The Philippines: a democracy or a mere electoral oligarchy?

 

 

 

Amado M. Mendoza, Jr.

Department of Political Science

University of the Philippines (Diliman)

E-mail: ammendozajr@gmail.com

 

 

 

 

Democracy is the most difficult socio-political regime. It requires a critical mass of economically-independent citizens imbued with adequate intelligence and a healthy civic spirit to get engaged in public matters. Democracy demands a lot both from the governors and the governed. Authoritarianism does not. Democracy offers the possibility of a progressive empowerment of citizens. However, the process is not automatic or natural. The true sovereigns, the people, citizens and all in the body politic, must empower itself even as it is mindful of its public duties and responsibilities. After all, the default behavior of all if not most political leaders in any political regime is to fear and prevent the growth of an empowered citizenry.

 

 

 

The health and quality of a democracy depends on its capacity to unify a people divided regularly by elections. That used to be the strength of the US. No longer true since the election of Obama. Now, Donald J. Trump is president only of his political base like Rodrigo R. Duterte in the Philippines.

Unification after elections is achieved if the ruling government, together with its partisans, respects, defends, and promotes the legitimate interests of electoral minorities and political opposition. The primary obligation of all is to pay taxes and uphold the law.  Both chief executives revel at savaging political opponents and tilting against enemies and social ills (real and imagined), to catcalls, cheers and the great delight of their partisans.  Trump seems to be at war with his own Republican party. 

 

 

US President Donald Trump enjoying a media moment with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un in Sigapore

Duterte did Trump one better recently and has upped the ante by repeatedly attacking the Catholic Church, its clergy, and even Jesus Christ and His teachings.  Earlier, he declared that the Philippine Constitution is just a piece of paper and that he is not bound by it.  In fact, he argued that the basic law of the land was being used by his political enemies to frustrate his ‘Change is Coming’ programme—a mishmash of promises and motherhood statements.  Instead of being appalled by an apparent volte-face from his oath of office, Duterte is cheered on by his followers who seems amenable to the establishment of a nebulous ‘RevGov’ or revolutionary government.   Instead of being impeached for culpable violation of the Constitution, a pliant legislature initiated impeachment proceedings against one of his most prominent critics instead.  Instead of arresting him, the Philippine National Police (PNP) recently declared that his will is the law.

 

On the whole, both presidents are the latest exemplars of uncivil demagoguery and uncouth thuggery, though Trump seem to be copying from Duterte’s playbook.  Notwithstanding their departures from usual norms of civility and public conduct, both conduct themselves with great confidence buoyed by the support of subservient political lieutenants, legislators, judges, bureaucrats, and their defined political bases.

 

A number of my colleagues at the University of the Philippines Department of Political Science and College of Social Science and Philosophy had strongly suggested that it would be better for all if we stopped calling the socio-political system in the Philippines a democracy but label it instead as an electoral oligarchy–a political system ruled by a faction of the political-economic elites by voters in regular elections both at the local and national levels.

 

They make a very strong case. While indeed elections had been and being are mounted regularly (at least, after 1986 to present day; and between 1946 and 1972), the first test of being fair and fraud-free has not been met repeatedly. For this reason, losing candidates almost always claim that they had been cheated rather than bested in a fair electoral contest.  In many parts of the country, dependent voters either sell their votes or are cowed to vote according to the preferences of local strong men.  Anecdotal evidence suggest that in Muslim Mindanao, ballots are pre-accomplished and pre-counted inside municipal halls and police/military camps while voters innocently cast their votes in full-view and duly recorded by national mass media.  Entry into the candidates’ pool is restricted by laws banning supposedly nuisance candidates—laws which effectively bar less prosperous and less-connected citizens from running for public office.

 

Philippine Congress hears President Aquino’s SONA

Secondly, virtually the same political families and clans have dominated Philippine politics since elections had been instituted by the American colonial authorities at the beginning of the 20th century as an anti-insurgency and anti-revolutionary strategy–that is to divide the Filipinos who wanted to complete the Philippine Revolution and establish an independent Philippine nation-state.  When outsiders from the under-classes managed to win electoral posts, the ruling oligarchy decided to kick them out of office by branding them as subversives.  If there were new entrants into the ruling circles at both the local and national levels, they are immediately socialized into the dominant political culture, the elements of which include these truisms: the public treasury is a private trough for politicians and other public servants!  And that one must be smart and fast enough to figure out how to get the most of it while in power.  It is never too early to prepare for re-election so good times will never end!  Political support is gained through the grant of special and divisible favors and goodies to supporters, backers, and financiers.  After all, we are above the law.  We are in fact the law.  We execute what we declare is law; we legislate; we interpret what is lawful; and we enforce the law!

