A post-pandemic primer on the Philippines

 I recently "sat down" with Cecile from Toronto, the host of a Youtube channel known as CeCe Tee Vee and "The Closet Economist" a former official of the Bangko Sentral who is completing her doctoral studies in Barcelona. 

We discussed the state of the world following Covid-19 and the complex challenges facing the nation as it seeks to rebound from its ill effects. We assessed the capacity of the incoming government of Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos, Jr to address it, and the missed opportunity of electing Isko Moreno whose human-centered economic plans were aimed squarely at our complex challenges.

We concluded with reflections on how to promote transformational thinking and keep the flame of the Iskommunity alive.

This episode streamed live on Philippine Independence Day June 12, 2022. The language spoken is mainly Taglish (a combination of English and Tagalog).

Dilawan: Rise and Fall of the EDSA Regime - Part 1

PART 1: ORIGIN STORY

From 1986 to 2016, the worldview of the yellow forces in our country dominated the thinking and actions of most Filipinos.

Yellowism or dilawan ideology is a system of moral, political and economic beliefs with normative prescriptions and modalities for regulating and regenerating Philippine society.

It provided a narrative, around which the life of the nation was structured. 

A whole new generation of young Filipinos has been brought up with this belief system.

In 2016, an epoch-making shift took place with the election of Pres. Rody Duterte. To many, this marked the end of the yellow orthodoxy.

In this episode of The Cusp, I’m gonna try to explain what happened. What led to the rise and collapse of the yellow doctrine and the ongoing search for something to replace it.

Videos referred to on the pitfalls of Marcos:
1. Lust for power https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW4vigtWp08
2-3 Greed and hubris https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxdvmHDV9cA
4. Might makes right https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwHLWWGGry8
5. Debt-driven growth strategy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbB3DyfFOVg&t=22s

Institutionalising People Power through an Ideas Summit

The challenge for him (Mr Aquino) will be to consolidate the movement ... "to ensure that the pattern of his mother’s administration – a non-corrupt president surrounded by a host of sometimes dodgy relatives and advisers – is not repeated."

For the soon to be proclaimed presidential frontrunner Sen Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III of the Philippines whose ambition only began 9 months ago with the passing away of his mother, democracy icon Corazon C Aquino, the problem now is consolidating the different messages of his campaign into a coherent narrative to govern his administration over the coming six years.

Many political analysts including Paul D Hutchcroft of the Australian National University have said that the election of Mr Aquino was a "vote for change". Manolo Quezon blogs in the Daily Dose that "The Philippines is OK" after its successfully held elections. With the settling of the political environment, the prospects for future economic growth seem sound. The country posted a 7.3% growth in the first quarter, leading many analysts to believe a recovery from the global recession is on its way.

It is under such auspicious conditions that Senator Aquino is poised to take charge of a country of 90 million filipinos. The challenge for him will be to consolidate the movement that ushered him into the "limelight" as Hutchcroft calls it "to ensure that the pattern of his mother’s administration – a non-corrupt president surrounded by a host of sometimes dodgy relatives and advisers – is not repeated."

It will be quite easy for Mr Aquino to slip into the malaise of incumbency where the true voice of the people that he promised to champion seldon gets passed through the cordon of protocol.

Already there are numerous rumours circulating of infighting within his inner circle. Several unofficial cabinet line ups have been leaked. Amando Doronilla opines that rather than change, the supposed appointments signal more of the same and "bode ill" for the incoming administration. Alongside these developments are the midnight appointments of the outgoing president Gloria Arroyo which include the Chief Justice and Ombudsman. Her coalition also retains the largest number of seats in the lower house of Congress. These represent serious obstacles to Mr Aquino's pledge of prosecuting her for the many scandals that plagued her administration and to run an anti-corruption drive.

Pieces of unsolicited advice keep hugging the headlines which include everything from fulfilling his promise to quit smoking to imposing a permanent gun ban, to surrendering the lands of the Cojuangco-Aquino sugar estate to land distribution. Having had only 90 days to prepare his platform of government which was conducted by an inner circle of seasoned policy advisors behind closed doors, Aquino runs the risk of overinterpreting his mandate for change. The media driven campaign and the numerous debates with eight different candidates did not provide a proper platform for the discussion of serious policy challenges in detail.

