Ah, the wisdom of “expert insight“, indeed. Abe finally got around to at least referring to my child-like queries in a characteristically-Pinoy pa-hilis sort of way here:
[...] In impeachment, however, the un-election process is one step removed from the decision of the final arbiter, who by way of holding their representatives directly accountable may either respond immediately as in “people power” if the decision is widely perceived to be unwise or perhaps given that the next electoral reckoning is well at hand, the people in their (yes, BenignO) vast political wisdom may just opt to wait for the next regular election to take place as a matter of course.
Abe, you write here as if “people power” has become a standard option in the process of exercising this so-called “people’s will”.
There is no such option under normal circumstances, professor.
And I underscore “normal” because we are, despite what many of our fiesta-happy pundits write here, in a normal situation. We are not in a war situation nor are we in a revolutionary situation. We are in a situation that is part and parcel of what it means to be a democracy.
Sure, the sitting president is widely perceived to be a lame duck. She may even have been holding on to power in a “self-serving” manner and even criminal manner (to satisfy the self-described “investigative journalists” out there). But the first simply indicates she is ineffective, the second simply means she is an astute politician, and the latter, maybe even a clever crook. But the three even taken together are NOT GOOD ENOUGH REASONS to even consider “people power” as an option, much less incite such an activity. There are processes to catch and resolve the above. How well or the quality of the way these processes work in our nation simply reflects the character of our society. And, guys and gals of FV, give yourselves a reality check. If you take the time to observe the way the average Pinoy conducts himself on Manila’s streets, in our MRTs, behind the wheel, and even in Church, one need not be very surprised why these processes — or any form of mechanism to instill order — DO NOT work.
Ours is a society that requires armed guards at every corner store and tall fences and barricades on sidewalks and streets to enforce order. Compare that to societies where clearly-displayed signs and painted markings on streets more than suffice.
Go figure.
Under normal circumstances (and I cannot stress enough that we are in a normal situation here), to consider “people power” is an act of inciting rebellion that should be punished severely.
If there was any single thing I could cite that could be considered to be “damaging to the Republic”, that would be it — that ocho-ocho “revolution” habit that Pinoys have become addicted to. It’s like scabs that form on a moron’s wound that continuously gets scratched off before the wound heals. When the wound finally does heal, it usually does with an unsightly scar.
And that, Abe, is the answer to my question I repeat here and here that you seem utterly incapable of answering in a straightforward manner (which I repeat as follows for your convenience):
Give an example of what you would consider to be a “serious injury to the Republic”.
And my answer is — as always — simple:
Ocho-ocho “revolutions” do serious injury to the Republic, much the same way as an otherwise beneficial drug kills when abused.
[Ironic, Abe, that you'd come up with the quaint platitude "serious injury to the Republic" and I end up defining it for you. ;) ]
A democracy and the dynamism of its institutions should be given time to play out. We can put this whole lofty platitudinal “damage to the Republic” battlecry of yours in perspective, Abe, by re-visiting my piece “Who cares if Gloria is president after 2010?” where I issue this challenge:
Is there some kind of evidence or at least some kind of logical construct that convincingly describes some kind of causal relationship between (A) the character or even identity of the President of the Philippines and (B) the prospects of the Philippines achieving some semblance of sustainable prosperity?
Can we, infer from a value of A, what the probability distribution for a set of values of B might be?
For example, what many people claim to be a certainty can be expressed like this (using the conventions I loosely spelled out above):
IF A = GMA and Year > 2010,
THEN B = Disaster for the Philippinesor, for that matter;
IF A is NOT equal to GMA and Year > 2010,
THEN B = Prosperity for the PhilippinesMy question is this: Is there an A=>B relationship?
Think for a minute of the implications of the answer to this question. Because, if there is none, if there is no convincing answer to this question, or if a debate about whether such a relationship between A and B exists gets drawn out over comments ad infinitum and never gets resolved convincingly, it brings to light this SIMPLE question:
WHO CARES IF GLORIA ARROYO IS STILL LEADER OF THE FILIPINO PEOPLE AFTER 2010?
