Electile dysfunction

Romy Bernardo, who frequently disturbs us with his incessant wit conveyed through text messages and blogs, recently complained about suffering from “electile dysfunction.”

Sounding supremely debilitated, he claims he is not aroused by any of the candidates currently threatening to run for president. Not aroused at all.

I am glad one full-blooded Filipino male has finally stepped out of the closet and disclosed what seems to be a widely shared disability. Now we can begin diagnosing the disease with a certain degree of clinical detachment.

Indications of a political epidemic have been noticeable the past few weeks.

Most remarkable is what we might call a phenomenon of inverse effect: the more some politicians attempt to convince us that they are the ones who will save this nation, the lower they rate in the public opinion polls. The harder they try, the deeper they sink.

“Electile dysfunction” appears to be affecting more Filipinos that we might be prepared to admit, what with all the contrived media stories about old horses preparing to run the 2010 race. I know of several meetings being held the past few weeks among concerned individuals, groups and networks seeking to uncover a path to a new mode of electoral politics: one that begins from genuine popular movements and responsive to grassroots expectations.

Among the ideas emerging are public forums held nationwide asking our voters to define what sort of leadership they want (instead of being forced to make a choice from among a pre-selected list of presumptive candidates). The idea of a publicly initiated equivalent of the primaries in US elections is rapidly gaining ground.

A highly organized and deeply politicized people such as we have are not about to yield to an unaccountable pre-selection method where people because of royal surnames or robust war chests or high name-recall ratings rush the rest of us into making premature choices. That effort to corner us, to restrict our choices and to deny us a voice in candidate-selection has unintentionally produced a trauma in civil society that exhibits in the malaise we now call “electile dysfunction.”

The earlier ambitious politicians have made known their presidential bids, in an effort to position on the stage and elbow the others out, the more unresponsive our voters have become. If the trend indicated by the recent surveys carry on, we might see in a short while a survey profile that pushes the early runners to single-digits in voter preference and a large segment of undecided/uninterested voters.

Early indications tell us that our voters refuse to be rushed into making choices by those who have designated themselves candidates without the benefit of public involvement in the selection process. That should be compelling reason for our political parties and politicians to give pause and consider the symptoms more carefully.

For decades, our electoral democracy suffered from one glaring imperfection: constituencies have never been meaningfully involved in the candidate-selection process. Instead, factions of the elite conspire, connive and congeal, eventually designating the candidates and supplying them with the required logistics.

After the political aristocracy is done defining the lines of partisan contention, voters are left with a shortlist they had no hand in determining. By means of a noisy campaign and massive electoral spending, voters are convinced they had the power of choice. In fact, they only have a semblance of that power. The real power belongs to the power-brokers and election financiers who invest in candidates and extract concessions from the “elected” government afterwards.

There is a rebellion brewing aimed at deposing this traditional, elite-determined mode of electoral politics. There are, I think, enough organized groups of voters ready and willing to challenge the conventional way of doing things. When these groups begin converging, over the next few months, the unwritten rules that had governed the conduct of our electoral democracy could be irretrievably altered.

Elections, simply put, are too important to be left to the power-brokers.

More and more Filipinos, given the wonders of modern communications, are beginning to appreciate what Americans call their primaries. In these polling exercises, rival candidates from within the major parties compete among themselves in gathering support from their parties’ grassroots. Democratic voters cast their choices in the primaries of the Democratic Party. Republican voters indicate their preferences in parallel exercises aimed at choosing the candidate of the Republican party.

More and more Filipinos, given the wonders of modern communications, are readily able to build consensus and raise name-recall for their preferred leaders at a very fast rate. They do this through e-groups, SMS, web pages and blogs networks.

Should the mainstream media decide to throw their support for this rebellion of voters who want enfranchisement in the candidate-selection process, the brewing upheaval could finally break out. The old, elite-mediated system could finally be overthrown. A people’s candidate might finally march to the top, powered not by special interests but by the aggregated and articulated preferences of the grassroots.

Enough of the whining over how weak our political parties are. Enough of the cynicism about how corrupt our elections have become. Enough of the inaction over the tendency, in the recent elections, towards adverse electoral selection where the least qualified prevail over the eminently fit.

The only thing that could final us at this point is our imagination. The new ways of doing things are accessible.

The more people admitting to suffering from “electile dysfunction”, the better. More of us can come together and decide to do something new, something wildly imaginative about the deteriorated quality of our electoral democracy.