Lastly, the country’s political system is hobbled by a flawed system design.  Marrying a multi-party system (which the political science literature finds to be best paired with a parliamentary system) with a presidential system, all chief executives since President Corazon C. Aquino (1986-1992) are minority presidents.  Notwithstanding the wisdom of having second round run-off elections, the country’s political leaders argued against the exercise deeming it to be too expensive and divisive (!).  Furthermore, the single presidential term limit had the unintended consequence of weakening already feeble political parties.  The outgoing president, nominally the leader of a ruling party, is reduced to being a lame-duck and cannot impose discipline.  In many instances, ambitious politicians who were unable to win their political parties’ nod found it easy to bolt and form new parties behind their candidacies.  In this respect, political parties remain candidate- centered rather than programmatic and served mainly as vehicles for the political ambitions of clan-supported politicians who, once in office, will rewards family, friends, supporters and financiers with political posts, juicy government contracts, and/or policy favors and preferential treatment.

 

To be continued…

Individual legislators, legislative committees, and tax policymaking II

This blog entry will illustrate the inordinate power and influence of legislative committees and powerful individual legislators in the policy process.  In the case of tax policymaking, the officials and members of the House and Senate Ways and Means Committees would wield this disproportionate power relative to their respective legislative majorities.  Comparatively speaking, officials of the House Ways and Means Committee wield disproportionate power vis-à-vis ordinary committee members and non-committee members on tax policy matters relative to the Senate Ways and Means Committee.  Because of the small number of senators (24), the Senate Ways and Means Committee may already constitute a built-in super-majority than can ensure passage of the committee report in the Senate plenary floor.  On the other hand, the larger number of House members and the larger size of the House Ways and Means Committee allow committee officials greater leeway in the tax policy making process.

Table 1

 Number of ‘bicam’ conferees that were not Ways and Means Committee members, major tax laws of the Ramos presidency

 

	RA 7654	RA 7716	RA 8184	RA 8240	RA 8241	RA 8424
House of Representatives	0/11	1/10	3/10	2/13	5/12	5/20
Senate	0/7	1/7	0/8	1/6	0/5	2/7
Percentage share of non-members	0	11.7%	16.7%	15.8%	29.4%	25.9%

 

 As shown in Table 1, members of the Ways and Means Committees of both chambers numerically dominated all of the Bicameral Conference Committees formed to reconcile the differences on all major tax laws passed during the Ramos presidency.  The dominance of Ways and Means Committee members in the bicameral conference process was not uniform across the six major tax laws.  Their influence was relatively weakest during the deliberations of the more controversial tax measures, RA 8241 (or the improved VAT law) and RA 8424 (on individual and corporate income taxation).  Though also contentious, the influence of committee members was stronger for RA 8184 (on petroleum product taxes) and RA 8240 (on ‘sin’ taxes) and almost dominant during the 9^th Congress that deliberated on RA 7654 (on cigarette taxes) and RA 7716 (or the expanded VAT law).

 

If we consider the identities of the bicameral committee conferees (as shown in Table 2), the influence on individual legislators on the tax policy process would be clearly perceived.  This influence is most perceptible for individual members of the House of Representatives.  Playing key roles were the officers of the House Ways and Means Committee who served in that capacity in both the 9^th and 10^th Congress.  They include Rep. Exequiel Javier, who served as Committee Chairman during the entire Ramos presidency, and Reps. Renato Diaz, Mariano Tajon, Catalino Figueroa, and Jerome Paras, who were committee vice chairmen during the same period.  Rep. Ramon Bagatsing, Jr., Raul del Mar, and Eric Singson were committee members for both Congresses.  Singson, for one, may appear to be an ordinary member of the Ways and Means Committee. He however brings with him the clout of being vice chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee. In addition, he was the acknowledged leader of the Northern Luzon Alliance, a powerful voting bloc composed of legislators from the tobacco-producing provinces.  Tajon is also a key figure in the tobacco alliance.  The particularistic activism of Singson on behalf of the tobacco industry and his constituents was alluded to earlier in Chapter 5 when he tried to remedy RA 8240’s infirmities harmful to Fortune Tobacco.  In addition, his only attendance and active participation in the bicameral process for RA 8424 was his plea that a new section be inserted in the National Internal Revenue Code (NIRC), which shall embody a section in RA 7171 on special financial support to beneficiary provinces producing Virginia tobacco (Bicam TCM, 29 October 1997).

