possible presence of the fact that the color you have sided with for siding with your cause has through all these years also been gradually siding with those others' causes, and you continue to embrace the illusion that the color still has your cause in mind as a priority. A part of it, perhaps, which is what you know, but definitely not entirely, which is what you deny. Not entirely anymore.
But you've closed your mind to that possibility and tell yourself over and over, and tell your friends the same, that this can never happen, and that should this happen it will only be as an illusion painted on the wall by the enemy. And your allies that have begun to realize the stains on the paths you have all been walking on? You have labelled them as spies, as corrupted individuals slowly being swallowed by the rhetoric of the enemy. You fail to see now that, unlike you, these allies of yours have never lost their loyalty to their original cause, and have never forgotten that they only offered the same loyalty to the color you both pledged allegiance to because the color supposedly wanted to serve that original cause. They have never forgotten that their loyalty to their original cause comes first, and shall forever retain that status in the eternal changing of colors. That their loyalty to any color must anytime turn to nothing in the betrayal of that original cause. That, my friend, is not synonymous with siding with the enemy. You've seen some of them dine with some elements of the enemy's side? Well, remember, at least, what you've told each other before you pledged your allegiance to a color? That whatever happens, wherever you go, you will never lose your allegiance to your original cause? Do you remember? Do you? Have you forgotten your promise to each other, written in blood, that in the eternal alternation of colors you will never ever lose yourselves in the control of colors but shall forever endeavor to control back? To control back! To control back what you can still control back! Have you? Have you?
“… the manipulation of bodies in space suggests that it is not the space that creates content, but those within it. But, as [artist Joseph] Beuys suggests, such spaces might contribute to the creation of direct democracy. Perhaps this is what [Kazimir] Malevich was thinking about when he started painting black and white squares. Maybe that's what protesters have been thinking about more recently, with the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements. Space is an important thing. It can be a very political thing. And as Occupy London has been officially evicted from St. Paul's, physical space is becoming such a rarity, one might wonder where such bodies might interact….”
“… space as a place for interaction, debate and discussion.”
ADDENDUM, JULY 2014: In October of 2013, enterprising political activist Manny SD Lopez enjoined me and other direct-democracy advocates (Rey Callope Sabio, Dexter Briñas Amoroso, among others) to form ePIRMA (the Empowered People’s Initiative and Reform Movement Alliance) which would spearhead a people’s initiative (using Republic Act 6735) against pork barrel spending. The new group sought the help of Atty. Jose M. Roy III, another direct democracy enthusiast, among other lawyers, and the inspiration of former Supreme Court Justice Reynato Puno, a direct democracy advocate in his own right, who had then been coming out in the media at the height of the PDAF scam to inform the public of the available people’s initiative option. The ePIRMA alliance grew and attracted all sorts of individuals and groups: social liberals friendly and not friendly to the Aquino government, opposition groups, leftists, advocates of other special causes, even Marcos loyalists. Albeit the Facebook community page of the group allowed various subjects and viewpoints to be posted by its members, the alliance’s central committee managed to focus the group on the pork barrel system as its main target, followed only by concerns as various as total public finance management reform, Porto Alegre-modeled participatory budgeting, the abolition of ‘political dynasties’, and so on. By July of 2014, the group had joined in a coalition with the Cebu Coalition, the Makabayan group, PICAD, and Scrap Pork Network, for a final framing of an anti-pork barrel initiative that, after the decisions by the Supreme Court rendering both the pork funds PDAF and Aquino-administration DAP (Disbursement Acceleration Program) unconstitutional, would criminalize any similar fund-making along with their use. The initiative is slated to be launched on August 23, 2014 in Cebu City.
