The conservatives have triumphed. For another decade or so, the nation will hobble along with a badly designed political order and with a Constitution that prescribes an economic orthodoxy fit for the 19th century. At some point, the nation will require a traumatic revolution to address a political system that has fallen into such glaring disrepair before the inexorable realities of the 21st century.
Tomorrow, the reactionary guardians of the Establishment will gather to gloat. They will thump their chests and feel self-righteous. But many years from now, the nation will likely regret the outcome of this episode.
The triumph of the conservatives was an easy one. It is always a facile exercise to build fear of the unknown – and every change involves proposing a process that is untried. It is always easier to tar and feather the proponents of the untried: they are imperfect men trying to make their way in an imperfect world.
That was precisely what the campaign against change capitalized on. They made a big fuss about the probable motives of the most imperfect advocates of change – motives that were imputed unfairly.
But little attention was given to the visions of the true patriots who raised alarm bells about the degenerative descent of our political order and the urgency of political reformatting.
The most rabid reactionaries claimed that the entire enterprise of introducing changes in the way we are governed was motivated entirely to perpetuate the incumbent in office. That was the same insinuation made in 1997, when the first effort for Charter reform was undertaken. In both instances, the imputed motives were unfairly made. It is probably true that the proposed Charter change was unpopular. But, for that matter, no true change begins from a vantage point of popularity. It is the task of visionary leadership precisely to manage a course against the wind. Galileo was persecuted for saying that the earth was round. At any rate, what the man said was counter-intuitive and defied popular belief. The orthodoxy that the earth is flat was never formally withdrawn even as, these days, we regularly circumnavigate the globe.
Those who persecuted Galileo warned that if we stray too far from the shore, perdition awaits. They stymied the imagination of an entire civilization for centuries and never apologized for that.
On post-mortem, what we went through was an aborted debate. By keeping close to shore, exploiting fear of the unknown and condemning imagined devils constructed with imputed motives, the conservatives never ventured into stating what they were standing for. Were they defending a celebrity-driven system of electoral representation that inhibits statesmanship and rewards populism? Were they defending a format of government that leads to paralysis in decision-making and confusion in policy formulation?
Were they defending a "democratic" system that is fueled by undocumented money and thus helps drive corruption, increasing our vulnerability to narcopolitics? Were they defending a system of governance where, because of high centralization and extensive executive prerogative, there is less transparency in policy decisions, more exclusivity in decision-making and greater permeability for power-brokers to exercise influence?
Were they defending an economic orthodoxy, enshrined in constitutional provisions, that has caused us, over the last two decades, to receive the smallest share in global investment flows and condemns us to being The Sick Man of Asia? Were they defending a system of party-list representation that ensures ideological dinosaurs convenient and permanent seats and that guarantees the pervasiveness of the politics of hate propelled by movements of rage? They were defending all that – even if they would not admit it or, even sadder, they do not realize it. There lies the immorality of it all: a debate buried stillborn. Issues left unexplored. An alternative national future left unimagined.
That gross immorality the CBCP will never condemn. As they will never condemn that duplicity of those who claimed to oppose Charter change in the name of "democracy" instead of admitting the present degenerative order was the scaffolding on which their personal ambitions were hung.
It is easy to examine the self-interests driving the Charter change effort. It is true that term limits was a factor, although not a major one. But it is still valid to debate whether or not arbitrary term limits are wise – or at least whether self-serving party list groups should be exempt from it, as they are in the present system.
At any rate, every major effort to break through barriers to change needs to muster a broad range of interests – including blatantly selfish ones.
If it is any consolation, the termination of the debate on Charter change will spare us that constantly repeated idiocy aired by those opposed to the adoption of a parliamentary system. They have presented us a crude chicken-and-egg argument: we cannot have parliamentary government because our political party system is weak. But the longer we prolong the life of the present system, driven by celebrity politics and the money of power-brokers, the less possibility for party politics to take root.
Well, what is done is done. The option of constitutional reform is archived. Let us now prepare for an electoral carnival and celebrate the most outlandish outcomes of a system they say the majority prefers.
The only way to win national-level elections next May is to field people with the highest name-recall, which, as experience should have taught us, is inversely proportional to their ability to govern.