Thoughts on the CBCP Statement

Last night Ces Drilon had me on her show to discuss the CBCP’s most recent pastoral statement. While Philippine Commentary takes a contemptuous view of the document (Banketa Republique is more positive), his entry has an illuminating extract from the writings of Pope Benedict XVI. The present pontiff presents a clear, and dare I say, exceedingly Teutonic, defense of the separation of Church and State.

My own views on the pastoral statement:

• The most news worthy thing about it is it categorically rejects coups as a means of resolving anything. Will this set back coup plotting efforts? I think so. Particularly Right-Left alliances for this purpose.
• The Palace has reason to be upset; as do groups opposed to the President. Truth Commission and Independent Prosecutor proposals could possibly gain new currency.
• The pastoral statement mends fences with disgruntled clergy, religious, and the laity.
• The call to reinvigorate the basic communities of the Church means two things: reminding the faithful they failed to listen to the bishop’s injunction to reflect on the issues; and it is a flexing of the Church’s own machinery in case of a showdown with the politicians on the issue of Charter change.
• They insist that the public remain bound by the parameters of the Constitution, at least for now. In so doing, they define the issues as determined by people’s attitudes to the Constitution.
• This has defined the next, major showdown: over the No Election proposal and Charter Change. With the President and the Speaker having jointly demolished Fidel V. Ramos, the direction the bishops are taking puts them headed in a direction where their positions will converge with Cory Aquino’s. While Aquino seemed diminished by the failure of her call for the President to resign, she has remained consistent; her strength is recovering while that of other leaders is waning.
• The inability of the politicians in the opposition to sacrifice will become even more of a liability to their efforts, as the bishops hammer away at the moral dimensions of Charter Change. The much-awaited tipping point? Cha-Cha? Possibly; certainly in a manner much more conducive to People Power.
• New basis for unity among skeptical or disgruntled groups mistrustful of politicians: the bishops’ endorsement of Comelec and electoral reform. Their opposition to a Constitutional Commission or a Constituent Assembly. Their openness to a Constitutional Convention. The politicians can be measured by their answer to a few direct questions: do you support an immediate and thorough Comelec revamp (regardless of what this means for your election prospects if the effort fails)? Will you refuse to serve in any government established as a result of the administration-led Charter Change initiative? Will you support or condemn a coup? I think these three questions will reveal which politicians can be trusted by the middle forces.

In its letter to the bishops, the Black & White Movement (of which I am a convenor) pointed to the story of Jesus asking Peter thrice if he loved him, and when Peter would say yes, Jesus would reply, “feed my sheep.” In a similar manner, the bishops have replied to that question twice. If Bishop Teodoro Bacani is any guide, we may all have to wait for a third message from the bishops. A matter of months may not be so long; it took sixteen years from the first letter of Filipino bishops asking Ferdinand Marcos to be honest, to their final decision to declare the people absolved of allegiance to his regime.

If this is so, then perhaps we are going through a protracted period of drift, precisely to encourage people to become more politically mature. Rep. Teddyboy Locsin was saying on TV that the opposition kept on trying to manufacture an “Edsa moment,” during the hearings and impeachment, instead of doing proper lawyering. I remember making the remark that this is what happens when former Marcos lackeys try to get involved in People Power: it only comes at the end of the road, after all reasonable, legal, options have been tried. You can’t rush it or simulate it in the manner the opposition thought.

Moving on:

Boying Pimentel releases part two and part three of his podcast on yours truly.

In the punditocracy, Juan Mercado has a brilliant column on the dangers of military messiahs.

And former UP President Jose Abueva takes exception to one of my columns.

Connie Veneracion renounces writing about politics -but really only wants to abandon writing about politicians. Bravo.

In the blogosphere:

kottke.org points to a famous bet, in which two journalists tackled the probability of blogs overtaking the New York Times as an authority on Google.

Pinoy Press seems to have the final say in the PCIJ and Bulletproof Vest copyright tussle (Torn & Frayed was un-amused by it all; Sassy Lawyer was un-amused at his being un-amused; Philippine Commentary commented, and his commenting was not found amusing, either by Sassy; check out perhaps the most star-studded thread in recent years).

Ah, comment threads: as seen in the example above, they can be such a problem! How much control is acceptable, or is commenting really necessary? Mediashift discusses the decision of the Washington Post to turn off commenting (except for the blogs it hosts); Online Journalism Review seems to think the issue concerns anonymous commenting specifically;  BuzzMachine discusses the entire question of interactivity in the blogosphere. I myself am a believer in spam filters, ruthless as they can be, as essential; I tend to be permissive about comments, and have deleted only one commenter who was issuing death threats (oddly enough, not against me).

My Liberal Times takes exception to a commentary by Amando Doronila. Speaking of Liberals, To See & Log points out Ronnel Lim (who has been disgracefully absent from the blogosphere) won an essay writing contest sponsored by them.

Another Hundred Years Hence has an interesting entry on heritage housing and rent control. Adel Gabot spots a Filipina newscaster who left for America, playing a bit role on an American TV series (as a newscaster!).

Slip of the pen on commas (would it be that I could wax eloquently on semicolons!).

Batang Baler does a masterful roundup of media reports of the floods there, with commentary (this blog is rapidly developing as a model of community-oriented blogging; more towns and provinces should have similar, non-government blogs).

Technology writer Chin Wong announces he has a blog, thanks to the inspiration of Sassy Lawyer. It’s at chinwong.com. Also, World Famous in the Philippines has spun off a new blog, Thud! Splat! Blog! And  fish in a bowl is back to blogging.

The Philippines Free Press blog republishes two articles on the 36th and 35th anniversaries of their publication, respectively: That Marcos Foundation (January 31, 1970) and Malacañang vs. Meralco (January 30, 1971).

In the for adults only department,  McVie (now on Season 4) on bath house dynamics.Philippines For Men thanks Basangpanaginip for putting him on his list of sexiest Filipino bloggers.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, CBCP, constitution, Gloriagate, Google, history, journalism, Marcos, media, military, Philippines, Philippines Free Press, politics

Teachers in Baguio

For the first time in my life, I made a Powerpoint presentation. Look, here it is:

Unleashing.ppt

Whee!

I have always hated Powerpoint. I tend to agree with the observation that Powerpoint is evil. Steve Simon lists the many critics of Powerpoint, and it does have its defenders, such as Don Norman. It seems everyone’s a critic. I’m a critic, too. I’ve had to endure far too many meetings during which ghastly, boring, Powerpoint presentations are trotted out, requiring you to stare at a screen on which is the complete text of whatever it is the speaker is droning on about: look, either simply hand out your speech, or eliminate the Powerpoint, or just flash through the Powerpoint and shut up! Not to mention people who freeze up if their Powerpoint fails to work as programmed.

But after viewing the presentations of Steve Jobs, and articles such as Presentation Zen’s Gates, Jobs, & The Zen Aesthetic, widely discussed and linked to, I changed my mind. It helped that Apple has had Keynote, its own presentation software, for a year now. I have a visceral reaction to most Microsoft programs (though I still haven’t weaned myself away from Word and Entourage): I found Powerpoint particularly unpleasant to use. Keynote is another story altogether.

With the help of this student’s guide for using Keynote, I managed to whip together the Keynote presentation I exported to Powerpoint (above).

This leads to my column for today, which is Learning and teaching through the internet.

