From People Power to mob rule

On two occasions already in less than 25 years, the transfer of power at the very highest level of governance, the presidency, has come on a golden platter called People Power. No wonder it has become the favored option should the regular means by way of election fail.

There is a certain romanticism in the thought of directly involving the participation of people from whom all authority and power of government emanate. But to dwell on that is wrong because then what does it make of elections, which also entail direct people participation.

My guess is that the romanticism dwells, or more aptly, harkens back to our childhood fantasies where war games make us heroes in our make-believe world of innocence. Applying that innocence on the hard-ball realities of politics and governance is naively dangerous.

The first manifestation of People Power in 1986 was of course perfectly all right because it was spontaneous. But Filipinos are notoriously dangerous copycats and are wont to start a fad where commonsense would have dictated otherwise.

The 1986 People Power should have been sanctified by its rareness. Instead Filipinos have demeaned it by repetitiveness. What value and respect the world extended to us in 1986 have been cheapened by casualness and triviality.

We have retailed People Power. At the slightest agitation, People Power is summoned, for the flimsiest and even the most dishonorable reasons -- to defy lawful court orders or to thwart arrest warrants.

And that is just citing episodes that really happened. What is worse is promising its occurence, as if People Power has become a convenient weapon or tool that one can unleash on a whim.

The spontaneity of People Power that made it so pure and beautiful, and thus credible and respectable, has been hijacked by those who never understood such credibility and respectability and who see in People Power neither beauty or innocence but purposeful forcefulness.

Can you imagine how much it sucks to hear People Power being promised to be descended in wrathful vengeance if the expectation of one is so much as threatened by the simple possibility of unexpected failure?

People Power has become a tool of imposition, of one's will over that of others, without regard or thought that from imposition it can move so swiftly on to oppression. The People Power that restored us to democracy is now being made to transport us back to undeclared autocracy.

Filipinos must sit up and take notice of how dangerously close we are being led to chaos and anarchy by those who simply would not accept the win-loss possibility that attends each and every contest, political or otherwise.

We are right this very moment being primed to believe there is no chance for an honest result to emerge from the coming election so that whatever the numbers that may arise, and whoever the victor that those numbers may raise, is already tainted before the fact.

And because we have been so primed into thinking the system has been corrupted even before a single vote has been cast, the scenario is being painted that People Power will have to be descended to set things aright.

If this is the way we do things, that if we cannot win it by a process then we snatch it by way of the angry masses, then we might as well stop this charade of going through elections. Maybe we should make leadership be a matter of who has the most and angriest mobs.