 

Some individual legislators served as conferees despite being non-members of the Ways and Means Committee.  For instance, Rep. James Chiongbian was not a member of the Ways and Means Committee but he was a conferee to both the expanded and improved VAT laws.   It is apparent that he participated in the bicameral deliberations as an interested and affected party.  The Chiongbians were heavily involved in the inter-island shipping industry and shipping was one of the sectors debated by lawmakers for VAT exemption.  The participation of other non-members of the Ways and Means Committee could also be explained.  Rep. Marcial Punzalan, Jr. joined the Bicameral Conference Committee for RA 8184 since he was the principal author of HB 72, the original House measure on petroleum product taxation that was eventually substituted by the final House version, HB 5550.  Rep. Enrique Garcia, Jr., who was a former official of a petroleum product company, expressed great interest and expertise in oil industry deregulation and the related taxation issues, and was therefore drafted for the bicameral committee of RA 8184 that governed taxation of oil products.  Garcia was also a key member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and he most likely brought that clout to the bicameral conference of RA 8424. 

 

The same is true for Rep. Arnulfo Fuentabella, who was a conferee for RA 8241 and RA 8424 even if he was no longer an official of the Ways and Means Committee during the 10^th Congress.  Fuentebella, however, was a Ways and Means Committee vice chairman during the 9^th Congress and was a key member of the Appropriations Committee during the 10^th Congress.  His seniority and expertise were the most likely reasons why he became a bicameral conferee in two occasions during the 10^th Congress despite his non-membership of the Ways and Means Committee.  Expertise in tax matters appears to be the strongest suit for Rep. Margarito Teves.  Teves served as member of the House Ways and Means Committee during the 9^th Congress.  However, he did not become a conferee to the bicameral process during that period.  During the 10^th Congress, he was no longer a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.  However, he still managed to become a conferee in three occasions during the same period.  Reps. Antonio Diaz and Amadeo Perez, Jr. bring with them the cachet of being vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee during the 10^th Congress.  In effect, the only featherweights who became conferees were Reps. Leopoldo San Buenaventura and Zoilo de la Cruz, Jr.  De La Cruz, who was sectoral representative for labor during the 10^th Congress, attended the Bicameral Conference Committee meetings for RA 8424 only once.  The only time he attended was on 17 November 1997; however, the meeting was cancelled because Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile was rushed to the hospital.  De la Cruz’ participation was therefore effectively limited to affixing his signature to the Bicameral Conference Committee report.  San Buenaventura, meanwhile, had a slightly meatier role than De la Cruz.  He co-authored House Bill 5881, an innocuous bill that sought to promote tax consciousness; HB 5881 was among the several bills that were substituted by HB 9077, the House’s final version of the income tax bill.

 

The populist predispositions of some legislators were revealed during the bicameral process for RA 8424, the tax law for individual and corporate income.  Reps. Manuel Roxas, Felicito Payumo and Raul del Mar initially dissented with the bicameral conference committee report as they insisted for a higher personal exemption level.  However, other conferees that were initially absent during the initial signing of the committee report began signing the same such that it was deemed approved.  The three started changing their minds fearing they would be associated with an unpopular and losing position.  Defeat of the committee report would mean return to a status quo of a much lower exemption level.  Their change of heart was no longer necessary at the time it was made since a sufficient number of signatures were gathered to approve the committee report.  The three however found it necessary to change their votes and be on the winning side.  Roxas even delivered a privilege speech to explain his turnaround.  These changes were accepted even as opposition legislators questioned if they were allowed by the House rules. 

Individual legislators, legislative committees and tax policy making

Through this blog entry and subsequent ones, I will continue sharing parts of a book on Philippine institutions and policy making which I started writing the middle of last year.