And, as I told the teachers in Baguio and mentioned in my column, here’s a rundown of the websites and blogs I mentioned during my talk:

The definition of critical thinking that I used came from the Public Speaking Glossary. Also, check out Critical Thinking Community and Critical Thinking Web with online tutorials.

Then, there’s Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. I pointed to Wikipedia as the source of the definition of ICT I used.

Research examples: these were examples I used to illustrate the vast research potential of the Internet:

Bonifacio Papers

Philippine Photographs Digital Archive

The Philippine Revolution by Apolinario Mabini (the Leon Ma. Guerrero translation); there is also a Tagalog translation, Himagsikang Pilipino.

For the use of information technology for collaborative work, I pointed to Writely (which I discovered via The New Web).

Examples of sharing:

The Edsa Revolution Website

Rizal: His Masterpieces

Chris Sundita’s Salita Blog

For examples of adding to the knowledge base:

The Philippine Presidency Project

Examples of “unleashed thinkers”:

Filipino Librarian

Mga Turo ni Tito Rolly

Ang Tambayan ni Paeng

How ICT can make you a better teacher:

I gave them the example of Mila Aguilar and her blog for her Students of English. Her own thoughts and poetry, as well as the papers submitted by her students, are featured in the blog.

Incidentally, a good guide for public speaking is Guy Kawasaki’s How to get a standing ovation.

Plastination

There’s a famous painting titled The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolas Tulp, which first frightened, then fascinated me, as a boy.

Here’s the painting, from the link above:

Recently I got to watch two documentaries, featuring Gunther von Hagens (read his colorful official biography), who invented Plastination.

His plastination exhibits have been popular, but controversial. The TV documentaries he’s made have been controversial, as well, since they involve dissections of human corpses done before a live audience.

The shows, however, are timely. They indicate an almost insatiable curiosity about the human body, in a sense out of a morbid sense but also as a healthy antidote to interest in the Occult or religion. A best-seller recently has been “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers” (Mary Roach) which is an extremely enjoyable read. Another book I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading (if that’s the right word) is “How We Die : Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (Vintage)” (Sherwin B. Nuland). Our culture, which does not shrink from death, and which includes visits to the dead as part of the cycle of the living, owes much to the Catholic conception of the Memento Mori as it does Asian concepts of ancestor worship or respect to the departed.

The big questions, of course, revolve around life and death; between science and faith, technology and nature. The more we know about what we can really know -the biology, the science of it all- the more we can properly determine if the things we really can’t know, spirituality, philosophy, and so on, matter to us or not.

Interesting weekend readings:

Farewell to the pandaca pygmaea.

Are comments necessary? Time to get tough. And, the ethics of interactivity. Kottke.org gives the lowdown on comments.

Filipino journalists as mafiosi. The proportional response controversy.

Live from Iraq: home-made war movies.

Coming soon: webcams made obsolete.

Face of the opposition

My column for today is Face of the opposition, in which I suggest that the weakness of all those opposed to the President is best addressed by finding two leaders to rally around. In my view, those leaders are Senators Ramon Magsaysay, Jr. and Rodolfo Biazon.

Another opinion piece that makes for timely reading is Manuel Buencamino’s What time is it? His concerns echo mine:

Because the man on the street, unlike academics and ideologues in their ivory towers, does not live by manifestos and reform agenda alone. He needs to see a face. Experience has taught him that who is as important as what.

Second, although some of us enjoy large followings, none of us, so far, is acceptable to all of us, and worse, some of us will actively oppose some of us. This is not the time for personal agenda. This is the time to concentrate on restoring the rule of law. No one can run for president while Gloria Arroyo occupies Malacañang. First things first.

First things first is to find a face for the opposition.

Still, it’s useful to ponder the philosophical issues, such as when Patricio P. Diaz in Mindanao asks, Where lie the solutions?

Even as the fallout from the Council of State has been confusing: Jove Francisco reports on the conflicting statements from the President’s people, which has been echoed in reports that alternate between blind optimism, suggestions of disagreements, and even more involved speculation, the President’s visit to Camp Aguinaldo has helped fan the flames of speculation concerning the loyalty of the armed forces (scuttlebutt was, the head of the Presidential Guards quit; instead, reports are he’s asked to be reassigned, or that he has been axed).

Tony Abaya takes a hard, and skeptical look, at possible military motivations (even as Lito Banayo reminds readers the military is just like civilians in their concerns):

What do this repeated rumors of coups and their repeated postponement tell us? They tell us that a) the same group of people are behind these persistent efforts; b) the coups are continuously being postponed because the plotters cannot recruit a critical mass of military officers to carry it out; and c) there is no public outcry from among the middle class in support of such an enterprise.

Individually, the Magdalo officers may be motivated by the purest and the most patriotic of intentions to bring about substantive changes and reforms in the Philippine military and in Philippine society as a whole. But they need to think through the implications of what they are trying to achieve and the direct beneficiaries of their course of action.

Gail Ilagan also takes a skeptical look at the military.

Technorati Tags: constitution, military, Philippines, politics

The Long View: Face of the opposition

Face of the opposition
By Manuel L. Quezon III

IT HAS often been pointed out that while the administration has two clearly identifiable faces — the President and the Vice President — the opposition, up to now, doesn’t have one. While efforts have been made to bring the different opposition groups together and to project a more united and coordinated opposition front, much remains to be done. With no one clearly leading the fight, even opposition members themselves admit that their efforts aren’t as effective, because there’s “no clear alternative.”

 

I believe the alternatives are there. There are two individuals who can raise the banner of the opposition cause, in a manner that creates unity and establishes trust. If one assumes, as I do, that the end of the Fifth Republic is approaching, then the question is whether it will end in an orgy of violence, or in a Lakas-CMD Party-engineered and highly messy transitional system, or in some other transitional regime hopefully involving an election.

The administration has the President and Vice President representing the existing executive authority; and it has Speaker Jose de Venecia as the prime minister-in-waiting. For the same reason that the administration’s supporters generally don’t consider former President Ramos as the face of the future, the opposition as a whole cannot have former Presidents Corazon Aquino and Joseph Estrada as the faces of the future; just as Susan Roces isn’t that face either, even if various opposition camps look up to them as elder statesmen and for guidance.

If the administration relies on the Marcosian argument that “there’s no one else” — incidentally a profoundly undemocratic argument — then it behooves the opposition to put forward faces that they perceive to be capable of assuming the leadership of the country at a moment’s notice, right here, right now.

In selecting those faces, the opposition must bear in mind that its traditional leaders can help but cannot put themselves forward as the solution; they belong too much to the past and are divisive. Rather, they can help by showing their confidence in leaders who can be trusted to give every other leader, and their followers, a fair deal; leaders who will not favor one group over another, and who can be relied on to be the opposite of what the administration offers. Ms Aquino put it famously in a repartee when Ferdinand Marcos and his daughter made fun of her: At least, she said, she didn’t have the experience Marcos had in lying, stealing and cheating.

Who can Aquino and her followers rely on to uphold democracy? Who can Estrada rely on to give him a fair trial, deal with him sincerely and rectify any wrongs that have been dealt him? Who can Roces rely on to honor her husband and restore hope in the country? Who can the middle class trust as a person who understands their needs and who will address their fears? Who can the groups feeling the brunt of official persecution today trust as a person who will deal with them justly and humanely? Who is the leader who understands all the classes and sectors of our society, finding the commonalities that can bring them together? Most of all, who can we look up to, to lead us with a strong sense of duty, rather than with insane and ruthless ambition; to wield power responsibly instead of robbing the country blind or unleashing a new, senseless cycle of revenge?

