Edifice complex 2.0

The war in Ukraine will have far-reaching ripples that will smash through shores all over the world, like a multidimensional, repetitive tsunami.

Not only are we talking about the immediate and long-term consequences of the disruption in oil and food, financial, trade, and investment flows, and even the shutdown of social media services as Western sanctions against Russia take hold, with anticipated but difficult to quantify blowback against the Western countries and the rest of the world.

The image of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy articulating the feelings and hopes of his people has been a wake-up call to nations that have accepted lower standards of leadership, statesmanship, integrity, and patriotism of their leaders. Many nations have forgotten how a single leader could galvanize a nation and propel it forward, especially in the face of unprovoked war of aggression.

This is where I worry about the Philippines. Are we prepared for the emerging volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world emerging from the Ukraine war? In making a diligent assessment, I think we have to go back to the major source of weakness, our edifice complex 2.0.

Edifice complex 1.0 was, of course, the penchant of Imelda Marcos to build grandiose structures like the Cultural Center of the Philippines, the Folk Arts Theatre, the Philippine International Convention Center, the Film Center, the Lung Center, the Heart Center, the Kidney Center, and myriad others. One of the curious things about these edifices was that there was borrowed money to build them, but there was no money for sustaining them. These facilities required budgets for people to staff them and systems to make them useful and operational.

Thirty-six years after the end of the “New Society” in 1986, it is clear that we have embarked on our own edifice complex. This refers to the democratic institutions that were established by the 1987 Constitution, capturing the euphoria and spirit of reform that gripped the nation after the Marcoses fled to Hawaii.

The completion and maintenance of that edifice, however, did not happen. From the very start, after that brave act of codifying the hopes of the Filipino nation in the basic law, the task of perfecting the scaffolding of democracy was neglected. It was as if this child of the people power revolution, once born and baptized, was expected to grow up and develop on its own.

If the 1987 Constitution looks and feels tattered today, it is because it had lacked the care and maintenance that was required.

The main neglect was the failure to heed the constitutional mandate on political dynasties. The Constitution was meant to be an irresistible force, but political dynasties have been an immovable reality. And political dynasties have flourished, ironically rising from the appointed officers in charge mechanism used by the revolutionary government of Corazon Aquino that was meant to dislodge Marcos loyalists from their political perches. The new layer of political dynasties fit comfortably with the old layer, which sprung back up after a few years.

The most egregious neglect to protect the 1987 Constitution as a fledgling democratic edifice was the decision to allow the Marcoses to return to the Philippines and almost immediately embark on their quest to regain their political power and reverse the narrative of Philippine history. Such a naïve and misplaced lack of political sense blinded by premature sentiments of reconciliation without restitution and repentance exposed a fledgling system to a clear existential threat.

One needs only to see how this alter-narrative emerged. The Mordor that kept sending homing signals to the fanatical Marcos loyalists as early as the 1990s came from the government-maintained museums that glorify the lives and rule of the Marcoses in Batac and elsewhere in Ilocos Norte.

The biggest threat to democracy now is the way the political system has become predisposed to choose presidents who are the least qualified to promote the democratic rules of the game. The system has been hijacked by a malevolent algorithm that blinds the people. It is the worst time to be exposed to the current world crisis that could ripen into a world war.

People blame how the 1986 people power revolution failed the people. It is the other way around. We failed the seedling of democracy we imagined we were replanting in 1986.

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