If we are not able to prove that our prospects for prosperity are a function of who is sitting in Malacanang, then why bother even wasting precious bandwidth on any discussion about whether Gloria is out to extend her term or not?
The fact that Edsa “revolutions” have all but proliferated in vast undifferentiated volumes as to [have been] devalued (Shawarma Effect 101) is ample TESTAMENT to what may already be irreversible damage to our mediocre Republic.
It’s simple, really™
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To Gloria Pidal and The Con Ass Gang:
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May araw rin kayo!
The Angry People of The Philippines
“And I underscore “normal” because we are, despite what many of our fiesta-happy pundits write here, in a normal situation.”
this is bull benigs. no, this is dung.
if you consider our situation as a country now normal, malaki ang tililing mo sa ulo.
and others on this site is right afterall that you are not to be taken seriously!!!
i don’t know what he means by ‘normal’, but i do share the sentiment that extra-constitutional measures should be used only under certain, fairly rare conditions. If we use extra-constitutional measures too much, it will damage our constitutional democracy. There are measures in place to deal with political disagreements.
i think if we want a system where leaders can be more easily changed, then we should shift to parliamentary (the PM can change everyday), and more regular elections (every 3 years).
“If we use extra-constitutional measures too much, it will damage our constitutional democracy.”
bwahaha, what democracy?…
constitutional democracy???
bwahahaha.. really ROTFL
“If you take the time to observe the way the average Pinoy conducts himself on Manila’s streets, in our MRTs, behind the wheel, and even in Church, one need not be very surprised why these processes — or any form of mechanism to instill order — DO NOT work.”
This is the job of the department of transportation and the local police. These departments must work in tandem to instill order. It will not work of course because the management team of both departments are lacking the knowledge of know how and know about. These departments are “expert damage”
In church? I don’t know about that. it was organized at our church in the province. May pila na.
yes benigno, this thread of yours, all the rest of it, is bulldung!!!
stop polluting this site with your bulldung!!!
@mitch,
You have implied that the country is “not normal” and is not a “constitutional democracy”. Okay, you may be right. I’m going to assume for the moment that your desired outcome is “normality” and a constitutional democracy. If that is the case, then does rebellion lead to the desired outcome? Or perhaps an even better question is, do you even have the skill and concentration necessary to raise your comments above the third tier of the disagreement hierarchy to answer the first question?
Talk about bulldung — six other comments here besides this one, and only two of those add something thoughtful to the discussion. (But of course, leytenian & GabbyD, you guys usually do) Out of the other four wastes-of-bandwith, three of them are yours, mitch. Sad.
If we proceed from purely academic discussion, we can consider our country democratic,because we are given to choose our leaders or a semblance to choose our leaders. But if we appproach the issue from purely pragmatic aspect, the Phil is not a democratic country but a feudal state where power is retained by the propertied/landed class and politicians are no different from the medieval warlords, and in fact they are our modern-day warlords.
The pinoys are not really given the right to choose their leaders, (except for certain elective officials who were able to break that enclave of private preserves traditionally for the moneyed class) as most of those who seek to govern are members of these privileged class.
On exceptional cases, the people elect some of their kind because of hype generated by the media or the perception that this official could be the tool of the ruling class. I would venture to say that the late Ramon Magsaysay, who was pictured by the media as an “auto mechanic” and his image built around the issue that he was “pro-masses” and U.S best hope to contain the communist growing influence in the countryside was the best example on how the media and its sponsor, the U.S., can interject its choice as the choice of the people.
If democracy means the people are sovereign, and therefore they determine the course of their government and their future, then the Philippines is not a democratic country. Our institutions are mere symbols of democracy or its trappings, but they do not provide the essense of democracy.
Our kilometric blogs or our “waste of digital space” as others would say, are also trappings of democracy, they do not from my perspective, provide the essence of democracy. Viewed from the limited accessibility these blogs are because majority of our people do not have the luxury of internet service and personal computers, any bright ideas expressed here is far detached from empowering our constituency.
Democracy is about people empowerment.
