Can the Opposition win in 2022?

 

The EDSA narrative provides its adherents a meaningful way of making sense of the world based on a valorizing worldview. In this narrative, the Philippines is like the chosen people of Israel who were delivered from the bondage of dictatorship and ushered into the promised land of freedom.

The past five years under Duterte, would have felt like an exile to Babylon for the opposition. Their defeat in the midterm election of 2019 signaled the prolonging of this exile from power. The recent death of Noynoy Aquino has been used to revive their fortunes in time for next year’s polls. So, can they return to power in 2022?

In opposition, the Liberals and their allies have had time to reflect. Why have they fallen so out of favor with voters? Just like the exilic Jews who pondered their fate in Babylon and the meaning of it. The temptation, and in fact the norm would be to adopt the gods of their conquerors and lose their religion. Should the political opposition do the same and bow to their fate?

Of course, for the faithful the answer to that would be ‘no’. If so, then a plausible, credible explanation would have to be found for why they have fallen so far from political grace.

The worshipping of false gods by the Israelites was the reason given by the Jews to explain why the Lord had allowed them to be conquered. This historical narrative allowed them to hold on to their cultural and religious beliefs despite being in a strange land. And by remaining true to their religion, they found a way back from exile with their identity intact. So, is there a parallel here for the children of EDSA, and if so, then what? How can they credibly explain their fall from power and find their way back from political oblivion?

Ninoy had espoused a belief in Christian Socialism, which traced its roots to the attempts of an enlightened monarch in Denmark to liberate his people from serfdom through mass education. It was a human centered form of capitalism aimed at affording the full blossoming of ordinary citizens to reach their fullest potential. The success of this model is demonstrated today by Scandinavia being one of the wealthiest, least corrupt, and happiest places on earth.

The adoption of a neoliberal worldview by the EDSA regime with its idolatry of the Market, espoused by Washington and mediated through market-enhancing institutions of governance promoted by the WB and IMF, was in effect what had caused the children of EDSA to go astray. This is what invited populist backlashes from the left, in the form of Erap Estrada in 1998, from within, with the apostasy of Gloria Arroyo in 2004, and from the right, with the ascendancy of Rody Duterte in 2016.

Vice Pres. Robredo for her part has emphasized the dynamism of the private sector for collective action by brokering donations between corporate foundations and needy communities. She has not lasted long in any of the public roles assigned to her, first as housing czar then as co-chair of the Inter-agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs, preferring instead to become a maverick policy entrepreneur.

Her support for marginalized communities through her ‘Angat Buhay program’ is still consistent with a neoliberal view that public investment merely crowds out charitable spending. It is consistent with a minimalist role for the state, relying on the magic of markets to broker the needs of society through voluntary, altruistic donations by moneyed elite: trickle-down economics, in effect. Government by NGO.

Duterte didn’t mind breaking with this tradition. He didn’t kowtow to the international rules-based order when dealing with the West Philippine Sea or human rights issue. He in effect defiled the sacred cows before which the EDSA forces fall prostrate.

He offered instead a kind of tough love for the development of the Filipino by focusing on the social ills that have come about because of the aimless accumulation of wealth in the pursuit of materialist, consumerist culture. This tyranny of freedom, of unconstrained choice fostered by free markets, has only led to alienation, apathy and addictive forms of behavior.

Duterte, in acting like a strict father establishing boundaries and disciplining his children has stepped into the breach because while the EDSA narrative structured our political and economic ways of life, it had nothing to offer us from a social standpoint. Neither did the post-EDSA regime engage in the necessary work of political and electoral reforms needed to truly democratize participation in our society.

With the recent passing of Noynoy Aquino, his former confidante Rep. Joey Salceda offered an assessment of his legacy. He praised him for accomplishing many noble things, but also said that PNoy suffered from a lack of ambition due to his ‘worldview’. He had the most favorable macroeconomic conditions, but failed to seize the opportunities these presented. This lack of ambition was his cardinal policy failing.

This is what obscured the original agapic vision of Noynoy’s father for a human centered form of development. This idolatry of the market is the folly that has led to their political exile, so it behooves the children of EDSA to return to The Source for inspiration.

If Duterte represents a consumptive love of country - a form of governance that destroys human life to preserve it, that breaks the law to uphold it; and, if the EDSA regime represents a reciprocal kind of love - a form of governance that relies on transactional markets and padrino-based politics, then the agapic love of country, of actualizing individuals by investing in their human capacities is what the successor to the EDSA regime must work towards.

Only by rediscovering this forgotten vision can the children of EDSA rescue themselves from irrelevance. Acknowledging where they went wrong would go a long way towards healing the partisan divide with those who were once in their broad coalition but no longer see themselves as part of it.

The question is, who among their leaders today would be so humble as to do that? Dare I say none;  and so, for the true believers in Ninoy’s Impossible Dream, they may have to go outside the fold to find a leader who can re-imagine the promise of EDSA and bring its children back from exile into the Promised Land.

Episode 25: Yellow Alert! Is the Opposition drawing the wrong lessons from recent elections?

Is the opposition drawing the wrong lessons from recent elections?

Are they committing the same mistakes now, which could potentially make them obsolete in the future?

What lessons have the opposition taken away from the elections of 2016 & ‘19? Are they the right ones? What lessons could they have drawn, but are refusing to because it would mean admitting some painful truths to themselves? What are the implications for the future?

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.