What can be done to fix our nation?

It is the sad truth that a people deserve the government it gets. The poor quality of our polity is not merely or mainly due only to the poor quality of our politicians and bureaucrats but also due to the steady degradation of the quality of our own people and citizens most of which may be mired in the daily grind of making ends meet.

I speak as a senior citizen whose interest in politics and governance started decades ago–in my grade school years.

However, I also notice a similar lack of civic spiritedness and concern about the common weal among comfortable people thus material poverty may not be the cause for apathy. It is poverty of the human spirit.

Studying the history of other peoples, it seems that great shocks such as international war, revolution, and extensive natural disasters provide defining moments for a nation to unite and put its house in order. Should it come to that?

Reflecting on our own experience, I note that we have yet to unify around key ‘boundary’ questions:

1).

WHO/WHAT ARE WE?

Filipino?

Bangsa Moro?

Ilokano?

Bisaya?

midget Americans?

brown Chinese?

2).

WHERE DO WE LIVE?

 

Treaty of Paris limits?

plus the West Philippine archipelago?

plus the Philippine Rise?

 

3).

HOW DO WE CHOOSE OUR LEADERS?

Elections?

Coup d’etat?

People power?

Vote buying/selling?

Armed violence?

Rizal warned earlier that there are no tyrants unless there are slaves. Politics is really a relationship. Most of our despicable politicians were (sadly) elected into office. We are also complicit in the corruption of state officials and institutions. True, there are pathologies and imperfections in our instititutions. But these pathologies have long been analyzed and sensible solutions had been proposed. Why can’t we as a people adopt these solutions?

Is it because of the opposition of an intransigent political elite?

But then, who is truly sovereign?

Aren’t they our servants?

Or what we have here in the Philippines is an electoral oligarchy pretending to be a full-blooded democracy?

And that, we do not have what it takes to fix our house?

Comments. questions, and reactions are most welcome.

Picking up a rock…and still being able to fly?

I did not comment on the on-going impeachment trial of Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona except for the blog-entry on the G-word [see <https://bongmendoza.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/four-letter-words/>].

My reasons: I did not have anything new to say or a novel spin on the developments even if the impeachment was the news of the day for three months running.  At many instances, I got bored with the proceedings when most of the business of the day was marking of exhibits and as the defense resorted to technicalities that a non-lawyer like me cannot follow.  Of course, I also had work to do.

Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago

This reminds me of the Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s admonitions against non-lawyers making commentaries on the impeachment proceedings.  At one point, she argued that the law is a body of technicalities.  For these reasons, it requires one to go through four years of law school and a year to prepare for and pass the bar examinations.  So there!

However, to our amusement and consternation, both the prosecution and defense panels resorted to several schemes which could be best considered as fool-hardy.

We Filipinos have a sensible warning: Do not pick up a huge stone only to fumble and the stone drops on your foot.

Gambits are risky and can go both ways. They could pay off big time or could land people hard on their back-sides.

Let’s consider the prosecution.  At the heart of its Article 2 of the Articles of Impeachment is the charge that Chief Justice Corona under-declared his assets (particularly peso bank deposits) in his sworn statements of assets and liabilities and net worth (SALNs).  If the prosecutors alleged this misdeclaration, it meant that they had prior access to Corona’s bank records even before they were able to prepare the Articles of Impeachment.  During the impeachment of then President Joseph Estrada, the House prosecution was allowed by the Senate to issue universal subpoenas for banks to submit bank records of Estrada and his alias–Jose Velarde.

Lead prosecutor Rep. Niel Tupas Jr.

 This time, the Senate allowed the issuance of subpoenas only pertaining to specific peso bank deposits of Corona.  The prosecutors complied by specifying the account numbers.  However, they found they needed to explain how they were able to obtain such information.  They needed some defense against the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ doctrine; that if the evidence was obtained illegally, then it would be inadmissible in court.

Rep. Rey Umali

Rep. Rey Umali (Oriental Mindoro) tried to convince the senators he got an envelop containing the bank documents from a “small lady” within the premises of the Senate.  However, footage from the building’s CCTV cameras did not support Umali’s story.  So it was Rep. Bolet Banal’s turn to make his best shot.  Banal claimed he found the documents left at his house’s gate.  One senator (I cannot remember who) asked him if there were CCTV cameras outside his house.  I could claim he sorrowfully said there were none.

Rep. Bolet Banal

As things stand,  the prosecution’s gambits paid off.  The Senate ruled (with three not voting) to accept the evidence submitted regarding Corona’s peso deposits.  

Serafin Cuevas

 The defense panel, headed by former Associate Justice Serafin Cuevas, had their share of gambles.  The first was relatively minor: a charge that lead prosecutor Tupas was himself building a P50 million mansion in Quezon City.  It did not gain traction since it was Corona who was on trial.  Representatives are not impeached; they must win elections otherwise they cease to be representatives.