In the Philippines, such a tradition of participative consultative coalition building is vigorously espoused by non-governmental sector organisations that have comprised the "parliament of the streets" since the days of the Marcos dictatorship.

It will be quite easy for Mr Aquino to slip into the malaise of incumbency where the true voice of the people that he promised to champion seldon gets passed through the cordon of protocol. In order to arrest such a slide, as a way of institutionalising "people power" that brand of democracy his family legacy made famous, it might serve his administration well to call for a people's summit to consult with various stakeholders and create a bottom-up approach to his governance style.

Such an attempt to frame a policy agenda for an incoming administration was made in Australia by the Federal Labor government of PM Kevin Rudd back in 2008. It drew from the ideas of 1 000 participants hailing from different sectors of society. Participants to the 2020 Summit as it was dubbed were selected by a 10 man steering committee. The summit was co-chaired by the prime minister and a leading policy expert from Melbourne University.

In the Philippines, such a tradition of participative consultative coalition building is vigorously espoused by non-governmental sector organisations that have comprised the "parliament of the streets" since the days of the Marcos dictatorship. Such a summit early in his administration could help keep Mr Aquino's change credentials healthy and provide a more rational systematic approach to dealing with the disparate ideas that are floating around.

The Market for Rules

A recent straw poll among the business elite in the Philippines showed that an overwhelming proportion of them support the candidacy of Benigno Aquino III, the son of former president Corazon Aquino who is campaigning based on a platform of rule of law and good governance.

The demand for the “rule of law” in the Philippines coming from the oligopolistic business community is quite puzzling considering that the literature points to reasons why this demand would normally be absent in such a context.

The argument goes that the elite often prefer a system in which they can bend the rules to suit their needs. They would have a comparative advantage in capturing a weak state since they command more resources compared to the owners of small and medium enterprises. They would in fact continue to see returns from their investments in capturing rules and regulations long after such investments have been made.

The founder of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, Johann Lambsdorff has in fact found that investors prefer “grand” corruption compared to petty corruption for the simple reason that under the former they feel part of an elite group that is able to influence laws and regulations.

So why are Aquino’s supporters pushing for the “rule of law”?

There are two possibilities: (a) they could be merely capitalising on public anger against corruption in government aimed at the present administration, or (b) they have seen how the absence of rule of law affects their interests and have learnt to compete on their own terms.

The first reason would cast the elite in their traditional role as opportunistic predators positioning themselves behind the leader that captures the zeitgeist during an election in order to exploit opportunities after the wave of public euphoria has passed. The second reason is a bit more interesting since it would suggest that a genuine market for rules is beginning to take shape.

Is there proof for either position?

History certainly favours the former. Studies comparing the Philippine state with that of its East Asian counterparts have categorised it as a weak incoherent state controlled by dominant business interests. The ability of the economic elite to capture state banking institutions and monetary authorities since their inception has been well documented by Prof Paul D Hutchcroft of the Australian National University.

The country’s failed attempts at implementing a genuine land reform program since the 1950s despite the backing of American aid missions and its susceptibility to protectionist crony capitalism under authoritarian rule in the 1970s to mid-80s despite the doting guidance of the IMF are proof that the legal-administrative system in the country has been under the tight control of landed and later industrial elites.

More recent history may be on the side of the latter. It was in the mid-80s after a major banking crisis and the assassination of the exiled leader of the opposition, Benigno Aquino Jr, that the business community withdrew its support to the autocratic regime of Ferdinand Marcos. This is when the yellow confetti rained down in the central business district of Manila during the height of the protest movement to depose him.

According to Emmanuel De Dios of the University of the Philippines the severe recession experienced in the 1980s led to a weakening of the import substituting industries that were standing in the way of reforms to open up the Philippine economy. Under the presidencies of Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos, the country began a process of liberalisation in its tradable goods and non-tradable sector (namely in telecommunications) as subsidies and protection were done away with.

As restrictions to foreign investments were gradually eliminated in all but a few sectors of the economy, a new set of economic elite comprised of small and medium sized exporters began to prosper according to De Dios. Industrialists began to see the opportunities of foreign markets as part of the benefits of increasing globalisation.