JCC,
“people do not have the luxury of internet service and personal computers, any bright ideas expressed here is far detached from empowering our constituency.Democracy is about people empowerment”
i totally agree with you. that’s why we have to try to influence the journalists or media to publish the right article and to communicate the brilliant ideas here to the masses and to the persons who are responsible.
In my province, our highschool has a forum, our town has a forum , everybody talk about politics and express their anger. These people may influence their neighbors who have no access to the internet. The only thing we can’t do in our forum is attacking our political leaders for fear of getting killed.
Journalists have access to emails. Anybody can always email if we want to expose somebody. It’s a matter of doing the right thing. It can be done.
And that’s what I battle here. It’s one thing that our society is such as you describe above, jcc, but the fact that the so-called “thinking class” tunnel their “analyses” into the trivialities of the celebrated and notorious few, there will be none of that “empowerment” we seek, as you say:
Empowerment does not come from politics and therefore whoever sits in Malacanang will have a very weak (if any) causal relationship with how democratically powerful Pinoys are. The power to influence is already there for the people — elections, free speech, and freedom of assembly. But the low-thinking-applied way that this power is employed is what makes Pinoys chronic losers.
:D We elect morons without even realising we did.
:D We say and write unoriginal insight-deficited platitudes the essence of which (when pressed) we cannot even explain to ourselves.
:D We gather together to worship, to rally, and to express without really knowing the spirit of the occasion.
And the irony here is this:
Our predisposition to elect morons, express crap, and gather like lemmings, thinking (in the half-witted way that we do) that we exercise our “democratic right”, all the more makes us vulnerable to the manipulative genius of those characters we revile.
A blowtorch is a powerful tool that is destructive and dangerous in the hands of a two-year-old. Democracy in the hands of Filipinos has proven to be destructive and disempowering.
Ben’s question is quite an easy one…
… in the sense that there are literally thousands of crappy ways to answer it (and therefore an equal number of people who are able to step up to answering it).
But the condition on whether we …
… is what separates the men from the boys.
As such, the challenge is in what leytenian says here:
From what I’ve seen so far, many FV authors take their cue from whatever sensational news the media dishes out. We need to step up and differentiate ourselves — influence media rather than consume it.
The media and poltics have a symbiotic relationship. Politicians perform and the media sensationalises. Ordinary schmoes are the currency exchanged between the two “institutions” at a profit. A truly clued-in people (or at least its intelligentsia) would be able to step out of that loop and be clever enough to play both against each other.
Too much to ask for a people who prefer the sensationally droll and unintelligent, focused on the trivial or the irrelevant fodder, of course. But then that reality is begging to be pointed out.
benigs,
my take is that if majority of our people have access to alternative forum, the mainstream media will die a natural death.
BENIGNO: Abe, you write here as if “people power” has become a standard option in the process of exercising this so-called “people’s will”.
ABE: First of all, to reformulate someone’s thought and then proceed to argue against it may not be a clever idea in a rather serious discourse; to let it pass is probably not as smart as well. So, if only to obviate any more misimpressions, I’m reposing here some of my thoughts on “people power” especially the ones which I’ve recently shared in FV in reply to what I supposed was Blackshama’s devaluing of the phenomenon when he called it an “idiocy.”
One of those somewhat lengthy comments reads in part as follows:
__________
There may be as many critiques of People Power as there are advocates.
As an advocate, what I see as one basis of People Power is the idea that the people collectively establish governments that may rule over people individually; and individuals agree to such an arrangement to be ruled, by obeying laws promulgated by the government as long as the government so established protects the people’s rights.
Hence, if the government abuses its powers or ignores the limitations the people impose on those powers, and existing curative or rectifying process is unavailing owing to the very same abuse of power or misuse of privileges, then the collectivity can empower itself to remove the abusive and unjust government and enter into a new arrangement. The new arrangement may hold on to revere deep-held values or break new paths. No matter.
In a democracy, the wisdom (or folly) of exercising People Power is not subject to any higher authority than the people themselves (a “political question” in the sphere of Constitutional Law). And the fact that only an intense few dare to actualize the manifestation of the power does not militate against the collective sense of the exercise. For a collective decision requires neither a perfect unanimity nor even a numerical majority supposedly determined in the ordinary course in an open tally sheet (as in a plebiscite or a recall process.)
