Controlling the barangays

It remains one of the most infamous episodes of martial law: how then President Ferdinand Marcos ordered the convening of so-called citizen’s assemblies across some 35,000 barangays all over the country for purposes of ratifying the new 1973 Constitution. Through his meddling and ministrations, as demonstrated by the bribery exposé made by delegate Eduardo Quintero during the constitutional convention that drew up the charter, the document ended up with provisions that validated Marcos’ newly imposed one-man rule, and he was determined to have it approved by an overwhelming majority of citizens.

The referendum, held on Jan. 10-15, 1973, posed one question to the citizenry: “Do you want martial law to continue?” It lowered the voting age from 18 to 15, and was said to have featured the raising of hands by the multitudes to indicate their ayes. Two days later, on Jan. 17, Marcos issued Proclamation No. 1104, which claimed that, based on the results of the referendum in which “15,224,518 voted for the continuation of martial law as against only 843,051 who voted against it”—meaning an astonishing 90-plus percent voted yes—he was now declaring “that martial law shall continue in accordance with the needs of the time and the desire of the Filipino people.”

When various parties filed suit against the irregular way the referendum was conducted, the Supreme Court issued what essentially amounted to a white flag being waved at the dictatorship. The majority of the justices said that while the approval of the Constitution via the barangay assemblies was improper, it was all moot and academic because the document was now in place, anyway—a fait accompli. Marcos had legitimized his dictatorship through the illegitimate means of his newly invented barangay assemblies; from then on, there was no stopping the depredations of his martial law regime.

It’s both urgent and necessary to recall this consequential bit of history in light of Malacañang’s worrisome announcement that President Duterte plans to do away with the elections for barangay officials slated for October. Instead, he wants to end their term en masse and replace all the heads of some 42,000 barangays nationwide with his own appointees. The ostensible reason? Drugs.

Mr. Duterte has said that up to 40 percent of the local government units in the country are infested with drug-related criminality, and, according to Interior Secretary Ismael Sueno, “he does not want those financed by drug lords to win.”

There is no justification for this rash proposal. No less than the principal author of the Local Government Code, Aquilino Pimentel Jr., former Senate president and founder of Mr. Duterte’s ruling PDP-Laban, rejects it, saying it runs counter to the law that was designed to effectively devolve power from the central government to the LGUs and thus empower ordinary citizens. The most damaging effect of having the President appoint barangay heads wholesale, instead of subjecting them to the electorate’s free choice through elections, is to bind them to the appointing power by virtue of loyalty and patronage. But, points out Pimentel, if they are not appointed by one person, their loyalty will be to the public that voted for them (“pero kung hindi sila ina-appoint ng isang tao, ang loyalty nila ay nasa taongbayan na naghalal sa kanila”).

Having the President exercise that unprecedented power of control down to the smallest barangay, with every community leader grateful for his or her appointment reduced to doing the bidding of Malacañang, brings back worrying echoes of Marcos’ use of barangay assemblies to solidify his grip on the country. The President’s reliance on questionable statistics to shore up his claims of nationwide drug use is alarming enough; this latest idea brings his flirtation with authoritarian governance to a dangerous new level.

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