On top of it all, our politics has become irredeemably polarized.
The atmosphere is poisoned. The air is thick with hate. In this condition, a national conversation is not possible. Common action to solve the nation’s deepening problems is unreachable. The nation will be condemned to sink like a rock.
Observe the social media sphere. It has become a sordid arena where the troll armies of the contending forces clash each day, spewing vitriol soaked with defamation. The social media space long ceased to be a forum for reasonable national conversation.
Unfortunately, social media completely eclipsed the mainstream traditional media. Not only that, the legacy media has lost the trust of our audience. It can no longer function as an effective mediator of contending partisan positions.
When the Senate broke down into irreconcilable factions last month, it was because the institution became the main pressure point for the larger fault line that runs through the nation’s politics. No amount of patching up, no magical political arithmetic, can save this institution. It had become simply a microcosm of broader polarization.
The Senate is particularly vulnerable. It is no longer inhabited by great statesmen. It is inhabited by pawns of the major power players. It is incapable, as an institution, to rise above present political partisanship to imagine the nation’s best interests.
This week, led by members of a major religious sect, the EDSA People Power Monument was occupied by thousands of protestors. Threats to arrest and detain an outspoken senator appears to be the most imminent cause for this protest action. But the more profound cause is the sense that the massive infrastructure scandal is being comprehensively covered up to spare the ruling faction from any meaningful and truthful inquiry.
There are antecedent events. The so-called Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI) produced no dramatic results from its half-hearted inquiry. An explosive testimony by a former Marine who used to work for the security group of Zaldy Co was played down by the Senate Blue Ribbon committee. When a larger group of ex-soldiers emerged with their dramatic testimonies, the whistleblowers were targeted with libel suits. The NBI seemed more interested in discrediting the whistleblowers than in seriously appraising their serious claims.
As polarization deepens, the middle ground disappears.
There is no such thing as “middle forces” in the emerging strategic confrontation. The battle lines are being drawn beyond personal and factional allegiances. Partisan identification has crept into ethnolinguistics lines.
This administration has completely mishandled the evolution of the BARMM, for instance. There seems to be a resurgence of discontent among Muslim Filipinos.
The liberal and leftwing forces ceased to be independent political forces. Sensing the inability of the pro-Marcos coalition to ensure its factional perpetuation, leading personalities from these groups now imagine they could colonize the Marcos political machinery and use it to break into power. Opportunism has deep roots in Filipino politics.
The 1987 Constitution prescribed a multi-party system superimposed on a presidential system with a bicameral legislature. We ended up with a chaotic political system with no effective political parties. Instead of having mechanisms for aggregating interests and espousing strategic policy directions, we ended up with personality-centered factional alliances. We lost the ability to cultivate a competent political class and a system that enabled the cultivation of statesmen.
As a consequence, our elections were driven by money and name-recall. The short three-year electoral cycle meant that we were constantly on campaign mode. This encouraged the primacy of money politics and celebrity-driven elections.
There was no predictability in our electoral system. Neither was there any capacity for policy continuity. Every administration tried to discredit its predecessor and ensure its continuity. Politics ran on the least common denominator. Administrations relied on endless subsidies to buy popular support and avoided sound policy options that required short-term pain. The short electoral cycle reduced everything to cosmetic responses that did not address long-term trends.
The very design of our electoral politics undermined any possibility for strategic governance. It is a basic design flaw. But every effort at redesigning our constitutional format was resisted for decades. The 1987 Constitution itself militated against reform. We are trapped in a failed constitutional system that breeds all the evils that blight our politics.
From the very beginning, the BBM administration tried to ensure its perpetuation. The acknowledged successor was the president’s cousin, who was installed as Speaker to better ensure retail politics was kept in line.
We know what happened to this political project of perpetuation. The money for public works was looted with impunity. The loot was widely distributed across the political class to ensure loyalty. The agenda of governance was subordinated to the pursuit of factional continuity.
Instead of impressing the public, the misshapen political agenda produced public disenchantment. The former Speaker is seen as a rogue. Satisfaction ratings for the President is deep under water. The President’s activities are defined principally by his public relations team in the absence of any strategic program of government.
The Marcos circle has become so unpopular, the agenda of perpetuation becomes untenable. As power-wielder, the President subsists from one opinion poll to the next. No one is managing the macro-economy.
No one wants to speak about it, but we are likely to suffer ratings downgrades. We have hit the limits of our fiscal space. The economy will continue to bite.