When the government itself ignores or flouts the “rules of the game” under the agreed upon arrangement, such rules as those pertaining to certain essential safeguards ensuring for instance that governmental powers will not be concentrated in one agency or person, collective decision only requires a morally informed consensus among the people, as the principal, on the expediency of exercising People Power. One important caveat however: to be legitimate, the underlying reason behind the consensus ought to get to a continuum deep and wide enough to overpower competing choices including one that may press on to conserve the existing arrangement.
Once a successful People Power is acquiesced in by the people, a new covenant is thereby established which sets into motion the democratic cycle anew.
x x x
Recall that on the 16th anniversary of the first People Power, the EDSA shrine was ordered shut by the Catholic Church to political activity. Then, former presidents Fidel V. Ramos and Cory Aquino, two key figures of both the 1986 and 2001 People Power revolts, thought people power could be bad for democracy. Removing unjust or abusive leaders, according to Ramos, should be left to the political institutions in accordance with the Constitution in order for democracy to mature. Aquino, on the other hand, has cautioned against making a habit out of People Power. Other opinion makers, PDI columnist Amando Doronila for one, have also expressed their trepidation about the “excesses of people power.” The fear that People Power is an affliction in the body politic rather than a curative force in our “dysfunctional institutions” is therefore understandable from the standpoint of status quo defenders.
One of my contentions has been that the challenge posed by People Power to dominant beliefs, value systems and institutions is comparable to the threat of a rival ideology such as communism or authoritarianism or as real as the menace of terrorism.
In a larger sense, I see People Power as representing a bellicose movement that has impacted a broad spectrum of the civil society asserting its misgivings with inefficient and ineffectual institutions in our version of democracy and with the rank subservience of those institutions to the dominant segments of our society.
In a narrower legal sense, People Power is now an insert into our constitutional order as a result of EDSA I. It finds support in a number of express provisions in the 1987 Constitution (see for example Article XIII, Sections 15 and 16 of the Constitution defining the role and rights of people’s organizations separately from the right peaceably to assemble or to petition the government for redress of grievances as well as in Article VI, Sections1 and 32 in relation to Article XVII, Section 2 reserving to the people the power of initiative and referendum.) The philosophical consultative character of the governance system under a “people powered” constitution thus informs a continuing consensus proceeding from the first enactment of People Power.
My thesis is that People Power serves the fulfillment of the democratic dreams even if broader participation does not necessarily produce better decisions whether in the electoral process or in ordinary policy matters except maybe in terms of educating the people in civic consciousness as was seen in the impeachment trial (of Estrada) that had been precipitated by the various crosscurrents of People Power.
People Power conceivably creates the perception that it delegitimizes traditional institutions such as one that protects the accumulation process. So, we are often wont to react with the anti-ideology that citizens should be retarded into passivity and participation reduced, in order for “market” and “democracy” to work. To some status quo defenders, “stability” for the wealth-creating process to thrive (a salutary end in itself) is more important than the rhetoric of participation and therefore restoring and preserving the “governability of democracy” require the depoliticalizing of the citizens. (Although resolving economic scarcity could be the sine qua non for a successful program of universal education towards attaining a “democracy of the educated.”)
Even serious partisans of deferential politics, who set themselves apart from the “irrational mob,” are thus exposed by their fondness for social “control mechanisms,” subservience to hierarchy and hence, their hostility to democratic ideals and practices. This translates into an unabashed distrust of the people’s capacity to protect and govern themselves, despite professing that the powers of government are derived from the people. As People Power will continue to uncover the pursuit of such a political myth is anti-democratic, plain and simple.