I believe that man is Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr. I believe he enjoys the respect of those people looked up to by the various opposition groups. I am convinced that if what the country needs is a transitional leader capable of running the country during a transitional period (say, leading to, or resulting from, an extraordinary election), that man is him. He knows how government works but has avoided the abuses and temptations of power. He has shown himself capable of earning a national mandate. He has no burning desire to be president but, if called upon to restore the people’s faith in their country, will do so not only out of a sense of duty, but out of a desire to live up to the example given the country by his father. If the face of the administration is a presidential daughter, the face of the opposition might as well be a presidential son who represents everything the incumbent is not.

As a civilian with entrepreneurial achievements, Senator Magsaysay understands the needs of the country. He is also respected by the armed forces and can be relied upon to push for reforms in the military.

And then, considering that the three crucial tasks for any future government are: first, to put the economy — particularly the government’s finances — in order so that corruption is eliminated and public funds are spent for the public’s benefit; second, to clean up the electoral process so that the public’s verdict in every election is unquestionably clear; and third, to institute reforms in the armed forces to put an end to disaffection within its ranks — then the opposition’s compromise leader needs a “lieutenant” who will help carry out those objectives.

A danger facing a transitional leader is his becoming the target of adventurists who think that an extraordinary situation allows for even more adventurism than the public is willing to tolerate. One reason why the President feels more and more secure is that her constitutional successor doesn’t inspire confidence among her supporters; neither among her enemies. The Vice President, then, is really a negative asset, so to speak.

What the opposition needs is a leader with a deputy who is a positive asset. That person, I’d like to suggest, is Sen. Rodolfo Biazon. He is a man also armed with an existing national mandate. He has courage — and military experience, too.

Arab News Newspaper: Do Americans Realize the Growth of Anti-US Alliance?

Do Americans Realize the Growth of Anti-US Alliance? Manuel L. Quezon III

Â

It boggles the mind that Osama Bin Laden has had the time and resources to catch up on his reading. And yet this is precisely what his most recent, recorded, statement suggests. A Reuters report says that after Bin Laden endorsed “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” by Mark Blum to the American people (after warning them of Al-Qaeda attacks to come, Bin Laden said, “It is useful for you to read the book ‘The Rogue State’”), sales of the book took off like a rocket. The Reuters story says Blum’s book “was ranked 209,000 on Amazon.com’s sales list before Bin Laden mentioned it in an audiotape released on Thursday. By Friday, the book was No. 30 on the Amazon.com list.” The author himself told Reuters television, “I was quite surprised and even shocked and amused when I found out what he’d said,” but that still, “I was glad. I knew it would help the book’s sales and I was not bothered by who it was coming from.” Blum went on to state that “If he (Bin Laden) shares with me a deep dislike for the certain aspects of US foreign policy, then I’m not going to spurn any endorsement of the book by him. I think it’s good that he shares those views and I’m not turned off by that.” Perhaps more mind-boggling, however, is a new kind of convergence taking place, when it comes to the objectives of people like Bin Laden, and an energized, increasingly daring, left, not only in the United States (where Blum’s book is used as textbook in classes taught by “liberal” and “progressive” professors: As one such professor candidly stated in a mailing list, “the students, many of whom are already liberal and progressives, couldn’t believe that the US has become a rogue state. I guess, they wanted to remain naive about US foreign policy and so be able to maintain a vestige of trust in its so-called democracy. Blum’s book is meticulously documented”), but around the world. In Latin America, there is a socialist renaissance taking place, the victory of the new President of Chile being merely the latest example of this trend. The Defense Minister of Spain (also under a socialist government) went from a visit to the Philippines straight to a visit to Venezuela, where he signed a deal to sell armaments to President Hugo Chavez. The socialist renaissance is taking place because the American prescriptions for globalization and related policies that foster it, benefit a percentage of the populations of these countries, but exacts a toll in the uncompetitive majority. Combine these new lessons with the old lessons of the past — banana republics with dictators elevated and then deposed depending on American interests — and you have a continent eager to apply its Western education to finding a middle path between communism and American laissez-faire capitalism. In a sense, Latin America has embarked on a direction other countries are inevitably finding themselves headed, because of the American response to global terrorism. If American policy in the past was too pragmatic, it is now all too thoroughly ideological; in either case, American allies find themselves wrestling with the imperatives of US military and economic policy, which requires an almost suicidal devotion to Washington D.C. At least in terms of governments that are elected: Tony Blair has been embattled since he became America’s chief ally; governments such as Spain’s previous conservative administration have lost at the polls, and countries such as the People’s Republic of China and India are increasing their regional influence (both more influential now in South East Asia; China making inroads in South America), as America withdraws its resources from one area, to focus on Iraq and the Central Asian, oil-rich republics. The Philippine government itself, according to sources that claim to be in on the shadowy goings-on in the diplomatic and intelligence fields, was prevented from imposing emergency rule, or at least engaging in a crackdown against its opponents, by a combination of US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld telling Philippine Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz, Jr. that emergency rule would not be supported by the United States. American intelligence chief John Negroponte, too, made an apparently unscheduled stopover in Manila, to tell the Philippine government the same thing. The reason? The first American experiment in regime change and nation building, the Philippines, can’t abandon democracy just when the United States is engaged in building democracy in Iraq. Yet the Philippines faces two threats to its stability and security: A decades-long communist insurgency (one of only two in the world, the other being in Nepal), and rebellions being fought by various Muslim groups — among which the rebels influenced by Jamiyah Islamiyah are in the ascendant, in terms of their determination to keep fighting). In other words, a perfect combination of two anti-democratic and anti-Western trends: Though in the Philippine experience, the socialism being fought for in the jungles and in urban hideaways is obsolete and extremist, far different from European socialism and even more extreme if measured by the socialism espoused by Chavez and Fidel Castro; and a kind of extremism in keeping with the thinking of Bin Laden and his ilk. One has to wonder, now that Bin Laden has made it explicit, whether Americans are truly coming to terms with the unofficial but obvious alliance between socialists, Communists, and extremists, set on dismantling US influence around the world. And where this leaves nations still allied with the United States, or who do not welcome a future under socialism or extremism.

Council of Collusion

By now I’m sure you’ve heard of Kuwentong Kuwento, Benjamin Pimentel’s podcast on Filipinos at home and abroad. This week, he begins a podcast on yours truly.

The meeting of the Council of State was blogged about by journalists Jove Francisco (who thinks former President Ramos came out ahead) and RG Cruz (who carries useful snippets from the statements of some participants). The papers have different views on what the meeting actually accomplished:

Senators say Council of State meet disappointing (Malaya)

Ramos: no-poll ‘disaster waiting to happen’ (Manila Times)

Council rejects plan to defer ’07 election (Standard-Today)

Council scraps ‘No-Election’ proposal: Charter change advocacy commission formed (Inquirer)

ChaCha promotional arm gets P5m outlay (Standard-Today)

Dean Jorge Bocobo will be tickled by this news item: Davide rewarded with Palace post. Incidentally he, via Philippine Commentary, thinks the President’s game plan is clear: Cha-Cha is a circus but she doesn’t want anything changed.

Uniffors has the funniest reaction to the Council of State (but closest to the truth of what transpired).

An article in Slate that will appeal to Filipinos: “As I Was Saying to the President …” Washington and the art of the “glory wall.”

