The capacity to govern - CHASING THE WIND By Felipe B. Miranda

Many Filipinos bandy big words and dramatic phrases which they seldom bother to examine. One of the most current is applied directly to President Estrada, who supposedly has already lost – or is about to irretrievably lose – the "capacity to govern." This formidable phrase and whatever it might be construed as meaning obviously is no concoction of the masa. For these hardy people, almost half of them unable to finish high school, a public official’s "capacity to govern" might as well be Rousseau’s "General Will" – an abstraction that suggests little meaning and provokes little interest compared to Malacañang’s conjured images of pagkain at pabahay.

Those enamored with the idea of a president with the "capacity to govern" can only be people who have had a good experience of governance, people who have either themselves governed others or who have benefited much from the governance of others. In Philippine society, this fortunate group of people cannot exceed five percent of the nation or one in every 20 Filipinos.

In every political administration this country has known in the last 65 years, people who worried about a president’s capacity to govern had been primarily those with a firm, material stake in the nation’s polity and economy. Those who had none were far too busy keeping body and soul together such that abstract issues of governance failed to impact on them much or for long. Except during those seasonal exercises called local or national elections – when the contests could have distinct material implications for people who must sell their votes to temporarily bond scrawny bodies to impoverished souls – the majority of Filipinos had a grossly underdeveloped sense of anyone’s "capacity to govern" serving them well and, as attested by survey probes into political efficacy in this country, readily acknowledged that their constitutionally-acknowledged "sovereign" role in governance sounded fine but brought them neither pagkain nor pabahay through any efforts but their own.

Consequently, close to a month after the start of the presidential impeachment trial and even after the devastating evidence offered by witnesses for the prosecution, the charge that the president had lost his capacity to govern has not caught fire with most Filipinos, even those who are in Metro Manila and may be presumed to be more critical than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. For Metro Manilans, as of January 6, 2001, the most troubling issue concerning President Estrada continues to be the terrible allegation that he received jueteng money.

People in this country may be much involved in playing jueteng, but they appear to demand that whatever payola reaches all other public officials and influential parties – national and local elective officials, the military and police as well as some of those who attend to saving souls for the next world – it must not be received by their President, at least not in as gross a manner as is being alleged by the prosecution.

People in this largely ungovernable country are not much impressed by anyone’s "capacity to govern." They are more sensitive to whether someone, anyone, could be trusted to govern. This sense of trust is most sharp among a people who are largely disempowered in the nation’s governance. Whoever governs in the Philippines, most Filipinos can only trust that their interests – the weak people’s interests – will not be so betrayed or forgotten.

At the start of the impeachment trial on December 7, 2000, President Estrada‘s trust ratings among Metro Manilan’s was 38 percent. On January 6, 2001, this trust level had become 29 percent. Obviously, the trial has cost the president quite a bit, even among those who do not think of "capacity to govern" as a primary category in their list of presidential qualifications.