Why do our People have such a profound distaste for Power? And while those who can exercise it, simply have no idea on how to use it? Take this move by Jose “Joey” de Venecia III who intend to file new impeachment charges against Mrs. Arroyo.

Don’t get me wrong.

I’d love nothing more than the President getting her day in court. I’d like to see bullet-proof charges presented that would send her and her family to jail but given the lack of numbers, given the current global challenges and the opportunity such upheaval can do, is a tactical move (a play for impeachment) that important as opposed to taking the greater strategic gain?

Why are we not talking about how to best leverage these opportunities?

With the risk of sounding like an arrogant elitist bastard, the regular Filipino who works at the market, who sells fish, who uses the sidewalk as a place of business, they don’t understand. We can’t expect them to. Specifically they’ve no idea of what possibilities there are. They’ve never ridden an elevator to the 30th floor of a skyscraper. They don’t know a thing about microwaves or the differences of a blue-ray or dvd or what an iPod is. They don’t know crap about Starbucks, or Figaro’s. They’ve no idea what derivatives are or what huge shit the world has dug itself into with the credit crisis. For many of our countrymen, PHP2,000 is a lot of money. This is the kind of people our politicians and the media and often we bloggers talk down to. Not because we intend it— but often, something gets lost in the translation from what we know to regular Juan talk.

There is a gulf separating our people. It is a difference that is similar to the digerati and everyone else.

Our politics is such a mess simply because it is closed. It is exclusive to the rich, to the powerful, to political scion, to the connected, to the famous. And none of them are nominated by members of their party. There is no vetting process, no identifying who is the best of the best. There is no party. In the end, the election is the first and last hurdle these people have to surpass to win.

The intention of creating a multi-party system and even a party-list system has done the opposite of liberating. Our multi-party setup has created a landscape wherein campaign finance is unregulated. It has allowed the lobbyists— party lists to be legislators. It has incapacitated our politics simply because politicians have “gamed” the system. Our politics has become a place of business not dissimilar to having barons and dukes ruling their own personal fiefs. This is why when we look at the slate of candidates, we shudder and say, “that’s it?”

Our political parties are stagnant simply because of the limited selection.

In Comic Books, when the Challenge is greater than even for one hero or a Superman or a Batman or a Wonder Woman to resolve, they call on the Justice League. That’s why they team up. Every child knows this.

In real life that’s why even nation-states band together. When even the toughest of challenges can’t be resolved by one man, then a team is what they form. Why can’t we build better political parties that are inclusive? Political parties should have janitors, vendors, as much as it should have people who work in Makati. It should have everybody. It get new blood from that pool. It should have that gene pool.

People are always saying what’s wrong with our system. Instead of wasting precious money, time and energy on impeachment campaigns, why don’t our people waste time building our future? At this juncture, the world is at a crisis point. We can leverage this. We can come out of this better— leap ahead. The differences in perspective from the humble janitor to the secretary to the most powerful business leader is necessary to achieve such unimaginable goal.

Be inclusive.

My last post, I asked, Can the Future Be Designed? The American computer scientist Alan Kay remarked back in the early 70s, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. It is true for science, it is true for nation-states. Fixing our politics starts when it becomes inclusive rather than exclusive.

Fatal error: Call to undefined function p75HasVideo() in /homepages/39/d169067170/htdocs/voices/wp-content/themes/NewFV/single-default.php on line 57