WHY
SHOULD congressmen and senators be afraid of losing their jobs under a direct
democracy? On Facebook group Direct Democracy's wall, member Occupier Michael Hudson
pointed out this passage from a cited source titled “Pros and Cons” on
activatingdemocracy.com (a source first posted at the Forum for Direct Democracy Philippines’ Facebook wall by another friend, gallery-owner Simkin
de Pio):
“Representative and direct democracy are
compatible; well-designed direct democracy strengthens and invigorates
representative democracy. Initiatives and referendums represent dynamic
elements, which prevent the political system from ossification. Both citizen
lawmaking and parliamentary legislation are expressions of the same principle
of popular sovereignty. “Direct democracy does not replace but
complement parliamentary democracy. Only the most important decisions are made
by popular votes. Most of the decisions remain to be decided by parliament,
government and administration. The independence of the judiciary is not
questioned by direct democracy.”
There
you go. But the anatomy of this fear of direct democracy may be gleaned from examining what the
political elite did with the party-list proportional representation system. New Forum for Direct Democracy Philippines member Emil wrote: “In a realm where the moneyed class holds
sway, they will use all instruments at their disposal to get themselves into
power, even if that means violating the original intent of party lists. I'm
sorry to say this, but the party-list system, for all its good intentions, has
been co-opted by the trapos [Filipino
slang for 'traditional politicians' and Tagalog word meaning cleaning rag]. (The
system is) following the footsteps of the traditional political parties that
basically represent the interests of the ruling classes -- as expected. You
can't win as a party-lister unless you have money or established political
bailiwicks, like Bayan Muna, Gabriela, and Akbayan, but these parties too took time to
organize, to put up, and required lots of resources before they could be
established.”
Still,
the true small parties would have a lot to gain in terms of chances in a direct
democracy. So why would they allow themselves to remain as well-paid slaves to
masters? Ah, yes, did I say “well-paid”?
“I
dare say again,” says Emil, “if we really want a truly representative
democracy, then the poor must be enabled by legislation to be elected into
office as well, not just the less than five percent of the families who control
economics and politics right now. And I think the only way to set this up is to
change the rules of engagement.”
And
that is precisely what the global movements for direct democracy are all about; that’s what our movement is about. The multi-party direct democracy of
Switzerland is evidence enough that it can work.
MY FRIENDS Mac McCarty and Lila S. posted on their walls a post-election essay on Business World written by the historian Vince Rafael. Mac says the article takes a look “at the historical dynamic of Philippine
democracy and opens some interesting questions to ponder pre-2016.” In the
essay, titled “Election Notes,” Rafa wrote: “In world historical terms, elections were most effective and meaningful when they were introduced in the wake of social upheavals and movements to democratize society (see for example, the French and American Revolutions; the US Civil Rights Movement). Such elections did not inaugurate change, they simply followed and extended change that was already under way.
“The promise of electoral change coming in the wake of (rather than before) these social revolutions could only be realized, ironically, through the medium of a strong state and established bureaucracies left behind by the old order. Refurbished by the new regime, these were the only vehicles capable of carrying out legislative changes on a truly national scale.
“In the Philippine case, national elections have American colonial origins (whereas local elections date back from the Spanish era). They were first introduced by the Americans in 1907 as part of a series of counter-insurgency measures to quell the Filipino-American war. Hence these elections, like the municipal elections that preceded them in 1903, were not meant to further social revolution but precisely to put an end to its populist energy, re-channeling its demands into a conservative, elite-dominated, counter-revolutionary institution called the Philippine Assembly, the acknowledged grand daddy of the Philippine legislature today. . . .”
Rafa closed his essay with the following questions “to ponder”: “Is it possible to have a strong state given the geographical divisions and strong local allegiances of voters, and given the sway of money and personalities over political parties and issues? Can we ever overcome the colonial legacy of a decentralized, 'weak' state without returning to authoritarian rule? Can the national ever dominate the local, which even under Marcos proved unfeasible? Or does democratization in the Philippines also mean increasing decentralization and localization of power which are anathema to the building of a strong state capable of reshaping all levels of social life?” I think the Philippine geography has nothing to do with it. It is not because Switzerland
is landlocked that it would be a study in contrast against the Philippines’ case. The
main difference, landlocked Switzerland and its cantons practice direct
democracy. In contrast, the Philippine islands still curiously kneel down to their
sanctified idol, representative (or elite) democracy. There’s the rub!