__________
And I also offered these musings:
__________
. . . in advanced democracies already rendered sanitized of populist traditions, extra-constitutional checks and balances, perceived as liable to produce out-of-control public rage, is considered as “excess of democracy.” In such a mistaken perception, passivity creeps in, followed soon by self-disenfranchisement, thereby debilitating “legitimation.” U.S. President George W. Bush, along with his most recent predecessors, elected by only a minority of the popular votes of an apathetic electorate, is weighed down with this problem. Bush needed two wars to secure his legitimacy, the ideologically partisan stamp of his election by the Supreme Court exercising procedural checks and balances notwithstanding.
With People Power, the Filipinos have taken a different route, which, if served well by living room politics and allowed full sway, could open up a whole lot of possibilities. If fully empowered, Filipinos as active participants in some genuine democratic processes could explore alternative political styles of thought or arrangements outside the range of the elite consensus. Without rocking the boat, the possibilities could be infinite . . . (including a reexamination of) the supposed virtues of “market-democracy” with its promise of opportunity to save mankind or putting to the test People Power itself in some other contexts than as “parliamentary of the streets” . . . if only to find out on an on-going basis what works and what doesn’t.
On the other hand,
. . . public policies brought about by courtroom statecraft [and the Court does often legislate and set policies] have as much far-reaching consequences as those engendered by television or living room politics. Just as reciprocal checks and balances within government are required in a procedural democracy, so also are social checks and balances (upon governmental decisions) within the larger society in People Power democracy. Hence, a decision even by a court of last resort is final only when society acquiesces in it as a well-reasoned one. It goes without saying that when it comes to the exercise of People Power, the people has the last and final say.
. . . the exercise of People Power serves as some sort of pressure vents to release inbuilt people’s grievances trapped in a hothouse and that the Filipinos are just about to master the phenomenon of People Power to a point of making it predictable. This is how I’ve explained it in older posts:
1) Historically in the Philippines, the volcano theory has been delusional at best, sometimes cast unwittingly to justify the clamor for societal changes that directly affect the health, safety, property, liberty and general well-being of those ensnared in the hothouse. At a closer look, those political and societal anxieties thus trapped are no more of those who have something to lose than of the shirtless, toothless and shoeless. But as long as they don’t start preaching armed revolution, such a clamor could only be taken as earnest attempts to maintain order, not to sow anarchy, and therefore similarly tranquilizing. (That seems to demote People Power advocates here to pseudo-revolutionaries if judged against one of America’s founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, who believed “Every generation needs a new revolution.”)
2) On the other hand, James Madison believed that if unchecked, the majority, that is, the uneducated and the unpropertied Americans, would tyrannize the minority – the privileged, the wellborn and the wealthy, like him.
Madison and his colleagues feared People Power (of the American revolutionaries who had vanquished the British a decade before the Philadelphia convention), believing that human nature is essentially depraved by the thirst for power.
By instituting procedural democracy including the legal disenfranchisement of the propertyless Americans (not to mention the native Indians, the blacks, and the women), Madison preserved the power of the few in America.
The legacy of American constitutionalism to the Filipinos in 1935 was similarly contrived in the Madisonian fashion. In that vein, Philippine democracy was equally of spurious character – well, until the success of two People Power revolutions that have proved the Madisonian thoughts wrong.
In both historic events, the Filipino people have shown no ambition or greed, no thirst for power or wealth that Madison and his colleagues feared. Filipinos have just been too conscious of their civility they have balked to exercise the full force of their authority when apropos to do so.
Somehow, by some divine guidance they know, even in the most perilous of moments, the line that divides People Power and mobocracy. Filipinos are indeed too politically sophisticated they can discern quite easily in their unconscious if the exercise of the sovereign power is genuine or not. This is uniquely Filipino.
x x x
We should not call on People Power every time we have a problem with our elected leaders. We should only invoke the power when the problem with our elected leaders is so grave it strikes at the core of our democratic ideas, practices and institutions such as for example when our president cheats in an election or compromises our territorial integrity and the institutional process to hold him accountable is flouted by those charged to make it work for the common good.
At bottom is the proposition that the purpose of all political actions is either the preservation or change of the status quo. Conservatives who fear a change for the worse will opt to keep the status quo. Transformation agents desiring for the better will aim to break new paths. Indeed, neither has the monopoly of the good thoughts for the attainment of the good society.