Then the Asian Crisis hit. A new populist president in the person of Joseph Estrada took office. While the country had initially outperformed its ASEAN neighbours at the height of the crisis, self-manufactured home-grown crises including insider trading and shady deals involving government pension funds in the takeover of prominent business interests were slowly unravelling the country’s image abroad.

It is in light of these events that the current actions of the business community should be assessed. The second people power revolt that unseated Mr Estrada because of his involvement in illegal racketeering was largely backed and funded by the business community. Seeing how such shenanigans connected to his maladministration affected their wealth via the stock market and how the unfair takeover of their businesses could take place under such a regime, they have begun to see the value of Western style rule of law.

The critics of “civil society” (a local euphemism for the business elite) point to the very methods used by them in unseating the former president as a violation of democratic principles and rule of law. This is where economic and political definitions of rule of law clash. The legalities of the extra-constitutional process as affirmed by the Supreme Court notwithstanding, the opponents of Mr Aquino see his support from the business community that stood with his mother since the mid-80s as a sign of his capture by vested interests.

Partly for this reason perhaps, a recent survey shows the trust rating of Aquino lagging behind the man who may win the election, property tycoon Manuel Villar, who styles himself as a champion of the poor from whose ranks he claims to come. The association of Aquino with a family owned sugar estate that has been mired in controversy ever since his mother made land reform the centrepiece program of her government does not help his case either.

Not that Mr Villar is free from criticisms himself. A censure motion was put forth by his colleagues in the Senate for a conflict of interest involving his properties that benefited from road works proposed by him as chair of the powerful finance committee. The manner by which he flouted the rules in the Senate to avoid bringing the motion to a vote bespeaks of the manipulative way in which he could govern the country. For this reason, enthusiasm for his candidacy from his counterparts in the business world appears to be dismal.

Second Chances Don't Come Easy

In the rough and tumble love/hate game that often entangles lovers, a falling out often occurs which then recedes into a distant memory. Later on, nostalgia can reawaken their bond as memories of the old hurt inflicted dissolves away into rememberances of the good times they shared.

So it is with politics.

Just as in relationships, when the spouses, sons and daughters of fallen or discredited leaders seek to reclaim the mantle of their prominent forebears, the nagging question that often remains in the mind of every conscientious voter is, why ought I give him (or her) another chance at this?

Often times as in romantic relationships, emotions trump reason. But not always. In the lead up to the Democrat presidential nomination, former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton would have succeeded based on a nostalgia for the prosperous 90s when her husband Bill Clinton ran the White House. Had it not been for the impressive campaign waged by Sen Obama, things might have turned out differently for Mrs Clinton.

One could argue that although able to distinguish herself as a US senator, she was not able to differentiate herself from her husband, making his perceived weaknesses and frailties a liability for her unique brand. It might be easier in third world countries where patron-client networks prevail to perpetuate political dynasties. In the West where positions of power are more contestable, two conditions are needed for a political offspring or offshoot to "make it" in the eyes of voters.

One is to distinguish themselves as individuals. Two is to offer a substantial difference. The first one has to do with stepping out of the shadow of their prominent forebears without necessarily tarnishing their good name. The second is more important in countering perceived shortcomings of their patriarch.

John and John Quincy Adams were the first father and son to both serve as US presidents. John Sr succeeded George Washington and served for only one term due to the unpopularity of some of his decisions during the Anglo-French War. His son distinguished himself in international diplomacy before turning to politics.

George W Bush distinguished himself as governor of Texas first before being considered for higher office. He also countered perceived weaknesses in the image of his father George, Sr who promised "no new taxes" during his campaign, but reneged while in office. George Jr did this by following the mould of Ronald Reagan who cut taxes during the height of the Cold War (leading to the chronic deficits that his father had to correct, ironically).

In the Philippines, a former US colony with arguably the longest experience of democracy in Asia, despite an anti dynasty provision in its constitution, a small number of dominant families seems to rotate in occupying the halls of power. Senator Benigno Aquino III son of former president Corazon Aquino is running to succeed Mrs Gloria Arroyo daughter of the late former president Diosdado Macapagal. His running mate Sen Manuel Roxas II is a grandson and namesake of another former president.