In the punditocracy, my Arab News column for this week is Do Americans Realize the Growth of Anti-US Alliance?

The Inquirer editorial suggests the President’s cabinet members are engaging in Suicidal provocation. On the subject of coups, Alvin Capino discusses the literature on the subject. Carmen Guerrero Nakpil has a gloriously venomous column on the silly season last week.

In the blogosphere, let me point out the rather intricate discussions going on in the comments sections of two posts in this blog, one on Congress and the other on the Tiananmen dilemma.

Big Mango dissects the proposed amendments to the Constitution. Red’s Herring tackles People Power and the distinctions that help define it.  The Professional Heckler asks what if the President were a pugilist?

Bulletproof Vest is upset with the PCIJ and The Sassy Lawyer (to put it mildly) shares in his outrage.

Technorati Tags: Blogging, constitution, journalism, Philippines, politics

The Tiananmen Dilemma

The other night I watched a documentary based on “The Tiananmen Papers : The Chinese Leadership’s Decision to Use Force Against Their Own People – In Their Own Words” (Perry Link, Orville Schell) which is a fascinating book. The documentary had a heart-stopping moment (for me, at least) when the footage being shown showed one of those walls on which the protesting students pasted their manifestos, slogans, and articles they found inspirational. One of the items was a xerox copy of a book about People Power, complete with the famous image of nuns kneeling in front of Philippine Army tanks. Definitive proof that People Power in 1986 was among the inspirations for the students protesting against the Chinese government (just as it was an inspiration for those protesting against the Warsaw Pact Soviet satellite governments). The Chinese government was faced with a dilemma: call in the troops? And do what, if the public is opposed to the troops? At which point might calling in the troops result in the troops shrinking back from orders to shoot civilians? And yet, if you aren’t prepared to shoot the civilians, then they win by default.

It’s therefore important to examine the question of what is decisive in a People Power event: is it the people, or the military? Or: what makes a coup different from People Power?

In 1986, Juan Ponce Enrile, Fidel V. Ramos, and Gregorio Honasan planned a coup. It was exposed, and was in the process if being crushed, when Enrile et al. holed up and pleaded for help. Prior to that, a gigantic crowd had already materialized in Rizal Park claiming victory for Cory Aquino, who called for civil disobedience to bring down the Marcos dictatorship. Marcos, in reaction to Cory’s call, was prepared for a long and bruising fight, but one which he was confident of winning. The opposition didn’t quite know how long it would take, but were also hopeful of eventual victory. The failed Enrile coup changed things.

Left to their own devices, Enrile and company would almost certainly have ended up arrested and liquidated as part of a larger crackdown that would engulf the political opposition. Cardinal Sin threw his support behind the rebels, calling for the people to save them. The people rallied to that call, in which others like Butz Aquino joined in. Cory Aquino kept her distance, among other things, to see how the situation would evolve, and to avoid being dragged into the preferred scenario of Enrile and friends, which was a junta in which Cory Aquino would have a token participation.

Marcos made a show of not wanting to hurt people, going as far as to publicly scold Gen. Fabian Ver, while continuously ordering, in private, the quick elimination of  Enrile and the suppression of the crowd. This put the armed forces in the uncomfortable situation of having to contemplate massacring civilians, which, if they were composed of Communists would have been OK with them, but since the crowd included the middle class, nuns, priests, and so forth, all of them unarmed and offering flowers and sandwiches to the soldiers, was something they weren’t used to. The public, too, reacted to the prospects of physical danger with genuine courage. Military resolve faltered and further lobbying led to defections. Thus was People Power born.

In January 2001, the armed forces had been lobbied by the opposition, and the armed forces itself, after the traumas of 1986 and the coups of 1987 and 1989, was not interested in the possibility of soldiers having to fire on fellow soldiers. Up to the second envelope incident, most people were expecting a slow boil and a long, drawn-out fight: either Estrada would be acquited, which might trigger something, or he might be convicted, which would settle matters, too. The Cardinal again called the people to rally, and people showed up: though this time the element of danger wasn’t present because Estrada was not the type to order a violent dispersal, and because the armed forces had resolved not to have to face a violent dispersal order, in the first place. Cory Aquino, the Cardinal, the Supreme Court, the military and the politicians also decided to head off the attempt by the Left to play a defining role in People Power by closing off what should have been the inevitable consequence of People Power: a revolution.

In May, 2001, Estrada loyalists and their allies capitalized on a public outpouring of sympathy for Estrada by calling for People Power, but it seems their objectives were muddled: was it to spring Estrada out of jail, or simply to whip up popular support for the elections? The military, for one, were not about to reverse themselves so soon after abandoning Estrada. But neither were they prepared for an uprising that went beyond the past, well-organized demonstrations. Either from ambivalence or a lack of familiarity with handling People Power, the Estrada group kept stoking the rage of the protesters while holding back from unleashing them; this gave the government enough time, for example, to convince the Iglesia ni Cristo (standing in for the Catholic Church in this particular model for People Power) to withdraw its support and cut off coverage. When, finally, either intentionally or accidentally, the crowd was unleashed, the military was unprepared for it. The protesters swamped the police and military defenses, and a certain amount of tactical thinking seems to have been applied, which is why Civil Society found itself besieged in Mendiola and the PSG found themselves defending from within the Palace itself, instead of the defensive perimeter that had been established as the base for operations since at least 1989. I am still convinced that greater command and control on the part of the leaders could have led to a situation resulting in the President having to flee, or the Palace actually being invaded; but in the crucial hours, enthusiastic but lacking leadership on the ground, the protesters were held back until reinforcements from the provinces finally arrived -then there was a manhunt in the environs of Santa Mesa and Sampaloc. What could have happened if the protesters were better led, and more of an effort made to try to convince the military to defect? Or was that prospect closed off the moment Edsa Tres turned violent?

Since May of 2001 of course, the government and the military have learned their lessons. New gates have been built, pushing out and strengthening the Palace’s security perimeter. As much as possible, no crowds have been allowed to form close enough to give the crowds a tactical advantage in storming the Palace. All routes to the Palace have been fortified: the manner in which the protesters in January 2001 rolled over the police massed in defense of Mendiola bridge was already the first lesson; the manner in which protesters mauled policemen on Nagtahan bridge and rolled over outposts on JP Laurel St. and Mendiola in May, 2001 was the final lesson. But this closes off the traditional, post-1986 People Power model. That is, things cannot start with a crowd.

But a crowd can still come into play, if you revert to a traditional coup model, or if you attempt to institutionalize (or is operationalize?) the 1986 model. You can decide things simply by force of arms, which means you only need a greater concentration of firepower than the defenders of the Palace can muster, and neutralize them further through a combination of air and possibly naval power. Then you present the politicians and the public with a fait accompli.  Or, you can decide to hole up somewhere, proclaim the rebellion, and encourage defections while hoping the public will respond to your call by surrounding you. This was, in fact, the Oakwood Mutiny model, but it foundered because of the scatterbrained approach of the rebels, and their apparently being deprived of civilian support by the rest of the military preventing civilian reinforcements from either gathering, or arriving.

But if rebels learned in 1986 that the civilians can save them; if they learned in 1987 and 1989 that the civilians are suspicious of them; if they learned in January 2001 that the civilians welcome them if they take a back seat to the civilians; and in May 2001 that the civilians are meaningless if they lack disciplined and committed leadership; and furthermore in 2003 that they cannot succeed if they are fragmented and because of that fragmentation, the civilians can be prevented from reaching them: then you have a new model, in which the military will only want to move, if it is fairly cohesive, that it cannot simply follow the civilians, but instead, must goad them into action, and you are in the midst of a modified 1986 scenario.