__________
BENIGNO: Who cares if Gloria Arroyo is still the leader of the Filipino People after 2010?
ABE: I do because to excerpt from another piece I’ve also shared in FV -
__________
There are historical patterns that if we care to seriously reflect on would inform us of certain repeated forces known to have driven great events, among which is this: That history is often made by people and institutions in power and by how their power is employed by them to produce goods and services for society through the development and use of science and technology or otherwise dominate other peoples and grow more power.
Great historical events are also made when people and institutions in power, perceived to have failed society, have been overthrown, thereby allowing new institutions and ideas to be developed and instituted by the succeeding power.
Powers of ordinary men, like you and me, (not to speak of the shirtless, shoeless and toothless) are often circumscribed. For example, we in FV would like to believe that we have purposeful ideas and intentions for the Philippines, but we can only carry our purposes as far as our relative position in the hierarchy of powers can take us, unless of course we succeed in creating movements to match the strength of the powers that be.
So, in the Philippines, there are men and women, being in command of powerful institutions of modern society, whose decisions and non-decisions have immense consequences to our society. We do know that these special people own the financial establishments, control major corporations and organizations and for the most part “capture” the machinery of the state or, at the very least, have the ready ear of those who occupy positions of direct power.
There are thus dreadful consequences if our economic elites, the taipans or the old oligarchs for example, are risk averse, content as they seem with operating public utilities with captured markets, or mega malls and real estate ventures sustained by OWF remittances. Their lack of vigorous entrepreneurship translates into our economic engines not being propelled to create greater wealth and employment opportunities to provide decent incomes for a growing population of ordinary or less than ordinary people.
__________
BENIGNO: Give an example of what you would consider to be a “serious injury to the Republic”.
ABE: Please read my post below which provides a litany of the sins and omissions of President Arroyo as contained in the pending impeachment complaint (that’s about to be slain by her allies in Congress).
If we don’t stop Arroyo’s perilous tack now, her regime, just like Marcos’, will leave, to borrow your metaphor, an “unsightly scar” in our nationhood.
To summarize benign0′s point: the Philippines is doomed for failure.
To restore trust from our people and improve our investment climate, lets learn from Indonesia’s Heroes.
Indonesia’s anti-corruption heroes
Abe N. Margallo on December 2nd, 2008 10:23 am
your comment left me shaken… you really DO embrace Extra-Constitutional measures…
There are so many questions i want to ask, so much to discuss.
Let me begin with small bites: The Philippine Constitution
“In a *narrower* *legal* sense, People Power is *now* an insert into our constitutional order as a result of EDSA I. It finds support in a number of express provisions in the 1987 Constitution (see for example Article XIII, Sections 15 and 16 of the Constitution defining the role and rights of people’s organizations separately from the right peaceably to assemble or to petition the government for redress of grievances as well as in Article VI, Sections1 and 32 in relation to Article XVII, Section 2 reserving to the people the power of initiative and referendum.) ”
–> * are mine
In what sense is people power/ extra-constitutional a people’s organization?, which is defined as “… bona fide associations of citizens with demonstrated capacity to promote the public interest and with identifiable leadership, membership, and structure.”
In what sense is people power the “power of inititative and referendum”?
The constitution says:
Section 2. Amendments to this Constitution may likewise be directly proposed by the people through initiative upon a petition of at least twelve per centum of the total number of registered voters, of which every legislative district must be represented by at least three per centum of the registered voters therein. No amendment under this section shall be authorized within five years following the ratification of this Constitution nor oftener than once every five years thereafter.
During EDSA I, was there a petition being circulated?
In what sense is this a NARROW, LEGAL reading of the philippine constitution?
There are so many other interesting questions that your comment raised. i realize that the FV forum is not the best/most convenient place to conduct a long-haul discussion, but i’m crossing my fingers anyway.
i got a jolt reading this. bengn0’s words echo mussolini’s.
http://www.uniffors.com/?p=55
Manong Ben,
Not only are you a social darwinist, Facist ka na rin pala!
Barrado ka kay Kuya M. ano?
See you at Starbucks :)