A Derelict Democracy

This Monday, May 14, the citizens of the oldest republic in Asia will troop to the polls and cast their votes in the country’s mid-term elections.

Many are likely to vote quite willy-nilly, with no great expectations that the exercise will mean something to the vast poor crowding in its rapidly mushrooming slums. It is a political right that has steadily lost its luster since the apparatus of democracy was restored following the “people power” uprising two decades ago.

Months before, this election was seen as a kind of referendum on the legitimacy of the Arroyo government. Just like the US midterm elections, which sent clear signals that the Bush policy on Iraq was way out of line, it promised an orderly way of ascertaining what the people must feel about the unresolved allegations of fraud that has hounded the Arroyo presidency.

It also held out the possibility of recomposing the balance of power in Congress, and with it the off-chance that the fast train bulldozing its way on a wild rush toward constitutional changes could be stopped.

This optimism as to its significance quickly dwindled into disillusionment. The expectation that the battle lines will be drawn along the divide over these critical issues has evaporated. The parties in this contest have come together, not because of a common stand on policy, but because of a common pragmatism premised on the realities of “winnability.”

With the exception of Kapatiran, a rather quixotic attempt at a “politics of principle rather than personality,” the major parties—the administration’s Team Unity and the Genuine Opposition—are bands of miscellaneous rabble glued together by political convenience.

In this election, we see the final dissolution of the party system as more normal democracies know it. This is partly a residue of the Marcos regime, which once dismantled it and turned it into a shadow play, the protagonists totally controlled from behind the scenes. But it is also partly a product of an entrenched political elite, whose dynastic character is perpetuated by the intertwining of power and privilege through a complex system of patronage and a closed network of clan alliances and loyalties.

For some time now, the lack of a clear party system, as seen in the ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans in the US, or the current contestation between socialists and the Center-Right in France, has been bewailed by more reflective elements in Philippine polity.

The pronounced preference for personality rather than ideology on the part of voters has challenged the cultural premises of those schooled in “good governance” as practiced in the West.

The palpable presence of political dynasties and personalism in voting patterns have persisted despite the half a century of direct tutelage in American-style democracy. A former colony of the US, the Philippines was once billed as America’s “showcase of democracy in Asia.” This myth was shattered when nary a whimper was heard from mainstream citizenry when martial law was declared and the iron hand of authoritarianism fell on dissenters in 1972.

The euphoric rise of “people power” as a direct instrument for expressing popular will has briefly fanned hopes of a government that the people can own. This quickly developed a dark underside, however.

“People power” became a tool for those wanting a show of popular support for their vested interests. An example of this was the so-called Edsa Tres, an assault on the seat of power mounted by a ragtag collection of poor people in support of Joseph Estrada who was ousted in 2001 in a second uprising called Edsa 2. Since then, crowds have been mustered for a variety of political purposes.

The fallout of all these has been a deepened disenchantment with the electoral process and the mechanisms of democracy as a whole. There is a perception that ours is a derelict democracy that has lost its way, rendered dysfunctional by the realities of oligarchic power, social monopolies and a political system disconnected from indigenous ways of doing things.

Already, the ghosts of history haunt the political landscape: there are voices wanting a return to the supposed “disciplined order” of strongman rule, and the government’s “war on terrorism” has taken the form of masked men on motorcycles lawlessly gunning down supposed insurgents, dark knights of primitive justice let loose in a general climate of apathy.

The Philippines is America’s oldest experiment in transplanting democracy in an alien setting. Its continuing failure is a patent lesson on why grandiose projects like democracy in Iraq will not flourish. There are deep structures of culture, power and social networks that need to be engaged even before mechanisms resembling democracy can be put in place. While peoples everywhere want freedom and self-determination. American-style systems are not exactly what will work.

The Philippines, like every nation, has to find its own way and fashion a viable democracy out of the dislocations of its colonial history and the aggressive influences of the current global order and polity. To come up with a system that works, it needs to fit and root itself in the traditional culture while negotiating with the demands of effective governance in a postmodern world.