And here lies the important distinction: the military, by themselves, can never decide the issue, just as the civilians, when it comes to toppling a government, cannot do it by themselves. A fine balance is required: but it’s a balance even more difficult to achieve, because so many individuals, not to mention groups, have to be involved.

Technorati Tags: history, military, Philippines, politics

Forcing their hand

Two ideas from the past months have regained their former currency: the tactic of brinkmanship, and the idea of an autogolpe. After all, it’s been clear that a Constitutional crisis of sorts is virtually certain. The past months have led many, including myself, to argue that we need a resolution to the question of legitimacy, and that the Center must hold; while the National Democratic line is that there is no such thing as a Center. However, at the rate things are going, it’s unclear how anyone can expect the existing political order to survive the pressures it’s being subjected to.

Patricio Diaz clearly explains the difficulties involved in the political solution originally proposed by former President Ramos, but which has mutated into an altogether different plan under the combined efforts of the President and Speaker de Venecia (Solita Monsod, in her Business World column yesterday, pointed out the new parliament would have 486 members!). The other night, on Dong Puno live, I said that it seemed clear to me that the real objective for the President was to destroy the ruling party, Lakas-CMD, between now and June. With Lakas shipwrecked on the rock of Senate intransigence, or of popular opposition, or a lack of cooperation from the Supreme Court, the careers of politicians such as Speaker Jose de Venecia would be wrecked, offering up the possibility of what the President has been attempting all along: to establish her own, wholly-owned, political and ruling party, Kampi. A neutralized Lakas saves the President from the inevitable consequence for failing to successfully achieve charter change: a Lakas-led, or assisted, impeachment in July.

The inability of the political system to either heal itself or move forward out of the rut it’s in, has fostered the belief that the only way out may involve force of arms. If the population is indifferent; if those involved on either side cannot gain more allies; if the government remains in power because it has a war chest which enables it to ignore its own unpopularity; if even the earnest hopes of its allies for some kind of reform are ignored; and if the armed forces are constantly antagonized, and themselves do not experience better governance or leadership; then the inevitable consequence of this state of affairs is a rebellion. Therefore, many parties are pursuing brinkmanship; and as they do, the idea that either those inclined to rebellion will attempt it, or those who would be its target will head it off through some sort of self-coup, must capture the headlines once more. As it has.
The Estrada loyalists frankly look forward to armed intervention (though perhaps only to squeeze what they want from the government). The National Democrats are increasingly nervous, after having having attempted, and failed, to build a broader coalition with opposition faction, they are making overtures to disgruntled members of the military to enter into an alliance with them -yet the cautionary comments from their ranks suggests either they have been rebuffed or fully expect to be rejected or ignored: maybe, our soldiers remain firmly opposed to Communism, but are open to a milder form of Socialism (which would validate my suspicion that young radical officers may have more in common with the Left than the Middle).

The conventional wisdom thus seems to be, there are only two ways forward: charter change purely on the terms of the ruling party, or a coup, whether a self-coup, or a genuine plot by its enemies to overthrow the government.

What do we know? The government is concerned (as are its congressional allies). The military’s top brass is concerned. Those claiming to be rebels are getting more aggressive. The government’s gone as far as to raise the ante by saying it has bared a plot. The President, who toured Laguna today, said a genuine threat exists. This has been echoed by those old reliables, Gonzales and Gonzalez.

The weather is conducive to military or other action. The two parties with the finances to provide the logistics for some sort of coup, are the Estrada loyalists and the government.

A people, in the face of a coup attempt,  have three main choices:

1. to actively rise up against a government
2. to rise up in defense of the government
3. stay home while either
a) expressing support for the government
b) or condemning the rebellion, or
c) expressing a preference for no particular side in the struggle.

Of course a whole people never really decide on something to do; a group within society simply manages to present itself as representative of the whole. In any case, the question is which side will have the minority with the tenacity to pursue and achieve success, and the skills to portray its side as representing the true will of the people.

If a government attempts a self-coup, only the refusal of the armed forces to obey orders, or the citizenry pouring out into the streets can potentially stop it; public hostility by itself cannot stop it. If the military mounts a coup, only public support for the government can provide the morale necessary for government to mount a stout defense, and for the world to be inspired to maintain support for the government; if the public displays hostility towards the government, it strengthens the resolve of the coup plotters, and increases the chances political and military factions will throw their support behind the coup. In the case of a self coup, public indifference helps the government; in the case of a coup, public indifference helps whichever side is better able to achieve a purely military advantage early on; if things become protracted, public indifference harms the government and helps those mounting the coup: whether rising up for or against a government, if the population becomes actively involved militarily, you have a civil war.

It seems to me, government’s actions at this point, indicate they want to force the hands of their opponents, to provoke their opponents with armed might to reveal themselves before they’ve even properly united, much less decided on what really to do. As with charter change, so with the possibility of coups. A bungled coup attempt now, helps the government. Any coup attempt now, while government is still marginally stronger and more cohesive, is better than later on down the line.

This being the 5th anniversary of Edsa Dos, it is a time for reflection. Philippine Commentary takes a skeptical, if not hostile view, towards the whole thing.

My views on People Power have changed somewhat of late. Certainly it’s different from the attitudes I expressed in Between the Barricades or So Sorry, Uncle Sam (perhaps Spaeth was right, after all), not least because of what I saw and experienced during the May Day Rebellion.

In 1972, Ferdinand Marcos accomplished a self-coup, and had the support of a substantial portion of the people. In 1986, the attempted coup failed, but enough actively went to the streets to deprive Marcos of any claims to legitimacy. In 1987 and 1989, the people stayed home but made their displeasure with the putschists clear -enabling government morale to recover, and time for the Americans to assist the government. In 2001, an engineered effort to topple Estrada was helped along by the crassness of Estrada’s allies: there was, indeed, People Power, but it was flawed because, in retrospect, the dangers may not have been so real, and what should have been the inevitable result of People Power -a peaceful revolution- did not take place. The result was that odd animal in political science, a revolutionary effort within the boundaries of the constitutional status quo. Hence the profoundly unsatisfying manner in which the Supreme Court validated the whole thing. It didn’t help that, on the verge of throwing in the towel, Estrada was convinced by advisers such as Edgardo Angara to beat a strategic retreat, and abandon office without actually resigning. Still, it might have been irrelevant if Civil Society hadn’t insisted, in the absence of a thorough, iron-clad victory, to force the issue by insisting on Estrada’s arrest. As the saying goes, at that point, it was “bastusan na.”

What we seem to have forgotten is that Edsa in 1986 was a historical accident; this meant that we have, ever since, been liable to a dangerous nostalgia. Many participated in Edsa Dos precisely out of a nostalgic desire either to relive 1986, or to make up for being absent or too young to be at Edsa the first time around. In both instances, the enemy was a president who represented character traits offensive to the middle and upper class, as well as the masses who aspire to achieve middle-class respectability. Edsa Tres demonstrated what happens when the masses (and the middle class skeptical of middle class values more in keeping with the wealthy), decide on mass action without limiting that action within the parameters established by the middle classes’ participation in the anti-Marcos struggle. And, incidentally, which involves too many of those targeted by the first Edsas (the National Democrats and the Marcos loyalists). People Power can’t be led from the rear all the time; and when the period of active confrontation is reached, the only thing that separates People Power from an angry mob is the presence of leaders in the front lines, and some sort of spiritual influence to remind the public that violence is not an option. Edsa Tres had no leaders on the front lines, and no clergy to counsel peaceful protest. It became an attack on the Bastille that failed.