Despite his lead in the polls (which many credit to public sympathy for his late mother, the icon of the people power era who passed away last year after a bout with cancer), he is facing a stiff challenge from his colleague in the Senate Manuel Villar who was the frontrunner before Aquino joined the race.

The columnist Tony Lopez, an ardent Aquino critic, cites two main reasons why he believes Aquino has been losing support in the polls. One, despite serving for three terms in the lower house and briefly in the Senate, Lopez says Aquino has failed to leave a distinguishing mark on either chamber. Two, he also suffers from perceived weaknesses in the Aquino brand foremost of which is failing to deliver on social justice with the flawed implementation of agrarian reform, Mrs Aquino's centerpiece program.

Yet despite these hindrances, Mr Aquino still has a good chance of clinching the plurality required in a multi-party field to win the presidency. This is due in large part to the alternatives that many see are equally if not more risky propositions. They include aside from Mr Villar, a self-made billionaire with questionable business and political dealings, a convicted former president Joseph Estrada, former Defense Sec Gilberto Teodoro, an ally of the unpopular Mrs Arroyo and a few more who have languished at the bottom of the polls.

For Mr Aquino, whose poll numbers have been slipping lately, to reclaim the momentum, he would need to address the two important issues raised here. Since he cannot do anything about the lack of tangible accomplishments in the past (the claim of not being tarnished with corruption as an achievement in itself notwithstanding), a good way to start would be to roll-out some well thought out policy prescriptions, which he has begun to do. Another would be to demonstrate how he would correct some of the failings that plagued his mother's administration.

One way he can concretely do just that would be to convince his clan comprised of more than 50 members to give up their stake in Hacienda Luisita, a sugar plantation where some 10,000 families work and live. This would signal to the vast majority belonging to the poorer social strata that he intends to make a clean break with the past. It would also signal to his oligarchic friends in the business world that they cannot curry favor with him.

Until he addresses these concerns, his slogan of bringing about people empowerment and the rule of law will continue to be viewed by many with the same scepticism of a star-crossed lover.

Corrupt Yet So Popular

It is quite surprising a phenomenon to witness how that in many countries around the world corrupt leaders often retain public support.

In a recent poll conducted in the Philippines, the late fromer president Corazon Aquino was rated highest by her countrymen among their most loved political leaders (no surprise there), but the man she toppled in a bloodless revolution, Ferdinand Marcos ranked second.

Following in fourth place was the actor turned politician former president Joseph Estrada who was ousted and convicted for his involvement in illegal racketeering. The latter two figured in the top ten most corrupt leaders of the world compiled by the corruption watchdog Transparency International.

The man who topped that list, Mr Suharto, the late former dictator of Indonesia is still widely held in good esteem by his countrymen despite what current media reports suggest about the successful drive against corruption there. What makes these crooked leaders so well-loved among their poor countrymen long after their demise? Is it their charisma? Perhaps. Is it a sense of nostalgia? For what? Is there something that these corrupt leaders attend to quite effectively that honest leaders fail to do?

The answer to that last question is most definitely a yes. What they do is support a system of clientelism to enough of their constituents so that in their eyes, the means through which such patronage is dispensed becomes irrelevant in a country where governments fail to provide an adequate level of support to their populace.

The phenomenon is in no way limited to developing countries. In an advanced economy such as Italy where people still prefer to contract with each other based on personal ties rather than through impersonal markets, their current prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who has been hit by sex and corruption scandals, seems to retain wide popular support.

It took the global recession for the long-dominant ruling party of Japan to be booted out in last year's election. The new government vowed to take down the all-powerful triad led by the civil service along with members of the political and business elite who in the past have so successfully colluded to steer the economy in the right direction, but whose complacency was now holding the country back, so it claimed.

Even in countries where impersonal contracting has taken over as a result of a strong judicial system and where governments are adequately resourced, political parties are often found to engage in unsavoury practices. In Illinois for instance, the former governor tried to sell the vacated senate seat of President Barack Obama. One can find instances of such wheeling and dealing in local politics perhaps where such personalistic contracting can still be performed.

A recent Gallup poll in the US found trust in government to be at a low. Ever since the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal that toppled President Nixon, the trust rating has gone down from the previous highs registered since the “New Deal” era of President Franklin Roosevelt.