Let's
keep our representative democracy and we’ll never be rid of our trapos. And quite
obviously, trapos gain much from the system of pure representative democracy.
One of these gains is the facility of maintaining what has been termed in our country “political dynasties,” which involves wealthy families who seek further advantage by being in government instead of being merely in business (especially if one family achieved its wealth within government [or revolutionary government] in the first place and found it hard to get rid of the habit, thereby finding the entrenchment of its little dynasty quite a happy situation). When the young sons and daughters of these
“dynasties” win elections as either mayors, congressmen, governors or senators, what do they do? They take a crash course in legislation after the win. “Why not?” says my friend painter Dulz
Cuna, “Imee Marcos done it.” One would wish they also take up a course titled . . . something like Putting
the People above Special Interests 101.
Platform-less,
special-interest trapos are simply a product of representative democracy (elite
democracy), not of anything else. They won’t disappear in a near-future Philippine direct democracy, but this latter
system will at least force them to talk more about specific issues, if only because the people would have achieved a new culture of involvement in issues (a total involvement that could either be immediate or gradual). The trapos will then have to refine
their lying and, alas, direct democracy gives the people the power to vote them
out via a motion of no confidence (out of their seats) when they fail to
deliver.
“Citizens’ recall!” says Dulz. Exactly. They have that in Switzerland as well as in California. In fact,
there are even representative democracies in the world that allow for recall
elections. They have it in British Columbia (Canada), among
other places I can’t recall as of the moment (no pun intended).
DD (direct
democracy) might therefore frighten the currently-privileged elite which have long been
privileged by a system that marginalizes the majority from knowing the issues
and the details of the issues, one of the tools of which system of
marginalization has been the English language. The English of the educated class has been flaunted as a symbol of wide knowledge, in fact has largely been placed within a system that sells education at a high cost. This is why the currently-privileged elite might be afraid of direct
democracy. Because, largely, direct democracy is an attitude as well as a discipline of
principles. It doesn’t matter that direct democracy would not ban them from
seeking office, or that it does not do away with a Congress (a direct democracy in recent centuries being always a combination of direct and representative democracy), but its attitude will take away a lot of the plates of
privilege that the elite have for decades been eating from.
The attitude says this: we won’t anymore allow the
representation of our district’s needs to be the exclusive privilege of the
sons and daughters of wealth; we would like to represent ourselves on major
questions, us, the hundreds of thousands of us that have been so used to being
represented merely by members of the political elite. No more of that
exclusivist experiment. And the discipline that comes with that desire
comes with the knowledge of the issues and the principles behind the issues. In
RD (representative democracy) we are constantly either made ignorant or subtly told we are ignorant by the “experts” class; in DD we are expected to decide for ourselves. In DD
we complain to ourselves, not to the landlords. That ought to be our collective
attitude; and that ought to be frightening to an elite culture that has secretly
triumphed over the majority’s engineered ignorance for so long. The attitude says, enough of relying on elite
representatives to solve our poverty problems, for instance, or of relying on them to
achieve our socialized education objectives. For how else can we resolve those?
Who will even bother to start to achieve the latter, since private schools and
semi-private public schools are making quite a profit for the elite?
The engineering of our consent has gone on for more than a
century now, so much so that many of us have been conditioned to subconsciously
think thusly: “let’s just wait for our heroes, maybe the next set of
senators will solve our education problems for us.” Let us forever cross
our fingers? . . . Oh, and yes, “our system can never be changed” is
the problem, and our beloved senators would even sigh with us, but would then promptly follow it
up with a lightbulb gesture of having come up with a solution. Or we keep “forgetting that our culture is to forever wait for heroes,” and so
we join with our leaders in damning those who are ambitious, those “trying
hard” people, the so-called weird social climbers who think they can change the world, who think they are the messiahs, subtly telling us that our messiahs won’t be coming soon.