Since the middle class has been decimated; since the old leaders of People Power have dwindled; since the masses have gotten a beating with the failure of Edsa Tres, but are more convinced than ever that they have little in common, and even less to respect, in those they once viewed as people to emulate; and since, inevitably, twenty years is about the useful life of one ideal, before a society retreats and must learn the lessons that gave birth to those ideals all over again; I have to wonder if objectively, the country faces having to undergo the pains of enduring what it endured from Plaza Miranda in 1971 to Ninoy Aquino’s assassination in 1983: the crumbling of institutions, their being replaced by a shortsighted, selfish tyranny, and then the redemption of society by its people.

January 2001 tried to copy and compress the accident that was February, 1986; worse was July 2005. We are back to square one, which means People Power is still an option, but one that needs to be reborn, and not simply dusted off. But that being the case, our fate will be decided in only one of two ways: a coup, or charter change. In both cases, most civilians will be on the sidelines as things play out.

Technorati Tags: history, journalism, media, military, Philippines, politics

Taking the measure of Congress

I am rushing to meet a deadline, and so will not comment on today’s events until tomorrow. However, I am posting this article, which I co-wrote with Teddyboy Locsin some years ago, because it focuses attention on Congress: of which, the Senate is now enjoying center stage, even as the House plots to abolish it.

The Philippine Congress
By Manuel L. Quezon III and Teodoro Locsin Jr.

THE story of the Filipino nation and people is inextricably intertwined with their love-hate relationship with their legislatures. Under Spain, moderate Filipino reformists pined for representation in the Spanish Cortes. When they threw off Spanish rule, they nonetheless modeled their bourgeois congress in Malolos after it.

Under America, we aspired, first, for representation in a lower house and then flexed our political muscles by adopting a bicameral legislature to counteract the American executive. These legislatures, we loved. Tyrant rulers from the Japanese to Ferdinand Marcos, who was also corrupt, and corrupt but genuinely democratic rulers have used rubberstamp national assemblies to decorate their regimes and advance their personal or partisan interests; these legislatures we hated. And that about accounts for all the legislatures we have had.

We have measured our democratic maturity by the transformation of a unicameral assembly under the Commonwealth into the bicameral Congress of our unfortunate Republic: legislatures we loved to deride yet sought to restore when they vanished because the redeeming few unquestionably patriotic leaders we have had came from there. Benigno Aquino, Jr. and Jose Diokno, to name just the most recent.

Conquerors and constitutions have come and gone, and yet the ultimate aspiration of the Filipino people remains the same: to express their nationhood by means of a legislature, which betrays instinctively correct sense of checks and balance and John Locke’s assertion that the first principle of political organization is that no man may be judge in his cause. Put simply no one can be trusted to be judge and jury or president and congress all in one.

The catalog of legislatures, for those who didn’t pay attention to their teachers in school, may be given short shrift.

Token representation in foreign legislatures, twice: in the Spanish Cortes (when liberal and anticlerical forces held brief sway in Spain) and in the United States Congress (where we could send resident commissioners to the lower house to talk but not vote from 1907 to 1946).

Appointive legislatures thrice: the Malolos Congress; the Philippine Commission from 1901 to 1916 (with an elective lower house, called the Assembly, from 1907-1916); during the Japanese occupation from 1943-44.

We have experienced unicameralism twice, under the Commonwealth from 1935 to 1941 and during martial law with the farcical Batasan Pambansa from 1978-86, where our politicians got the first and addictive taste of parliamentarism nonetheless; certainly its most flavorful feature which is the combination of the appropriation and the spending power. In other words, they could write their own shopping list and spend our money as they pleased though their pleasure was somewhat restrained by an overbearing president-for-life who used the prime minister out of parliament as his footstool.

And we have had bicameral legislatures thrice: from 1916-1935; from 1946 to 1972; and from 1987 to the present—where the lower house is aptly that and almost consistently ignored and derided, and the upper house is aptly uppity, self-serving, gratuitously obstructionist, and thickly larded.

The typical pork barrel in the House is some P65 million pesos yearly in projects, not all of which are funded and therefore never materialize. In the Senate it is P200 million, pretty well good as cash because the Budget department dares not cross them. It is easier to get a majority out of 24 senators to frustrate the president’s agenda than to achieve it among of 220 members of the House desperate for any crumbs that will ensure their election or that of their spouses or children. The senators are also entitled each to an indeterminate amount for nearly unlimited staff, so that each senator can recreate or pretend to recreate in his office the tenured staff support that exists for and must be shared by the entire House of Representatives—in short, a cash cow and mangy dog. As we all know, neither surfeit or hunger are conducive to clear thought and rational act.

The common thread that binds these legislatures together, and ties them closely to our history, is the Filipino propensity to treat the executive power as suspiciously alien and prone to do harm, while holding our representatives in contempt as ever inclined to debasement while holding them up to the highest duty of checking executive abuse, which they cannot do without enjoying a measure of public support. Which, it must be said, they frequently do not deserve.

Thus Malolos congress was about the desire to trim down the powers of the dictator-president Aguinaldo; the Philippine Commission was rocked by the efforts of Trinidad H. Pardo de Tavera to play a role as “people’s advocate,” a role that would be played in later years by Osmena, then Quezon, Rodriguez as leaders and by Sumulong, Recto, and Aquino, Sr., as dissenters.

In her essay “origins of National Politics,” historian Ruby Paredes has this to say of Pardo de Tavera: “In Manila’s colonial politics, [he] was better suited than any other Filipino for the role of people’s advocate.” In response to the backpedaling of Taft’s successor, Governor-General Luke Wright, who tried to slow down the progress of Filipino participation in colonial affairs, and who consulted the Federalistas in government less and less, Paredes writes that De Tavera was “thrust into the center of the controversy, a position which, by virtue of personality and temperament, he held well. As the highest-ranking Filipino official, Pardo de Tavera’s statements were newsworthy and he used the media exposure to good effect. Described in later years as a man who was ‘not afraid to be quoted,’ Pardo de Tavera indeed shirked none of the challenges of the Wright administration…”

In Pardo de Tavera’s own words, “I have not accepted American sovereignty for the pleasure of being under the dominion of a foreign nation, but because I thought that such a dominion was necessary to educate us in self-government.” De Tavera’s would be replaced by Sergio Osmena who would then be replaced by Manuel L. Quezon.

In his day, Quezon was said to have been popular with the young. His political style was innovative. He was considered modern. The Free Press of the era described how Osmena, in his office in the Ayuntamiento, entertained members of the press by offering them light wines and biscuits, in the best tradition of Spanish hospitality and taste. Quezon, in his office in the Intendencia, served sandwiches and beer to the members of the press. In many ways Quezon’s political style—garrulous, intimate, relaxed—was in itself an innovation.

By contrast, Osmena was criticized for being aloof, detached, formal, which in itself was not bad, following, after all, the rules of decorum of the 19th century. The only problem was that this was already the 20th century. And while Osmena harked back to the best things of the century that saw his birth, his exact contemporary Quezon knew that the times were changing, and that with the introduction of the New American Order—and its rambunctious governance—a change in leadership style was advantageous and inevitable. That is why he went to the best school for learning politics, American-style: The Congress of the United States.

