‘Tyranny of the majority’

Chief Justice Reynato Puno of the Supreme Court delivered a speech over a week ago before his fellow members of the Philippine Constitution Association which many believe deserves much more than the scant attention it got from media.

Not having been able to attend the Constitution Day commemoration of Philconsa, I had to obtain a copy of the speech. Having read it, I agree that it does contain a lot of insights which should be discussed by those who mistakenly insist that the pith and substance of democracy is found simply in periodic exercises we call elections.

Let’s start with the Chief Justice’s conclusion and then work back from that. He concluded by stating "what Mencken calls the obvious of obviousities: the stakes in our coming elections are high." The Chief added: "We have witnessed twice in our history how elections corrupted by the power of the few or corrupted by the power of ignorance of the many created tension that ended in eruptions on EDSA."

"We can no longer afford those social and political upheavals. We cannot look down at our elections as mere personal contests among candidates. In truth, it is not the unsuccessful candidate who loses the battle in a manipulated and fraudulent election, but we, the people who have enshrined the republican and democratic soul of our nation in our Constitution."

Chief Justice Puno recalls that the early Greek philosophers feared democracy, particularly in societies led not by philosopher-kings, but by an uncritical homage to the fallacy of universal suffrage. Plato, The Chief said, expressed the fear that "the more numerous masses would govern with meanness and usher the ‘tyranny of the majority.’"

This didn’t happen, of course, and down through the centuries, the progression from monarchy to aristocracy to nominal democracy has been, as a rule, inexorable. But today, political analysts have been looking into what democracy really means, not for the perennial political and economic elite but for ordinary people, those "mobs" that Plato feared and who, even in stubbornly "democratic" societies, have received few of the real benefits of often hard-won freedoms.

There is great concern among contemporary thinkers that too many world leaders equate democracy with elections. As perhaps exemplified by George W. Bush’s almost messianic desire to spread democracy throughout the globe, the proof of advancing democratization is often the holding of elections. But as Iraq and Palestine have shown, general elections frequently do not solve problems, they exacerbate divisions.

And as countries like our own show, elections can be a well-developed and highly regulated exercise, but still result in the frustration of the popular will, as well as economic stagnation and retreat.

It is now becoming clear that elections are not the panacea to the nation’s ills, not irrefutable proof of our maturity as a democratic nation. Elections must merely be the beginning and not, as many think, the be-all and end-all of a genuine democracy.

"Sadly," Chief Justice Puno notes, "scholars of Philippine politics take the view that our elections have little to do with the voters’ weighing issues and scrutinizing the qualifications of candidates." These scholars posit three "interpretations" of "how we have exercised our right to vote after a century of experience." It’s not, as you might well expect, a pretty picture.

These three views are: the patron-client interpretation of Philippine politics, the patrimonial or elite-democracy interpretation, and the neocolonial interpretation. Although academic-sounding, all these three interpretations reflect familiar practices in domestic elections.

The first view says that our politics is all about personal relations and networks linked by kinship, friendship, exchange of favors, influence and money. The second view stresses the use of force, intimidation and violence to sway elections. The third concludes that foreign interests swing their way when they want to.

This, some might say, says basically the same thing as guns, goons and gold. The argument may be that our fiercely independent stance in global issues allows us to assert a stance radically different from, say, the time of Ramon Magsaysay and the famous (or infamous) Col. Landsdale in the early ’50s. Wise practitioners of realpolitik in today’s international geo-political landscape will call this utter self-deception.

Whatever, it is a familiar observation today that elections can produce dictators and rank incompetents, in the same way it can produce authentic statesmen. Chief Justice Puno quotes "an astute student of politics, Resil Mojares," who concludes that all these aberrations in our electoral system explain why voters seek "short-term goals and benefits for oneself, one’s family, or small group, rather than one’s class or nation."

They also explain why Philippine politics consists mostly of "quick returns, personalistic leadership, and visible impact-projects." Mojares also states that the "cumulative results of such destructive immiserizing [Author’s note: Or "impoverishing"] political practices are orchestrated mandates rather than genuine participation, manipulation of needs and rewards rather than a process of democratic bargaining, the perpetuation of false consciousness instead of purposive political education, and a continuing powerlessness of the people instead of empowerment through politics."

Put in non-academic lingo, our politics, especially our system of elections, is in deep doo-doo. Somehow, the Chief Justice’s clarification that, warts and all, many Filipinos still consider elections as the best way to decide who will hold office, and that most ordinary Filipinos still swear by democracy as they know it, neither mitigates nor assures. On the contrary, I take the Chief Justice’s analysis of our situation as confirmation of the largely held view that our democracy is in real trouble today.

On the other hand, none of us would be so reckless as to ditch democracy and try something else. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy can seem really hopeless…until you consider the alternative. If all this can’t convince you that real, far-reaching and immediate change is needed in our democratic system, I don’t know what can.