Hitting the nail about our failed democracy

We just celebrated 114 years of Philippine Independence and call it “heaven sent” that former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad was in the Philippines as the University of Sto. Tomas conferred on him an Honorary Professor title last Tuesday morning. We have known Mahathir to be a very vocal person… vocal even against the United States. But what totally took me by complete surprise is he talked about our “unbridled” democracy for his conferment speech and I’m glad that he did. Often it takes a foreigner to jolt us to realize what really is happening in our country today.

Mahathir calls our Filipino style democracy as one that raised the spectre of “Mediocre Political Leadership.” Let me quote what Mahathir said, “No doubt democracy is being practiced by this country. But is it really what democracy is all about? Is democracy the end or the means? If we think that democracy is the end, then well and good. But why did we change from autocracy to democracy? Wasn’t it because autocracy had failed to deliver the good life that we wanted? We believed that since it is the people who disapproved of autocracy, then if the people were to rule the country, then surely they would rule themselves well.”

What Mahathir was saying is… our EDSA People Power Revolution removed the autocratic conjugal Marcos dictatorship… and installed our own Filipino style of democracy… so if the Filipino people who ousted Marcos are now ruling the land… then we are supposed to have ruled ourselves well. So why aren’t we being ruled well 26 years after the EDSA revolt?

In all truth, this is what we’ve been harping all about in the past 26 years since I became a journalist… that while we removed the Marcos dictatorship, we installed 24 mini-dictators in the Senate that rules this nation no different from the way the Mafiosi is in control of Sicily or the Bronx.

Instead of having Senators to represent all the regions of this country… we ended up at one time with two Cayetanos, two Estradas, two Osmeñas in the Senate. Like the Mafia, politics has become a family business… and like a family heirloom, the keys of power are handed down from father to son or daughter so everything is kept within the family. Of course we call it an “election” but it is a total farce! Now we have electronic dagdag bawas using the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS), thanks to P-Noy.

This is why we’ve been saying all these years that the 1987 Constitution should be changed because in the last 26 years, it only strengthened the oligarchy and made them control more businesses in this country, including the mass media…to the detriment of the poor people. Then the cronies of the Marcos dictatorship returned with a vengeance. Ask yourself… who was the number two most powerful man next to Marcos? Wasn’t it then Defense Minister and now Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE)?

If the opposition at that time tagged the Marcos Dictatorship as corrupt, how come no one tagged JPE the right hand man of Marcos as corrupt? Were any of the businesses of JPE ever investigated by anyone? Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not accusing JPE of corruption… this is why when JPE and his cohorts decided to convict Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona even if the latter threw the gauntlet at the Senate floor for his accusers to also sign their bank waivers… then I expected JPE as being above Caesar’s wife to be the first to sign his bank waiver. But he isn’t doing that.

This is why I was pleasantly surprised that Mahathir made that speech where he literally plunged a sword into the heart of our Filipino styled democracy. Mahathir added, “One pitfall of unbridled democracy is poor leadership. The leader in particular must be incorruptible. His being so will lessen the level of corruption among those under him. There will still be corruption but the degree would be less In every country there are great people who should lead, but seeing the filth in politics add the fears of those who come into power they are unwilling to take the risk. And so very often the leaders are mediocre people at best, present company accepted.”

All I can say is… “Araaay!” That hurt! There were some Senators in the audience listening to Mahathir and most certainly they were very uncomfortable listen to that speech. But Mahathir hit it right on the nail! Our Philippine style of democracy where we have Senators without any districts and a partylist system that doesn’t truly represent sectors that need to be represented is no longer working. This is why the Manifesto that was published last May 23rd in the Philippine Star wanted a systems change, rather than a change in leadership. Let’s fix our country first is our cry!

What we have in this culturally-damaged nation is a failed democracy, where our having those three co-equal and independent branches of the government, the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary is nothing but a myth or a joke! All have kowtowed to Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino, III, who is today, more powerful than Marcos was during his Martial law years.

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