Democracy 102

This is a continuation of last Thursday’s discussion on the problems confronting our practice of democratic politics.

Considering all the structural constraints on the full blossoming of democratic practice in the country, how do we proceed?

Time is running short. The 2010 elections is fast approaching. It will be a severe stress test on our institutions and our democratic faith.

If we become path-dependent, continue with politics as usual, the next government will be as tenuous as this one. It will continue to be besieged by hostile political factions trying very hard for the established authority to fail. There will be more political circuses, more scandal-mongering and more unseemly alliances among opportunists.

By 2010, the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo presidency will be the second longest-serving administration in our Republic’s history. The longest one was Ferdinand Marcos’. But that was unduly extended by martial rule and dramatically terminated by means of an uprising.

The fact that this administration survived is a feat by itself.

The constitutional structure within which we operate is designed to doom the presidency. The single-term provision makes the incumbent a lame duck on Day One. The multiparty electoral system condemns every winning candidate to the top post to the status of minority president, vulnerable to being held hostage by every political bloc that could muster votes in the Congress for an impeachment or mount a sustained campaign to diminish the President’s popularity and political capital.

Governing under these circumstances is like being forced to walk a minefield blindfolded. One small lapse could call up the ghosts of people power and bring to center stage the tired old personalities who treat people power as private property.

This is not a constitutional formula that enhances the possibility of decisive leadership to transform the nation. Nor, arguably, is it a formula that improves our chances for the sort of governance that will enable our country to be competitive in a globalized world.

Interpreting the principle of checks and balances in a rigid way, as an extreme reaction to the experience with dictatorship, the 1987 Constitution provides a formula for political paralysis. This is why nearly every political question eventually ends up as a constitutional issue to be settled by the High Court. This is not a constitutional structure that enables the exercise of leadership, build national consensus to pull us out of path dependence, nor muster the political force that could break the inertia of a low-growth, oligarchy-infested and constantly squabbling country.

With a party system that is incapable of developing the leadership cadre the country needs, an electoral system that is driven by patronage rather than visions and flawed institutions that are vulnerable to partisan politicking, we seem doomed to mediocre governance. Under such conditions, no one is allowed to be inspiring. Every achiever will be cut down by the constant drone of political sniping.

We have a flawed constitutional design that will not allow a Lee Kuan Yew to emerge or even an Obama to challenge the political aristocracy. It is a constitutional design that does not allow us to go very far from where we now stand.

We cannot, as a nation, spring up to meet new challenges and opportunities. Given the nature of the present world order, that means we will simply lag behind. As we have always done.

Except that, today, simply lagging behind every one else is unacceptable. The public wants the political leadership to solve poverty overnight, to keep prices stable and growth high. We want to be a high-achiever nation without allowing the political tools to make that even remotely possible.

In 2010, we will very likely witness a peaceful, legal and uneventful transfer of power. That is not the problem. The problem is: So what?

Two years from now, given the present trajectory of things, we will have an embattled candidate emerging from a bitter, unprincipled and costly multiparty race. That victor will be a minority president whose narrow margin of victory will be questioned by all the losers. There will be no clear mandate to do anything in particular — except survive in office under constant enemy fire.

The winner of that dirty contest, conducted under the most primitive electoral process known to mankind, will have to wheel and deal with the various political blocs and business interests. Some sort of shaky “rainbow coalition” will have to be reassembled — a euphemism for a leader without much political capital and indebted to the amorphous assembly of interests that invested in his or her victory for entirely self-serving reasons.

The new leader will be confronted by a hostile media that sees its role principally as a consensus-wrecker. He or she will be collared by the religious blocs with their doctrinal and commercial issues to nurse. Every opinion poll taken will register a progressive decline in trust and approval ratings, diminishing the new leader’s political capital.

Like a sequel to the movie Groundhog Day, we will see a replay of the political conditions of the past few years. And as we repeat the same wild charges, the scandal-mongering, the same fat lawyers with ugly wigs hysterically crying “wolf!” at every turn, the nation just slides slowly, deeper into its role as a non-performer in a world of nimble economies and farsighted leaders.

There has to be a way to break out of this debilitating cycle of mediocre politics and slow growth. The constitutional order that incapacitates us all is convenient for the oligarchy, the self-appointed guardians of elite democracy and conservative clergymen.

It is a self-serving order that has to be challenged from outside its operative rules.