Since Quezon’s generation had to secure their goal of national independence in a game whose rules were drawn up and whose play was refereed by Americans, the logical thing was for Filipinos to learn how to play American-style, and play it well.  By the time he returned to the Philippines, in 1916, he had mastered American bluster and wheeling-and-dealing. He immediately set out to practice what he learned. In the process, he recast the political landscape. A piece of trivia, to illustrate the point: It was not until 1922 that English began to be used in the Philippine Legislature—the year that Quezon emerged as the No. 1 political leader. He had learned his lessons in the US Congress well.

This was real politics. Not the languid acts of a “directing class,” a group of gentlemen leading the nation according to an aristocratic ethos. This was sweaty, rough, ruthless politics. The politics of the poker table, of rooms thick with cigar smoke. Of ward leaders and party machines. This was politics as modern as the inventions revolutionizing the age: wireless radio, airplanes. This was politics geared towards winning and winning, again and again, through the systematic demolition of one’s opponents and the depletion of their resources because every victory made the next one so much easier. Machine politics, Tammany Hall politics, this was the politics that gave Quezon a nickname among American friends. Tammany Hall sachems nicknamed him “Casey.” The politics of the speakeasy and the Jazz Age. The youth loved him.

But after the war, it was passé. In the United States alone, politics changed with the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt: the era of big local kingpins gave way to the power of the party with its national (no longer merely a group of local alliances) constituency and leadership.  In the Philippines, the opposition called Young Philippines begun questioning Quezon’s Big Chief style even before the war. The Japanese Occupation, and the rise of alternative movements, such as the Huks, graphically revealed the limitations and abuses of the pre-war “tayo-tayo” system. Too many people insisted on being among the “tayo” of “tayo-tayo,” as to produce too many chiefs and too few Indians.

The prophets of the new politics, the politics of direct appeal to the public—and not just the voters anyone and anything, even those too young to vote in the hope they might persuade their elders. It was revolutionary in the French sense as calling for mass mobilization, indiscriminate recruitment and collective self-perpetuating ignorance.

This style would be exemplified by Ninoy Aquino first, because even the popular Ramon Magsaysay exhibited a certain restraint and decorum. The office then still made the man, while Marcos was already the maker of his own morals and by Ninoy Aquino’s it was clear that the man would be making the office whatever it became, even from opposition for Ninoy’s savage and unanswerable attacks on the ambitious Marcos largely inspired the latter to become more conspiratorial and illegal in his reaction. A style of presidential governance that would be carried over to all his successors. 

Our legislatures have always been about two things: leadership and dissent: the former surreptitious, clandestine, working always behind the scenes because often for no good; the latter always out in the open, exuberant, eloquent, exaggerated, destructive.

Referring to the opposition in Congress during his time, Claro M. Recto observed that “After its catastrophic defeat in two consecutive elections it disintegrated completely and the members of that opposition are now suffering from acute leukemia, the red corpuscles in their blood being eaten up by leucocytes and have placed themselves under the wing or rather under the shadow of Malacanang for crumbs of patronage and for protection against persecution by their [party] opponents in their respective districts.”

What Recto must have meant was anemia because leukemia is fatal and mercifully puts an early end to its victim but an anemic goes on and on, helpless and useless. And it is anemia that has characterized Philippine legislatures which have been worthless to their friends, harmless to their enemies and faithless to the public it is sworn to serve. On the other hand, a comparative Viagra has best characterized the executive, including such pallid administrations as that of Roxas. This serves to remind us that we must be thankful to the line of great dissenters who managed to single-handedly invigorate our politics. This line of dissenters—Juan Sumulong, Wenceslao Q. Vinzons, Claro M. Recto, Lorenzo Tanada, Jose W. Diokno, Jovito Salonga, Ninoy Aquino—links our political past with the present. Each of these men served the cause of democracy well, which is basically getting the other side heard if not heeded.

Few today remember Don Juan Sumulong, except perhaps a few political genealogists who have noted that he is the maternal grandfather of Cory Aquino, thanks to whom a gaggle of his relatives with not a particle of resemblance to the original managed to get elected after Edsa. While the sudden crush of relations essentially harmless to our political life is yet another proof of how dynastic politics need not worry us because it is a problem with its own solution over time, what is important to remember is the original Juan Sumulong’s record as an oppositionist. It was breathtaking.

He was, together with Recto, one of the pillars of the Democrata party, the perennial opposition party during the 1920s. Under his leadership the Democratas twice nearly toppled the Nacionalista party from its perennial preeminence through shrewd alliances with one or the other of the factions that regularly split the NP. When finally the Nacionalistas managed to swallow the Democrata party, Sumulong chose to stand alone, bitterly criticizing the reunification of the Nacionalistas after the acceptance of the Tydings-MacDuffie Act. The Democratats having vanished, Sumulong warned that the creation of a monolithic, unchallenged administration party could only lead to dictatorship. He was wrong by only forty years.

During the Commonwealth, when even the great Recto was happy to be in the ranks of the dominant Nacionalistas, Wenceslao Q. Vinzons and a small group of young leaders—not all of whom stuck to their youthful idealism—spoke up in spirited opposition; later on he would give his life for his country during the war.

In the first two decades of independence, Recto once more played the role he relished and in which he was happiest: the great dissenter. He roused the dormant nationalism of a people grown pudgy with Coca-Cola culture, left an incalculable legacy of intellectual probity and strength. A legacy continued by Lorenzo Tanada, who, though he never pandered to the popular taste, was repeatedly returned by his people to the Senate until, on the eve of martial law, he chose to retire, only to work even more tirelessly against the dictatorship. A younger voice joined Tanada’s in the senate: Jose W. Diokno. He too scorned to flatter oligarchs for their support or pander to the popular taste in politics, and stood defiant to the end against a rising dictatorship. After the democratic restoration, Jovito Salonga stood up for principle, finally achieved, before the astonished eyes of the old man Tanada, who had been brought in a wheelchair into the Senate to witness the event, the removal of the US bases.

The fact that dissenters, espousing difficult causes, have succesfully courted the mandate of the people speaks well of us. For while quality is hard to find, and perforce we must frequently settle for harmless mediocrity as the lesser evil, we as a people have shown that we recognize  and reward quality when we see it.

Another crucial thing to understand about Congress is that it violates the physical law that nature abhors a vacuum. Indeed, US legislatures waxed powerful with wan presidents but in the Philippine Congress a political vacuum in the executive merely triggers an adjournment as congressmen make a beeline for the exit.

The 1935 Constitution envisioned a strong presidency in keeping with the personality of Quezon, so the presumed capacity of the legislature to check that power was inherent in the framework established. But capacity is one thing and inclination quite another.

To be sure, the legislature would increase its influence over national affairs vis-a-vis the executive in succeeding administrations but never enough to overshadow the powerful office which, ultimately, always called the shots. This was true even with regard to the power of the purse, which is the sole and defining prerogative of Congress, the lower house in particular.

Under Quezon, the president had virtual carte blanche to move funds around in the teeth of declared items of appropriation; starting with Quirino, who had Quezon’s authoritarian streak but none of his political agility, the Congress began reasserting its traditional prerogative to fix budgets and set expenditures.  It even passed a law putting a cap on the national borrowings so that, when the comparable societies of Latin America would plunge periodically into bankruptcy the Philippine economy moved steadily—never spectacularly but always steadily.