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In candidate-centered democratic polities, individual legislators exert an inordinately heavy influence on policy making.  This is so since politicians need to develop personal reputations to get themselves elected into office and to stimulate their political careers.  Their party affiliations will not matter much in candidate-centered political settings and they try to develop their reputations as reliable representatives vis-à-vis constituents, supporters and financiers.  For the benefit of their constituents, they ‘bring home the bacon’ by way of pork allocations to finance local public works and other note-worthy projects that can generate local employment or bring desired goods and services like medicines, sports equipment, and the like to the home district.  To non-resident supporters and financiers, legislators must be able offer divisible policy favors such as subsidized credit, fiscal incentives, and tax breaks.

However, legislators do not participate in policy making only through their individual selves.  They do so through legislative committees.  Committees are institutions established to enjoy the scale economies and efficiency offered by division of labor.  Committee systems allow lawmakers to divide the various policy issues facing the legislature into distinct and separate jurisdictions, each delegated to a different committee.  Members of a legislative committee specialize in the aspects of their particular issues and the legislature capture some gains in efficiency due to the specialized division of labor (McCubbins and Sullivan 1987b).  These insights were drawn from the new institutionalist theory pioneered by Coase (1937) who sought to explain why economic agents coordinated their decisions via central authority rather than through market forces.  The basic approach is to study how institutions (qua rule-bound organizations) enable members within them to pursue their goals more effectively.

Alchian and Demsetz (1972) also noted a particular type of transactions cost and argued that firms reduce these costs better than markets.  Economic actors produce more by cooperating than by producing separately.  They therefore prefer to coordinate their actions.  However, coordinated action introduces the problem of measuring accurately the contribution of an individual to the joint output.  However, individual rewards are only weakly related to their efforts; and although they individually bear the full costs of their own efforts they individually receive only a part of the output they jointly produce.  Meanwhile, when individuals shirk by reducing their effort, the savings in effort accrue only to them and the resulting losses in team production are largely borne by other team members.  The rational behavior of each individual is to shirk or free ride on team effort but this will lead to sub-optimal results.  If everybody tends to shirk, then total team output will be reduced and individual benefits will likewise decrease (McCubbins and Sullivan 1987a).

The only way to mitigate shirking is to monitor the efforts of team members.  Alchian and Demsetz (1972) also argued that teams could be made better off if they hire a monitor and give her the authority to set payments on the basis of information with respect to productivity and individual contributions.  Since the monitor herself has an incentive to shirk, the team will give her marketable title to the team’s output and install her as the central contracting agent.  The approach of comparing institutions with respect to how well they enable members to pursue their goals is useful in studying firms and congressional committees.  Problems of monitoring and shirking are evident in legislatures as well as firms.  Transactions costs are incurred in building legislative coalitions no matter how tactical these may be. 

Labor in legislatures could also be divided through the party system.  While the committee system allowed legislators to specialize in issue areas of choice, parties also provide management and coordination.  In theory, parties reduce the transactions costs associated with building policy coalitions within legislatures.  Political parties should be looked at as ‘enduring coalitions’ and if parties were robust, the costs of negotiating bargains and securing legislative votes would be brought down since the process of cobbling coalitions on any issue does not have to take place anew each time a proposed measure was considered (McCubbins and Sullivan 1987b).

Notice the big ‘if’; parties rival legislative committees as mechanisms for coordination and management of collective effort only if parties themselves were robust.  In candidate-centered democratic polities where political parties are by definition weak and party discipline is practically non-existent, committees would emerge as the institutional agency of choice in legislatures.   Scholars and reformers for more than a century have acknowledged the central strategic position of committees in legislatures (Wilson 1885; Bryce 1893; McConachie 1898; Norris 1945; Bolling 1965; Eulau and McCluggage 1984; and Smith and Deering 1984).  While some difference of opinion persisted, there was a substantial consensus on a number of empirical regularities and stylized facts: (a) committees were ‘gatekeepers’ in their respective jurisdictions; (b) committees were repositories of policy expertise; (c) committees were policy incubators; (d) committees possessed disproportionate control over the agenda in their issue-area domains; and (e) committees were deferred to, and that deference was reciprocated (Shepsle and Weingast 1987a).