Then, in the middle of February, the defense panel clad in red shirts (but with Cuevas absent) gave a week-end press 

conference and accused Malakanyang of offering P100 million for each senator to defy the Supreme Court’s order to keep Corona’s dollar deposits secret.

The defense took a calculated risk.  The senators were predictably incensed and several took the defense to task for making the accusation and was asked to name names–a usual demand in Philippine politics.  Atty. Roy of the defense apologized profusely and explained that it was not their intention to tarnish the reputation of the honorable senators but only to warn of the Palace’s intentions.

It also appears that the defense’s gambit paid off.  During that same Monday, the Senate voted to uphold the Supreme Court’s ruling on Corona’s dollar deposits.  The apparent subtext is: if you voted against the Supreme Court, then you were reached by the Palace!

Other ploys of the defense did not meet as much success.  It wanted anti-Corona senators such as Senators Franklin Drilon and Kiko Pangilinan to inhibit themselves from the impeachment proceedings.  Suntok sa buwan ito!  It is clear that President Noynoy Aquino wants Corona impeached and as loyal members of the ruling Liberal Party, Drilon and Pangilinan are expected to support the President.  Even if that involves assisting a clearly-ill prepared prosecution panel.  

Senator Franklin Drilon

The defense could have gained greater credibility if they also asked for the inhibition of clearly pro-Corona Senators such as Defensor-Santiago.  That is, they want an impartial court.  In contrast, the prosecution panel (save for the Vitaliano Aguirre incident) takes Santiago’s tongue-lashing and tirades in stride.

In the past days, Corona himself went on a media blitz and implicated two senators in a seeming plot to unseat him as Supreme Court Chief Justice.

First, he claimed Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, also of the Liberal Party, asked him to share his term as chief justice with Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, the man believed to be acceptable to President Noynoy. Guingona dutifully denied Corona’s story and insisted they only met for dinner with other people.

Senator Teofisto Guingona III

Then Corona said that a male senator approached him and asked him to resign as chief justice.  He declined to name the said senator because supposedly it will make the latter ‘angrier’.  He added that senator knew that Corona was referring to him and that he will name him in due time. Feeling alluded to, Drilon denied Corona’s allegations and challenged the former to name the so-called senator immediately.

What is Corona’s game?  Why is he riling some senators who will judge him?  

I believe he is guided by the number of senators required to convict him.  At present, there are only 23 senators because the vacancy created by the election of Noynoy Aquino as President was not filled.  Be that as it may, 16 senators must vote in favor of his conviction.  If only 15 senators do so, he is acquitted and remains Supreme Court Chief Justice.  Put in another way, if 8 senators vote against his conviction, he is acquitted.

If indeed he (and his defense panel) is riling  Drilon, Pangilinan, and Guingona, he probably believes that the former will vote against him no matter what.  And the purpose of the propaganda offensive is to convince the public that the three will vote against him simply upon the bidding of the Palace.  One must remember that his chief battle cry is to maintain the judiciary’s independence.

The defense will present its case tomorrow.  The arguments of the defense will be the subject of future blog entries.

 

 

Corruption, state capture and extra-constitutional challenges in the Philippines, Part I

(Author’s note:  This blog entry was a seminar presentation made before a regular class at the National Defense College of the Philippines, where I once served as vice president for research and special studies, during the first quarter of the year.  Given the challenge of melding the diverse concepts and phenomena covered in the presentation, the talk is offered for the consideration of  followers of this blog.)

Logo of the National Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP)

Some key concepts need to be clarified so we can make progress in this presentation.  Among them include politics, constitutions, corruption, state or regulatory capture, and legitimacy.

What constitutes politics?  Politics is an ubiquitous aspect of life as human beings need to make, amend and preserve the general rules under which they live.  It involves the contest for scarce goods, both tangible and intangible.  With scarcity, the political contests results in some getting and some not getting the scarce resources.  Conflict therefore is one aspect of political life.  

However, people also realize that for order to ensue, they need to cooperate with each other notwithstanding differences in tastes and preferences and conflict over limited goods.  They need to agree on the fundamental rules of the so-called political game.   Otherwise, it would be quite impossible to build and sustain human communities.  

If politics is seen as a ‘game’, then it is rule-bound.  As a rule-bound process, politics is civilized.  Absent rules, politics is a no-holds barred melee.  Without rules, politics is war.

To build human communities, constitutions, which are the ground rules of the political game, are needed.  Constitutions indicate who rules, how they will rule, and why rulers should be obeyed by the ruled.

If we are to extend the metaphor further, the nature of the game is important and this is also specified by the constitution.  The rule book specifies the game: it’s basketball, not tennis!  It’s elections, not coups or insurrections!

When political actors stick to constitutional rules, they’re engaged in regular politics.

When they don’t, they’re engaged in irregular or extra-constitutional politics.  In at least three occasions in our nation’s history, leaders were sought to be deposed through irregular processes known as ‘people power’.  These attempts succeeded in February 1986 and January 2001 but failed in May 2001.   