Well, enough of that attitude. We’ve got a new
attitude. The Swiss attitude, or the state-level DD attitude of almost half of
the states in the US, which is the same attitude driving the OurNZ Party of New Zealand, the Direct
Democracy Now! party of Greece, Direct Democracy Ireland, the Online Party of
Canada, and many more! . . .
BUT HERE’S the catch. The Philippine government
ought to be the government of the people and by the people (the people who should also say,
enough of the custom of buying us, the people). DD shall therefore be achieved
via the concerted effort of the majority of our people, not just via the idealistic few, for otherwise it’s likely to fail. The attainment therefore of DD shall be a long and
tedious process, for its approval needs to emanate from the people, as that is precisely
why it’s called direct or true democracy. If its approval is to emanate from only a minority of the people, it cannot be validated as a truly-made direct democracy and may likely reverse everything. Direct democracy must therefore not be imposed by a bunch of ideologues who didn’t
attain the people’s backing. Let me repeat, the campaign for direct democracy is going to be quite a tedious and
long process, the end part of which needs to be a ratification of new DD constitutional amendments. Paradoxically, the people have to decide whether they want to decide. Well, actually that need not necessarily be so. For since representative democracy was imposed on the nation by the few, so direct democracy can also be imposed by a few who may succeed at forcing the shift. It doesn’t matter if the people doesn’t make use of its new power and privilege and freedom. The important thing is that it is there. Should they choose not to take advantage (avail) of their new right, there is still representative democracy in the background which can continue to happily work on the people’s behalf as before. The advantage of that situation is that it does not give the people a reason to complain. The kitchen is there for them to use, all they have to do is use it. (Just as RA 6735, long hidden from our awareness, has been there waiting for us to use it.) If they, the people, complain about not seeing a recipe they wish someone had cooked already, then I’d believe those people to be really stupid and lazy. But until that kitchen is made more available to their awareness, I will not believe any elite architect’s pronouncement that my neighbors can’t cook a level-headed new Act. . . . IT WILL be a tedious process. In fact, when we achieve a new culture of direct democracy, some or many of us may not even be around anymore. But the important thing is for the campaign to start now.
Not tomorrow, not next month or next year, not next decade, but now.
A program of work, then, as Emil reminds us.
Yes! A program of work, which is what the Forum for Direct Democracy
Philippines was built for. So far, its 149 members have yet to come up with a
program of work.
We’ll do this, then, as a labor of love. And,
remember, every political model has its favor for a kind of love, facilitating the promotion of its idealized love. Elite democracy facilitates, nay
proposes, the primacy of love for elite selves lording it over beneficiary
masses waiting for their benefactor lords’ charity. We’ll labor for a
contending broader embrace of a love concept, one not derived from generous
lords but from all our selves for as many of our selves.
Our friend from Wall Street Peter Casimiro
reminds us also via John Adams to “remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon
wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not
commit suicide.” And, indeed, direct democracy is not the end-all and
be-all of the democratic struggle for democracy. I say, democracy is a constant,
never-ending struggle, precisely because autocracy never stops at its own.
And in our case, I would be referring to the autocracy of elite democracy,
better known as plutocracy or oligarchy, which would continue to fight to regain the
privileges of representative democracy against the true populism in our new direct
democracy.
Another new friend, painter Arturo Cruz, squeezed
out a paraphrase of Noam Chomsky’s “Consent Without Consent” which went thus: “according to
consensus of Madisonian scholars, the primary responsibility of government is ‘to
protect the minority of the opulent against the majority’. That has been the
guiding principle of the democratic system from its origin until today.”