From the traditional literature on legislative committees, the foundation of committee power consists of gate keeping, information advantage and proposal power.  Committees, as an empirical matter, are veto groups that may choose to keep the gates closed on a particular bill.  Enjoying the advantage of smaller memberships (compared to the entire legislative chamber), a committee could study a question, obtain full information, and put the proposed legislation into shape for final decision.  The practice of referring bills to a standing legislative committee (and not debating them in full plenary until reported by that committee) gives legislative committees formidable proposal power.  However, Shepsle and Weingast (1987a, 86) argued that the ultimate source of committee power “resides in the rules governing the sequence of proposing, amending, and especially of vetoing in the legislative process.”  Both believed that the last stage of the legislative process—the bicameral conference where differences between the legislative chambers—was crucial since it confers relevant committees (or subsets of such committees) ex post adjustment power.  The deference given committees on the plenary floor was supposedly a natural consequence of this ex post power wielded by committees in bicameral conference.

Legislative committees have three specific mechanisms to employ in order to influence their institutional influence on the rest of the legislature.  These include punishment, ex ante defensive behavior, and ex post defensive behavior.  A committee may discourage opposition to its decisions (on nonactions) by developing a reputation for punishing those who oppose it.  This explanation is particularly potent in the realm of distributive politics in which the committee’s bills are of significance to a substantial number of legislators; disaggregatable by individual legislators; and introduced on a regular basis. Examples of these bills include those involving the national budget, public works and revenues.  A committee may also induce cooperative, deferential behavior by ex ante accommodation.  It tries, when preparing its committee report, to anticipate what will pass in full plenary.  However, Shepsle and Weingast (1987a) argued that the third mechanism, ex post defensive behavior, is the committee’s most potent enforcement mechanism since it allows the committee to exercise a veto after the full chamber had ‘worked its will’ on the measure.

Recalling the process of lawmaking in the Philippines, we note that after a legislative chamber has passed a bill in third reading, a Bicameral Conference Committee composed of panels from both chambers is formed to reconcile bicameral differences.  It could be demonstrated that relevant committees would dominate their respective chamber’s panels in the bicameral process enabling them to exercise ex post veto power.  In the bicameral conference process, only a small subset of a legislative chamber’s members participates in the process of drafting a bill that can only be voted up or down (or the so-called closed rule as a take-it-or-leave-it proposal) by both chambers in plenary to determine if the measure could be sent to the President for her appropriate action.  Legislative plenaries cannot amend bicameral output and this restrictive rule gives relevant committees (or smaller groups) inordinate power and influence over the entire process.  The bicameral conference process allows the relevant committee (or a subset of that committee) a ‘second crack’ at a bill.  A committee with only the power to move first—by opening the gates or keeping them closed—possessed only blocking power.  Once it opened the gates almost anything can happen and the committee is virtually powerless to alter the subsequent trajectory of a bill.  In contrast, a committee (or a smaller subset) with powers at subsequent stages, especially the penultimate stage, not only affects the subsequent outcome but also influences the antecedent actions of others by conditioning their beliefs and expectations.  A committee (or a subset) with an ex post veto has the power to protect itself against unwanted changes wrought by the entire plenary.  In that sense, deference to the relevant legislative committee is endogenous to the legislative institutional structure and procedures and should be construed as a property of sequential equilibrium.  The conference process institutionalizes the relevant committee’s ex post veto and the closed ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ rule after the bicameral conference stage enhances the veto (Kreps and Wilson 1982; Shepsle and Weingast 1987a).

In response, Krehbiel (1987) argued that congressional committees had never possessed an insurmountable ex post veto and were very much constrained by their parent chambers.  For one, Krehbiel noted that parent chambers possessed ‘discharge’ powers; legislative committees may be ‘discharged’ or compelled to report bills against their wishes.  He added that parent chambers could exercise these ‘discharge’ powers vis-à-vis the bicameral conference committee itself.  Shepsle and Weingast (1987b) conceded that chamber majorities could attenuate ex post committee powers through various institutional devices, including bypassing the bicameral conference process altogether.  They nonetheless asserted that the exercise of such powers by chamber majorities involved greater transactions costs given the greater number of legislators involved.  This point is best illustrated if we consider what majorities face when they deliberate the bicameral conference report under the closed ‘up-or-down’ rule.  If they vote against the report, the status quo is preserved.  But majorities have already expressed a preference to change the status quo when they approved the measure in third reading and agreed to send a panel to the bicameral conference.  Rejecting the committee report meant returning to ‘square one;’ and returning to ‘square one’ did not guarantee that subsequent results would not remain unsatisfactory. Therefore, the greater difficulties involved in attenuating ex post committee powers indicate that these powers bias final outcomes towards the preferences of relevant legislative committees.   

