The paradox of Philippine democracy

WHEN J. Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the huge explosion of the first atom bomb he supervised to build at Los Alamos, a passage from the Baghavad-Gita flashed in his mind: “I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

But structural injustice has a more devastating effect than an atom bomb. Powerlessness, violence and marginalization are a social poison which can destroy the future of our children.

In that context, our brand of democracy is a modern-day paradox. While majority of Filipinos are poor, they are actually led by rich and powerful dynasts. What this means is that poor Filipinos are not ruled by leaders who can truly represent them. The future of the country’s 26 million poor is in the hands of the old order—powerful clans, rich businessmen and influence peddlers. The paradox does not end there. Put somebody from the lowest margins of society in the political arena and in 10 years he too will become another insatiable monster.

For instance, there is no taxonomy of bad governance more obvious than the insufferable lives that ordinary people have to go through each day. While our rule-makers ride expensive cars, the poor struggle each day to get a decent means of public transportation. A sitting Harvard-bred public official even mentioned at one point that people just have to be patient. So, he is suggesting that either the ordinary

commuter join a mile-long queue, or take a two-hour bus trip to his destination, or walk under the heat of the searing midday sun. While we are a country of 100 million, our choices in the forthcoming 2016 presidential election seem likely to be limited by the expediency of political circumstance to three.

Ruby Paredes writes that we emerged from our colonial experience “with both a sense of their inadequacy and a confidence in their capacity to manipulate.” This is still true to this day. What the wisdom of old teaches us is that three things matter to a moral leader: integrity, competence, and a sense of vision. But these three can be reduced into one category—practical wisdom. The problem is that any person who may have such capacity for prudent judgment is prevented by the same prudence from joining politics.

We need power in order to control power. Power emanates from the act of the human will. In politics, this means the power of the people controlling the power of the state. In short, the state cannot pursue its ends at the expense of the people. Institutions exist, as Paul Ricoeur correctly points out, because of “the service they render to people.” For this reason, democracy is all about the collective act of will of the people in pursuit of the common good. However, if those who wield power favor the interest of the few and the elite, then democratic governance loses its true meaning. In this sense, laws and policies have become mere shades of the good and the just.

Some quarters have suggested that we need a strong leader in order to bring back glory to this country. We can be another Singapore, they say. What does it mean for us? Firstly, it is grounded on the assumption that Filipinos lack discipline. We do not obey laws. We are ignorant. We are lazy.

We do not follow protocols. For which reason, we need some kind of a benevolent dictator.

While the suggestion may be justified, its basic problem is that it pins all the blame on the poor, as if a poor child who toils hard in dangerous places is solely to blame for his misfortune. We are poor because the majority of our people are not free. To my mind, the idea that dictatorial rule can transform and give greater freedom to an unfree society defies all forms of logic.

Democracy is about two things: substance and procedure. Concretely, the very substance of democracy or its intrinsic value is about the liberties of people, the equitable distribution of wealth, and the recognition of people on the basis of their dignity as human beings. Translated into measurable primary social goods, this means just wages and decent housing. Procedurally, democracy is about fair rules or just procedures which allow people from the margins to be able to express their desires and not to be dominated or discriminated by those who are in positions of power and authority, whether in private or in public. For instance, federalism has a lot of promise, but put in the wrong hands of the same cabals who control, manipulate and exploit the lives of the poor, it will simply become another experiment gone wrong.

The basic point then is this. True democracy is not about the destiny of any single man. Rather, it is about ordinary people choosing and creating their own future. Real democratic rule is about implementing a political system whereby ordinary people are permitted to actually choose their leader not because their good fortunes depend on one man or woman, but because as dignified human beings they so deserve a life that is worthy of basic respect.

Christopher Ryan Maboloc is assistant professor of philosophy at Ateneo de Davao University. He has a master’s degree in applied ethics from Linkoping University in Sweden.