I would say, “Until today, Arturo, until today,”
for while that principle seems to be operative until today, it must prevail
only until today. For today we have found an option.
THIS OPTION is really this simple: there are two basic forms of democracy,
representative and direct.
Representative democracy says all the people
have to do is elect representatives (mis-representatives?) of the millions of
the republic’s citizens. These representatives can take care of the
nitty-gritty of the major decisions of governance for us, having been entrusted with the responsibility. We
can all relax afterwards and watch our soap operas as they do their jobs on our behalf. Direct democracy, on the other hand, while also employing representatives of
the majority with its necessary retention of a Congress, simply gives the people ample rights to
participate directly in governance/legislation as well as the power to amend or
repeal laws (even the republic’s Constitution) and recall elected officials. Now, almost all of the complaints we hear on the
radio and on TV every day can be traced to the failure and shortcomings, and the abuse, of representative
democracy as well as the failure of the people to defeat the powers and
privileges they have allowed to be allotted to this system. So, now, having been made aware of this, why prolong the
experiment? How can we keep complaining to our leaders while also indulging
them the privilege of representative-democracy representation powers, which definitely includes the power to ignore our complaints? How can
you complain to your abusers while allowing them to continue to operate within
a “democratic” form that facilitates abuse?
On the wall of the Facebook group Direct
Democracy, our friend Occupier Michael Hudson had another attractive posting, this time the video of a lecture by the
progressive-cum-liberal political commentator Cenk Uygur. Here is that video:
Cenk Uygur’s speech at The Conference to
Restore the Republic
Not
to contradict anything in the video except for one tiny thing, our Occupier friend quips
that, sure, “a Constitutional Convention [amendment] is a great idea, but for what
cause? Let’s try direct democracy. Direct democracy allows the people to
petition to place laws on the ballot and then, if enough people sign the
petition, we can vote for or against it. Switzerland uses this system, as does
over a dozen U.S. states. At least direct democracy gives the people the
ability to pass legislation that 90% of us like. And thus direct democracy
gives the people a mechanism with which to effect real change.”
And he’s right. And instead of a Constitutional Convention we can already make it
possible, simply by demanding for direct democracy even initially at the provincial or
the city or municipal level (especially in the case of provinces and/or cities
where the leaders are the type who would be more receptive to the
idea-cum-demand). From the municipal to the provincial to the national level, then. Maybe that’s the way to quickly shut up all the naysayers who claim that direct democracy won’t work in an archipelagic system like the Philippines (incidentally, wasn’t that the same argument the naysayers used against election automation not so long ago?).
But who could mobilize such a campaign in the provinces? Well, there are the
party-list groups’ provincial chapters, for one. And, again, with any party-list group that
claims to be on a mission to empower the people, I would like to know why it
wouldn’t want to join a multi-party movement for direct democracy.
And
there, in the provinces, we could try the beauty of a referendum or initiative.
THE INITIATIVE. A main artery at the heart of
direct democracy. Now, here is where fear lurks. And the fear is not exclusive
to special interest groups who would find it quite easy to convince a bunch of
congressmen and senators in their lobbies but think it hard or more expensive to convince whole communities in their plazas as well as entire media staffs in theirconference rooms. Other
concerned citizens also fear that moneyed special interests who can afford to put
their prized laws (and loopholes) to vote in election after election may, at
the end of the day, be the ones to own those initiatives or referenda. This is an
understandable worry, which derives from the dictum that well-financed
campaigns and adverts usually win the day. But this is precisely what happens upon a people not used to listening to themselves but only to TV wise asses
and their expert messages talking down to our low-financed voices. Direct
democracy gets rid of that just-listeners and just-consumers culture; people get
used to debates everywhere, not just in barbershops while watching GMA News TV documentaries. In a direct democracy, the people can actually own the philosophy that sees highly-financed campaigns as suspect. We’ll talk more about this in the
next part of our series. [END OF PART 3]
