“If we are what we are today – a country with a great number of poor and powerless people – one reason is the way we have allowed politics to be debased and prostituted to the low level it is in now.” (1997 Pastoral Exhortation on Philippine Politics by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines)
Over the 11 years since that was written, the Philippine political situation has gone from bad to worse. This deterioration has not, however, taken place in isolation. Along with the moral and political decay, the Philippines has suffered from several crises and periods of serious social disruption, widespread breakdown of peace and order, uneven and unfairly distributed economic growth, sluggish investment levels, pitiful support for education or other social programs, a steady disintegration of major infrastructure projects, widespread corruption at all levels of society, a massive outflow of workforce seeking employment overseas, and a steady rise in absolute poverty. Something is clearly very wrong. We Filipinos are betraying our country, our children and ourselves. It is time to pull together, as one people. It is time to act, and to act decisively, for all our sakes.
Several political cancer cells have to be excised. They include a lack of understanding of what politics* are all about, an absence of responsible and accountable political parties, and a loss of the sense of the common good.
Politics have a moral dimension which can lead us either to good or evil. Politics are not necessarily dirty. They can be good. But bad politicians defile them and the people allow it.
“A just society must be the achievement of politics, not of the Church. The direct duty to work for a just ordering of society is proper to the lay faithful.” (Encyclical Letter, Deus Caritas Est. Pope Benedict XVI)
For the voters, politics often mean voting on the basis of personality. Voters don’t bother to look into the moral character of the candidates or the political platforms of the political parties. This leads to a wholesale failure of the people to vote according to their collective aspirations and to vote responsibly.
Voters do not realize that voting is a creative act of participating in the building of a just and civil society. People fail to grasp the full impact and meaning of the Constitutional provision that states: “Sovereignty resides in the people, and all government authority emanates from them.”
A post-evaluation of EDSA I and EDSA II shows that while we have succeeded in throwing the undesirables out of power, we have failed to give the successors a “list of our clear aspirations” for them to achieve for us.
People power should have twin objectives: to replace a regime and to provide the replacement with a laundry list, so to speak, of what the people want. We have attained the first objective but have abjectly failed in the second.
For the traditional politicians (trapos), politics are a means of enrichment and a source of influence and power for self and family interests. The trapos look at public office as some sort of private property to be passed from one generation to the next. Family political dynasties are born and perpetuated.
Trapo politics come into play during and between election periods.
The absence of responsible political parties was very much evident in the 2007 elections when senatorial candidates ran under either “Team Unity” or “GO”, neither of which are political parties.
The frequent absence of a quorum in the House of Representatives is another example of party irresponsibility. Political parties have failed to discipline erring members, just as they have failed to interpret the aspirations of civil society and orient them towards the common good.
We have lost our sense of the common good. We have become too individualistic. We forget that by pursuing the community’s interests we benefit the individuals within it, including ourselves. We must now develop a sense of community where people are committed to the welfare of each other. All these are major contributory factors to the political problems that the Philippines now faces.
We would do well to remember the moral principle that men, individually, are responsible for what they make of themselves; but, collectively, they are responsible for the world in which they live.
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* Politics = n. pl. the activities concerned with governing or with influencing or winning and holding control of a government. (Other meanings take the singular.) Miriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, 1964