It is obviously impossible to write a rule book for extra-constitutional politics.  Try it: write the rule book for ‘people power’!

Human communities will have to deal with constitutional conundrums.  First, how does a group of people agree on a constitution in the first place?  For instance, what will make the local communists and secessionists agree to give up the armed struggle and participate in rule-bound politics?  Will adversely-affected parties not opposed any peace agreement reached with these political actors.

Ultimately, a constitution is enforced by armed force.  The secret of effective constitutions lies in how the armed specialists of violence are constrained even as they are empowered to enforce the law.

Premature celebration, premature congratulations?

I really hate to be a spoil-sport but I will go on just the same and raise some questions re the May 10 general elections.

The Inquirer today reports that “[T]he number of disenfranchised voters in last Monday’s election may range from 2 million to 8 million, a figure that could have changed the picture of the vice presidential and senatorial races, according to the Commission on Elections’ consultant on queue management.

While the automated voting was a success, Marvin Beduya said other aspects of the May 10 computerized elections may be considered a failure.

Beduya is quoted saying: “I think we should celebrate the success of the automated voting soberly and with the thought that it may not have delivered the true will of the people, the key purpose of elections, in a manner that is very difficult to prove”.

The long lines and the crowds wilting outside the polling precincts may have discouraged millions of voters from exercising their right to vote, said Beduya, an adjunct professor at the Asian Institute of Management, in his blog http://www.synthesistblog.com.

He said this may have affected the outcome in the tight races, particularly in the vice presidential contest between Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay and Sen. Manuel Roxas II. The margin of votes between the two candidates was just under a million votes.

Basing his computation on the voter turnout, the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting data, and the historical record, Beduya said between 1.91 million to 7.92 million voters may have decided not to turn out and vote—what other analysts have termed “self-disenfranchisement.”

“I am inclined to believe that these discouraged voters who came from the demographic of the elderly and the disabled, mainly in the urban areas and so may have voter preferences skewed to certain candidates,” he said.

Aside from the vice presidential race, this management failure may also have affected the contest among the 11th-, 12th- and 13th-placed senatorial candidates. Based on historical data, the margins between the candidates in these spots are small.

Beduya said the congestion at the polling centers was due to such factors as the clustering of the precincts, the board of election inspectors lack of training to handle the large numbers of voters, and technical anxiety about the voting machines.

Let me comment on Beduya’s observations.  How can anybody celebrate the ‘success’ of the automated election system if one similarly recognizes that it may not have reflected the ‘true will of the people’ given the large numbers of apparently disenfranchised voters?

I also argue that Beduya makes an unwarranted conclusion when he declares that the disenfranchisement only affects the contest between Roxas and Binay for the vice presidential post as well as the contest for the 11th up to the 13th senatorial posts.

I think it can also affect the presidential contest between Noynoy and Erap.

Let me first declare that I will give up my Filipino citizenship if Erap gets a second lease in the presidential palace.

Let me also say that I have already accepted Noynoy as the 15th president of the Republic.

However, if some 2 to 8 million voters were disenfranchised last Monday, then even Noynoy’s spectacular lead over Erap of close to 5 million votes does not guarantee that he actually won the polls especially if we take the high end of the estimate.

Of course, we will not know how the disenfranchised would have voted last Monday.  For all we know, most of them would have still voted for Noynoy.

But that is precisely the point.  We will not know and we cannot know–a point that Beduya himself recognizes.

We should really pay attention to improving the queue management system, as Beduya was reported to have recommended last Tuesday.  It may have been a mistake to cluster precincts and prior time-and-motion studies should have been mounted to see if 1,000 voters per clustered precinct could be properly serviced within the designated voting time period.

Conrad de Quiros and Harry Roque are reportedly happy to be proven ‘wrong’ re their apprehensions over the new voting system.  The local bourse also reacted favorably with upbeat indices.

Elsewhere, Moody’s believes the absence of doubt re Noynoy’s victory is favorable to the country’s credit rating.  The credit rating agency said the seeming consensus that Aquino was the clear winner of the 2010 presidential election meant that the probability of disruptions created by protests by losing candidates is low.

Consequently, Moody’s said, the absence of chaos in the political front appeases investors and encourages a positive outlook on the Philippine economy.

Given Beduya’s observations regarding substantial voter disenfranchisement, aren’t the celebrations and congratulations premature?  Or shouldn’t they be at least qualified?

I strongly share Mr. Beduya’s opinion and concern that we cannot simply move on and feel good about Monday’s elections.  We need to dissect our first stab at automated elections, identify shortcomings, and implement measures to correct them so they will  not happen again in future elections.

Finally, can’t the COMELEC be put to task for allowing disqualified presidential candidate Acosta to still be made available to voters?  Large notices regarding his disqualification should have been posted in every precinct to warn voters who will choose him that they are wasting their votes!