Many attribute this low rating to the gridlock and extreme partisanship that goes on in Washington. Yet despite these sentiments, polarising and highly partisan figures such as former Alaskan governor and vice presidential contender Sarah Palin retain immense popularity. This is probably due to the fact that they are able to connect with their party base by delivering the “red meat” in terms of policy prescriptions.

In other words, in Western democracies, instances of patron-client relations involving the exchange of tangible goods can still be found within governments and political parties, but it is replaced by and large with principle-based policy back-scratching that appeals to the lowest common denominator among their most loyal constituents.

The Romanticism of Elections

As the election season officially commenced in the Philippines this week, it has become quite fashionable among prominent local commentators to romanticise the current Philippine presidential race of 2010 painting it in the epic proportions of a contest between the forces of good and evil. An example of this is a recent column by Mr Manolo Quezon, a former speechwriter for Pres Gloria Arroyo in which he traces the political genealogy of all presidential contenders to the traditions belonging to one of two leading protagonsists in the 1986 people power uprising, former presidents Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino.

It becomes apparent that Mr Quezon regards only one candidate, Benigno Aquino III, the only son of Corazon, worthy of claiming the mantle of democracy represented by his late great mother. All others it would seem belong to “the wrong side of history” as Pres Marcos had been in 1986. A win by any of these candidates would be “impermissible” from Mr Quezon’s perspective. The dark and ominous undertones of such a statement are evident. Either election officials conclude with an outcome consistent with History (with a capital H), or the forces under the Aquino banner might or should enforce their own will on the situation and produce the right outcome from their perspective.

I don't think it is accurate to paint this race using such a broad brush. It would be an oversimplification of what the candidates, Mr Aquino and everyone else, truly represent. I don't think for instance it is fair to associate any one candidate with the repressive authoritarian regime of Mr Marcos for instance. Not one of them is espousing a return to dictatorial rule, but anyone including Mr Aquino could be capable given the right circumstances of taking the country down a path of greater repression of civil liberties and weakening of property rights as the embattled rule of Mrs Arroyo so aptly demonstrated through her flirtations with emergency powers.

A more balanced approach would produce a nuanced view of the two leading contenders, Messrs Aquino and Manuel Villar, a self-made Fortune 500 tycoon with a rags-to-riches story. It would show the evolution of two previously flawed attempts at addressing the problem of underdevelopment in the Philippines which they, on the face of it, represent and hope to redeem.

One strand, implicitly espoused by Mr Villar, has sought to deal with the rent-seeking nature of a weak state by centralising rule-making with the chief executive and by so doing reduce the potential for petty corruption elsewhere. This is a situation which makes the office he would occupy prone to intensive lobbying, but by the same token, present an improvement on the current situation of chaotic decentralised plunder. With a more disciplined bureaucracy and a coherent strategy, rapid development as illustrated by the East Asian economies becomes possible.

This assumes of course that the chief executive himself is disciplined and capable of resisting intense pressure to collude with powerful interest groups. But even if he succumbs to such pressure, the founder of the Corruption Perception Index (transparency.org) Johann Lambsdorff has found that investors actually prefer grand corruption over petty corruption (!) presumably because of the greater predictability that the former affords.

The problem though with this strand is that in some cases corruption does serve a purpose in enabling productive sectors of society to overcome stifling regulatory hurdles in the pursuit of greater value and output within the economy. By centralising rule-making, the executive also centralises deal-making, which means that only a select group of associates and hangers-on can take advantage of the unique opportunities that abound under a crafty and entrepreneurial president as demonstrated by the past administrations of Messrs Marcos and Joseph Estrada (ousted and convicted for plunder but later pardoned by Mrs Arroyo and now placed third by many pollsters in the race to succeed her).

This lessens the amount of investments made by other players due to fears of expropriation by those closely linked with the administration, a point that is exemplified by a scandal involving Mr Villar’s commercial property ventures and two nearly identical road projects. One was publicly funded, thanks to Mr Villar’s intervention as the head of a powerful Senate finance committee, the other privately financed under a fee for use basis. The private venture eventually backed down due to competition from Mr Villar's free access road that conveniently wound through his commercial neighborhood projects.

