Neither administration nor opposition has a serious political organization
YEN MAKABENTA
First word
AFTER two years of the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte — a period when there has been both fanatical support and fanatical opposition to his leadership — it is a shock to discover that neither the administration nor the opposition has developed serious political organizations that can pass for political parties in international politics today.
You might say that it’s just one more political convention that was laid aside in the rush to “tunay na pagbabago (real change).”
A few years back, the noted writer and editor Juan T. Gatbonton wrote a column in the Manila Times, wherein he discussed a phenomenon called “Philippinization” — a new political disease recently identified in academic study.
In his essay, “Philippinization”: A new disease of Third World political parties,” Gatbonton reported that a German academic, Audreas Ufen, looked into the condition of political parties in post-colonial Indonesia — and found them to be “weakly rooted and at the brink of Philippinization.”
Professor Ufen explained that a political party infected with Philippinization is both extremely fractionalized and weakly institutionalized. These two traits – weak organic linkages and the inability to develop stable norms and practices – have become so pronounced in Philippine parties that they are a disease.
The consolidation of democratic practices is most difficult to carry out in political systems of this sort. Such systems are also the most vulnerable to political collapse and state failure.
State of PH political parties
I thought of borrowing today from Johnny Gat (he is a friend and neighbor in Quezon City), because I mean to discuss today the state of Philippine political parties, as the nation heads to the midterm elections in May next year, or to a later debate and referendum on a new charter.
Johnny‘s points on Philippinization are significantly apposite to recent events and developments in national politics, which remarkably evince no advance in our political system and political culture.
In just the short span of a fortnight, we have witnessed the following developments:
1. The vaunted super-majority party coalition supporting the administration of President Duterte has split into rival factions. The lead party in the coalition, PDP-Laban, has lost its two prime positions in Congress: the presidency of the Senate and the speakership of the House. As if that were not enough, a rebellious faction held a rump election to establish a new PDP-Laban party leadership.
An effort by President Duterte to heal the rift fell flat.
2. Nine political groups decided to form an alliance with the Hugpong ng Pagbabago (Alliance for Change) regional party founded by Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio. Astounded by the drawing power of the new party, President Duterte himself decided to become a member of Hugpong, but he continues to profess membership in PDP-Laban, of which he is chairman.
3. To prevent its being forgotten, as the party in opposition, the Liberal Party has lately made an attempt to show a pulse. On the 35th anniversary of the assassination of his father, former senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., former president Benigno Aquino 3rd came out of seclusion and made his strongest political statement in a long time. He delivered a stinging criticism of the Duterte administration. He wore the seemingly retired and once ubiquitous yellow colors of the LP and the Aquino forces. He announced the plans of the party and the opposition to field a strong, competitive slate in the 2019 elections. And he did not shy away from predicting victory for the opposition next year.
4. The opposition, consisting of various parties and interest groups, have also moved to show the public a semblance of unity. A motley group of opposition lawmakers filed impeachment raps against seven Supreme Court justices who voted to oust former chief justice Maria Lourdes Sereno from the high court. Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo promptly referred the complaint to a house committee.
5. Hugpong and PDP-Laban have vied with each other in announcing their Senate tickets for the 2019 elections. And they oddly featured common names in their lists. Some of the mentioned aspirants found themselves wondering whether they were helped or set back by the announcement.
The rush-rush party decisions and inchoate developments underscore the total lack of institutionalization in these seemingly major political parties.
6. Finally, masking the lack of strong political parties in the country, is the babel of parties that ensued when the 1987 Constitution adopted the multi-list party system of some European parliaments. The party-list has become a haven for political entrepreneurship. Its parties are essentially formless, fatuous and unorganized.
Not surprisingly, the CPP-NPA ventured into creating fronts through the party-list system.
No structure, no ideology, no programs
Professor Ufen’s allusion to a political disease in Philippine politics merits serious thought. Neither the administration nor the opposition has bothered to organize themselves into authentic or serious political organizations. They have no structure, no programs and no processes for formal membership or affiliation.
Institutionalization is the conventional goal of political organizations.
Most of our political parties are barely past the stage of being an interest group or a pressure group.
What distinguishes a political party from these groups is this: A political party is by the standard definition, an association of people who hold similar views about what should be a community’s social and economic priorities, and who come together to establish these priorities by gaining control of the machinery of government. It is this which separates a party from a pressure group or an interest group.
An interest group aims to influence the government, while a party is or wants to be the government.
The rationale for organization is self-explanatory. In any system where collective choices are made by voting, organization pays. When action requires winning majorities on a continuing basis in multiple settings, organization is absolutely essential. Our Constitution puts a high premium on building majority alliances in enacting laws and electing political leaders.
The objectives parties serve
Some key objectives that are effectively served by a strong party organization are:
1. To build stable, legislative and electoral alliances;
2. To mobilize voters;
3. To develop new electoral techniques and strategies.
There are some political thinkers who contend that political parties create democracy and that modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties.
Parties recruit and train leaders, foster political participation, and teach new citizens democratic habits and practices.
Beyond this, parties knit citizens and leaders together in electoral and policy coalitions, and allow citizens to hold their elected agents collectively responsible for what the government does.
Finally, parties help to organize the activities of government by facilitating the collective action necessary to translate public preferences into public policy.
The debate over Charter change and federalism would be more comprehensible, if we have organized political parties, in administration or in opposition.
yenmakabenta@yahoo.com
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