For our purposes, the debate between Krehbiel, on one hand, and Shepsle and Weingast, on the other, remains an academic one.  Under existing rules of the Congress of the Philippines, chamber majorities do not have ‘discharge’ powers vis-à-vis standing legislative committees.  This means that legislative plenaries cannot compel committees to report out a disfavored legislative measure.  Furthermore, there is no way that the bicameral process can be bypassed.  Miral (2004) reported that even inconsequential bills have to go through the bicameral conference process.  The bicameral process for such bills would be ministerial; the bicameral process for substantial bills would be quite involved.  In all, the bicameral stage is an indispensable stage in Philippine legislation.  The ex post veto of legislative committees is more potent in the Philippines compared to their counterparts in the United States.

It is also true that while committees are crucial to the legislative process, participation in committee decision-making is not universal.  On any given bill, the membership of a committee abdicates its considerable legislative powers to some subset of self-selected members (Hall 1987).  In effect, while legislative committees matter, some committee members matter more than others.  Individual legislators wield such power by virtue of their seniority, acknowledged expertise, and legislative rank.  Officials of committees are obviously more powerful than ordinary members; issue experts rather than policy amateurs and neophytes, and grizzled veterans rather than greenhorns would enjoy a comparative advantage even within legislative committees.

The Marcoses’ political rehabilitation II

Marcos 'inauguration' February 25, 1986

Through this blog, I wish to share comments and my responses to them re the entry entitled “The political rehabilitation of the Marcoses”.

Mon Casiple believes that many of the 2010 voters are young and have no personal recollection of Marcosian martial rule. And that name recall is the ‘name’ (pun intended) of the senatorial game.

He infers therefore that many of these voters without knowledge of the past voted for Bongbong. This is a hypothesis that can be verified empirically. Niva Gonzales is of the same persuasion.

Pancho Lara wanted to know my take on why the Marcoses, particularly Bongbong, managed to get elected to a national post.

My answer:

Bongbong ran a skillful campaign by emphasizing the ‘good things’ (including the electricity-generating wind-mills) he had accomplished while governor in Ilocos Norte. Furthermore, no negative vote campaign was mounted against him. All fire was concentrated on GMA and the most likely sources of criticism–Satur Ocampo and Liza Masa–were quite compromised given that they were on the same ticket with Manny Villar as standard-bearer.

Both would have done the nation a great service by attacking GMA and Bongbong simultaneously.

Akbayan I believe can also be found lacking in this regard.

If the nation’s memory continues to be spotty, then FM II may just be a cruel reality. If that happens, then much of the blame may lie on us–those who went through the horrors of the dictatorship–but have not apparently done much to contest revisionist history.

For example, I did not see us joining the lonely campaign of that educator (whose name I cannot even recall at the moment) to correct many of the public school textbooks, many of which continue to extol the dictator.

I believe the singular insight that we could draw from the Marcoses’ rehabilitation is that our work, our struggle is far from over. It has in fact taken on a new dimension.

We should never blame the mass of ordinary voters for the mandates of the likes of Senators Bongbong, Bong Revilla and Lito Lapid. It simply means that we have not done enough.

But this means we will have to seriously address the issue: how will we–those who fought against the dictatorship–make ourselves a weightier actor in the Philippine political arena?

How can we build bridges to citizens–both organized and unorganized–who have no experience of martial law and have vague recollections of the same so they could join us in rejecting an unrepentant Marcos faction at the polls?

How should we deal with the opinion of many voters who believe that Marcosian rule was comparatively better given the shenanigans of post-Marcos ‘democratic’ governments?

We need to give democracy a ‘good’ name and convince one and all that it is superior to authoritarianism.

Our general task is to transform our current procedural democracy (some say it is an oligarchical democracy) into a substantial one that is more responsive to the needs of the greater majority and the under-classes.

Specifically, we should bring the struggle to the door-steps of the Marcoses. We should wage a tit-for-tat, or better yet, a n > 1-tit-for-one-tat, struggle against them. We should not leave any self-serving interview or press release unanswered.

Though difficult, we should bring the struggle to Ilocos and Leyte even as we continue to consider the big picture.

We should not neglect the international dimension of the contest. We could draw on the support of the various anti-Marcos dictatorship movements in different parts of the world.

The work is cut for us! Will we be up to it?

The Imeldific hooting and wooting? Who can blame her given her family's good run at the polls?