Theres The Rub
Time to party
By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:35:00 09/02/2008
Congress is all set to pass an interesting bill. That bill, authored by Joe de V, proposes to strengthen political parties by penalizing turncoatism and allowing accredited parties to obtain government subsidies. Joe de V justifies the subsidies thus: “The purpose of that is to prevent corruption or to reduce political corruption and money politics.” The logic being that parties may then maintain their independence instead of being beholden to campaign donors.
Well, the idea of strengthening parties isn’t bad at all. In fact, it’s an exceptionally good one. It’s the key to easing our political woes. I’ve been saying that for some time now. The problem is not our political system, which can be solved by going parliamentary. The problem is not our Constitution, which can be solved by Charter change. The problem is our party system. We haven’t got any.
That can be solved by having one.
We do not have any political party in a sense other countries, particularly the developed ones, will understand. In other countries, parties are organizations that espouse particular causes or platforms. The people who join them commit to them heart and soul. Here parties are loose and completely temporary alliances that offer personal gain. The people who join them keep to them only so long as the parties remain good on their offer. In other countries, the party is bigger than its members. Here, the party is smaller than its leaders.
I remember again a couple of conversations that show the depth of meaning parties hold for other peoples. One was with a German official whom I asked: “What if Joschka Fischer joined the Social Democratic Party?” At the time I asked this, Fischer was deemed the most popular political figure in Germany, but one who would never become prime minister because his party, the Green Party, was just a small one. The official I asked found my question thoroughly mind-boggling. He answered after a while: “Because if he did, he would no longer be popular.”
The other conversation was with a Japanese political officer whom I asked if there had ever been a case of any politician switching parties in Japan. He too found my question incomprehensible. He replied after a while: “But if he did that, he would have ended his political career. He would be rejected by the voters. He would be rejected by his community.” It was a fairly polite way of saying, “He would be committing hara-kiri.”
In that sense, the only real parties in this country are the Communist Party of the Philippines and Kapatiran. Both insist that the people who join them be bound by the principles they stand for, noncompliance being punishable by death in the first and by pangs of conscience in the second.
Otherwise, our politicians drop parties with the ease of dropping their pants. Neither their parties nor the voters greatly mind it, both expecting them to go for the highest bidder. One is tempted to say that the reason for it is that politicians are loyal to their benefactors rather than to their parties, but even that isn’t true. Here, politicians are loyal to no one but themselves and to nothing but their interest. Look at the ease with which Miriam Santiago and Juan Ponce Enrile went from professing undying loyalty to Joseph Estrada to undying loyalty to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
The problem is the political party, not the form of government. I’ve always argued that given the absence of any real party system in this country, a parliamentary form of government would be worse than the presidential one. Look at the way the “trapos” [traditional politicos] in Congress ganged up on the impeachment bids against Arroyo, led by De Venecia himself, and the way they’re ganging up to ram through Charter change. With elected officials changing parties faster than they change mistresses, they can always prop up a horrendously unpopular government (they’ve done so with Arroyo) or bring down a reformist one that’s scuttling vested interest. Without a real party system, we’ll have a Mafia for parliament.
The key is changing the party system, not the form of government or Charter. But how to?
That’s the part where De Venecia’s bill sucks. The direction is right, the vehicle is wrong. At the very least, what’s wrong with it is that De Venecia is advocating it. Joe de V has one thing in common with Gloria, which is that in his hands the most salutary thing becomes the most dangerous thing. Joe de V’s pivotal role in keeping Arroyo untouchable during his watch as House speaker suggests the kind of motivations that occupy his brain.
Quite apart from that, as Teddy Casiño points out, the proposal doesn’t curb corruption, it adds to it. It compels the taxpayer to shoulder the expenses of parties the corrupt themselves will decree as accredited. And it won’t stop those parties from soliciting from the Chinese-Filipino tycoon Lucio Tan and the Chinese-Filipino community anyway.
I’m all for banning turncoatism: It’s disgusting to see candidates flitting from one party to another. That is the main characteristic, by the way, of most of the major political players today, they’ve run the gamut of political parties. But banning turncoatism alone won’t do the trick. Some have proposed going back to the two-party system of the pre-martial law days. They forget that two of the most powerful presidents of this country became so by the simple expedient of switching from Nacionalista Party to Liberal Party: Ramon Magsaysay and Ferdinand Marcos. The two were able to do so because the Liberals and the Nacionalistas were divided by pretty much the same thing that divided the warring factions of Lilliput, which was whether an egg should be cracked from the small or the big end.
That alone should hint at the direction of change. It is not decreasing the number of parties to two, it is increasing the number of ideologies to more than one. But that’s another story, and one best left for another day.
|