The other strand promoted by Mr Aquino seeks to maintain the current system of decentralised rule-making and with it the petty corruption that prevails, but what it seeks to introduce is greater transparency and participation in the system. By all accounts, this is arguably the only legitimate means of prying the state loose from the clutches of special interest groups.

The challenge of course is achieving this goal with the meager resources that a third world nation can ill afford to waste given the multitude of development programs it needs to fund. If even the well resourced governments of advanced economies find it troublesome if not costly to enforce such institutions. (An eminent economist in the field, Douglas North, puts the price tag at 35-40% of GDP. What hope is there then for a cash-strapped government that can only raise a mere 14-7% at best?)

Ironically, pursuing “good government” through a costly enforcement system might in the long-run lead to greater corruption. This is a view endorsed by some leading institutional economists. And in the Philippines, it could be argued, the confiscation and sale of assets acquired illegitimately by public officials that begun under Mrs Aquino has itself become a source of corruption.

So in the end what we are left with are permutations of previously failed or flawed experiments espoused by members of the ruling elite in the hope of vindicating the competing hypotheses adopted by their predecessors in addressing the underdevelopment problem of the country. It is not that one candidate is on the right side of history and the other is not. What each party is seeking at this point is a way to carve out a place in history that would suit their own personal narratives.

Aquino on Countering the Calculus of Corruption

At the press conference following his announced bid for the presidency in 2010, Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III revealed what could be a guiding principle in his approach to good governance.

(Right: Senator Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III announced back in September his intention to seek the presidency of the Philippines in the election of May 2010.)

When asked about his solution to widespread corruption, he said firstly that he would emulate his mother, former President Corazon Aquino, whose reputation for simple living engendered greater honesty among public servants. Secondly, beyond appeals to a concern for the greater good, he would vigorously uphold an enforcement of the rules which would not only entail swift justice in prosecuting those who break the code, but incentives to those who abide by it. He called this his “carrot and stick” approach.

The test of this hypothesis will come no less from his office should he be elected which now seems very likely given his astronomic lead in the polls. In the past, winning and occupying the highest post in the land has been subject to what economists call an “incentive incompatible” problem, namely, a misalignment of incentives that ensured a reneging on the promise to uphold and defend the constitution and the laws of the land.

Given weaknesses in institutions, it has been all too easy to “take” rather than “make” while in office. The so-called checks on the excesses have been ineffective under the structure of rent-seeking incentives at play.

But now Filipinos could be witnessing the birth of public stewardship motivated by a true sense of noblesse oblige. Self-restraint might be the only effective means to check executive greed. In the past every contender and pretender to higher office has feigned a sense of noble intentions. The purifying trials of the Aquino family under the repressive Marcos regime may provide the most authentic case of altruism at work.

Turning their backs on the honest democratic legacy of their parents would prove too costly for the Aquino children because it would mean nullifying the sacrifices made by their parents all throughout their formative years.

The late Senator Benigno Aquino Jr set off a virtuous cycle of willling self-sacrifice that was “gifted” to the Filipino people. They reciprocated first by expressing public grief and outrage over his assassination, and then by endowing the presidency to his wife, Corazon, who in turn renewed the cycle of giving back by restoring democratic freedoms curtailed under the dictatorial regime of her predecessor.

(Right: The assassination of former Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr on 21 August 1983 shortly after being escorted by airport security off his plane at the Manila International Airport triggered widespread public outrage against the Marcos regime.)

Now it seems the people in honour of her own personal sacrifice following her untimely demise due to colon cancer are about to reciprocate the Aquinos once over by entrusting the presidency to the only son of the family, Benigno III.

This politics of exchange is not the debased form of transactional politics that is common among the ruling elites and their constituents, a practice that has left the Philippines languishing at the bottom of Transparency International's corruption league table for the Asia Pacific.

Rather, the calculus of exchange that seems to have been initiated by the Aquinos follows the pattern of “gift-giving” in close-knit cultures where the commodities exchanged cannot be valued and where renewing ties by re-investing in social capital is the key.

This new and ongoing dynamic that has sparked a sense of altruistic behaviour among those engaged in the "political game” is set to counter the vicious cycle of corruption and rent-seeking that has been entrenched in the governance arrangements of political institutions operating at the moment.