When Marcos became president but before he made himself dictator, he perfected the juggling of congressional appropriations and the use of pork barrel funds as a means for congressional control. In short, it was a kind of judo where he used the very power of his office’s traditional opponent, against itself. In short, he was buying the politicians with their own money, if Congress may be said to own the taxes that people pay—which is pretty much how they treat them.

It got even easier when Marcos declared martial law and constituted himself as a government of one, combining the executive and legislative powers in his person, while adopting the Supreme Court as his new rubberstamp. He abolished all limits on appropriations and spending, basically giving himself the authority to spend on whatever he pleased and as much as he wanted—an authority he exercised to the hilt.

The bisection of the Congress into an upper and lower house only slowed but did little else to stop the growth of executive power to authoritarian dimensions. And the impetus was not a sense of senatorial duty to maintain the principle of checks and balance but personal ambition, with the Senate convinced that it was the School of Presidents where at least one graduate would be president in time.

The most logical thing of course was for the senators to conspire to enhance the office that one of them would inevitably achieve. But most senators were convinced that, while one of them would certainly be president, the rest of them perforce would not and therefore took care to keep that office within some sort of limit. And that was the only friction that the growth of presidential power experienced.

Some say that it was the country’s bad luck to have a straw man, Gil Puyat, at the helm of the Senate when martial law was declared. This is unfair to a decent individual because it was not the weakness of its titular head that paralyzed the Senate but the brazenness of the assault on democracy that froze the senators in their shoes and left them flaccid thereafter.

Although frequently outmaneuvered by the executive, an appropriate deference was always paid to the Senate. But never had the senatorial class been humiliated as it was with Marcos when he sent soldiers to simply nail its doors shut and then proceeded to arrest—not all the senators for he knew their quality or lack of it—but only two: Jose Diokno and Ninoy Aquino. It was a master psychological stroke, striking individual terror and collective insult to the rest of the chamber. The House of Representatives was simply not hear from again, though the Speaker of the House, Jose Laurel, went home to pack his bags in readiness to be taken away to detention. No one came for him. Another masterstroke.

Marcos then proceeded to threaten though mostly to cajole and corrupt the members of a sitting constitutional convention into drafting a new constitution that he had  already written down and which imparted to him absolute power while granting to the legislature the handsomest perks for offices stripped of any real role in political life.

He promised that those who voted for the Palace-dictated constitution would be automatic members of the legislature it created in caricature. Yet, when the vast majority did just that, he abolished it with the most expressive show of contempt and called for elections to a new but still rubberstamp parliament.

Essentially Marcos wiped the floor with Congress, using it as a dishrag while he took upon himself the serious work of lawmaking, particularly for his, his wife’s and their cronies’ benefit. To this day, the republic’s finances continue to be compromised by the obligation to repay what they stole and wasted. 

That left only the Supreme Court as the lone self-respecting institution separate from an executive with no sense of limits or of shame.

Although described by one US authority as “the least dangerous branch,” because it cannot act on its own initiative nor does it the physical power to effect change, the highest court can stop the other two branches dead in their legitimate tracks if it chose. They could ignore the Court, of course, but they would proceed thenceforth with little or no legitimacy—and legitimacy is what government is all about.

In the world’s most populous democracy, a chief executive had declared emergency government and given herself extraordinary powers—in effect, martial law—but the Indian Supreme Court ruled, in a decision dripping with legal erudition, that it was unconstitutional. Indira Gandhi backed off and restored democracy.

The Philippine Supreme Court did the opposite. It could have, at the very least, refused to rule on the issue of martial law, on the basis of the specious adage that when the guns speak, the laws fall silent—which was true but did not absolve the Court from doing its duty to issue a ruling. Instead, it went a step further and validated martial law. And it would do so repeatedly so that, as one jurist put it, martial law was erected stone by stone by the decisions of a craven Supreme Court. Marcos declared martial law but it was the Court that said it was right.

There had been signs that the Court would rule in that fashion, not least its complete lack of fortitude in upholding the president’s suspension of the writ of habeas corpus after the Plaza Miranda bombing of which he was, at the time, believed to be the author. Like the proverbial first kiss on a first date, which has been compared to the first olive out of a tight bottle, once gotten, the rest follow first with increasing ease and then with total abandon.

Congress never recovered from the humiliation of its complete dissolution. To be sure, it redeemed itself, at least in appearance, in 1987 and again in 1989, when it convened to condemn a military coup still in progress. The 1989 coup attempt showed every sign of succeeding until the last minute. But no one doubts that, if a coup had succeeded, the Congress would have continued in session and legitimized the junta.

The year 2000 seems like a better one for the proposition of a revitalized Congress in the restored democracy. But the impeachment of a crook hailed before Congress with his hand still inside the cookie jar actually failed, although narrowly. It deserved no cigar and got none. The President fled the Palace but no thanks to Congress but rather to a big, noisy but not altogether representative popular uprising best remembered for its loud rock music. The fall of the President may have been caused less by real political pressure than a hearing not to mention a comprehension problem on his part that might have mistaken shrill song for screaming outrage.

This is not to say that Congress does only the bidding of whoever is president. That would miss important nuances in legislative acts. Congress can act on its own and display an admirable originality, a startling craftsmanship and an unexpected wisdom—all from 220 members who are brimming with ideas and insights that are bottled up by a firm tradition of legislative subservience. So that when the president shows either a complete indifference or only selective interest in a certain topic of legislation—in the latter case concerned only that there be legislation on a subject without any particularly strong idea what kind—Congress fulfills its hallowed purpose well: the making of laws which, by definition, should be in the public interest.

Congress also contains marked talent and wide erudition, which, on the individual basis, far outshine any to be found in the executive department. The present Congress has a superb draftsman in Antonio Roman, whose astringent legal writing style may be best described as succinct, penetrating and yet illuminating.

Among the solons who have contributed greatly to the qualities of coherence, clarity and constitutionality to legislation in the present Congress are, on the opposition side, the ciceronian epicure Ronaldo Zamora, the passionate Carlos Padilla, the nagging Muslim “Digs” Dilangalen (who grabbed the limelight in a singular and still ongoing defense of the deposed president’s innocence) and the penetrating, persistent, indefatigable and always prepared to an exasperating degree, Celso Lobregat.

The oldest congressman, Herminio Teves, speaks consistently with perspicacity, injecting any issue with that dose of common sense that seems always to elude the general public on any issue. But, once challenged by the executive, the Congress folds in obedience. This has been increasingly the case with every administration, regardless of the personality of the president.

The story of Congress, then, is about our legislatures being the personification of the Filipino mistrust of the executive power and the desire to curb its power, combined with our unsurprised discovery that each new congress never fits the bill. Yet we continue to want it, as a symbolic foil to the country’s real ruler in every aspect of the national life. The reason is that, if we cannot trust the Congress to come up with good laws or even check the executive, we trust the executive even less to make the laws himself—as Marcos did when he combined both powers in his person and robbed the country blind.

That Cory Aquino continued this arrangement through her first year and a half in power—ruling as a benevolent dictator with astonishing self-restraint and evident success, producing a remarkably fine yet comprehensive body of important legislation—elicited no public regret but rather a collective sigh of relief when she surrendered the power entirely back to a newly elected congress.

Indeed congress, like the famous definition of democracy as the worst form of government except for all the others, may be described in the public perception as democracy’s worst institution except for the other two.#

Technorati Tags: history, Philippines

Next Page »