BANTAY GOBYERNO 067
By Ike Señeres
“FIXING OUR DEMOCRACY”
We
copied our democratic system from the United States of America (US), but it
seems that we had copied wrongly, even if all we had to do was to copy. For
instance, the President and the Vice President in the US would always be
elected together, meaning to say that they would always come from the same
political party. That way, these two top officials would always have the same
agenda, and they would never have to fight each other in the political arena.
The Vice President in the US is also concurrently the Senate President, and
that way, he is in the best position to bring forward the agenda of the
President in the Senate, a situation that enables the Executive Branch and the
Legislative Branch to work very well together. You might wonder how and why the
Vice President could become the Senate President even if he is not a Senator,
but that is how the American system works.
Because
of the big differences in the number of Congressmen that would represent the
American States depending on the size of their voting populations. The
Americans decided to have two Senators each the States regardless of the size
of their voting populations, and somehow that became the equalizing factor
among them, so to speak. When the time came however to copy the composition and
structure of the American Senate in order to have our own version, we decided
to elect our own Senators nationally (at large), thus defeating the purpose of
equalizing representation. Even if we do not have the equivalent of American
States here in the Philippines, we do have regions here, and had we decided to
elect our Senators regionally (and not at large), we would have achieved the
purpose of equalization just the same.
Based
on the logic that the appropriator of funds should also be the auditor, the
government auditing organization of the US is merely a committee of the US
Congress, unlike here in the Philippines where the Commission on Audit (COA) is
a separate commission, and a Constitutional Commission at that, independent
from both the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch. Because of this
unique arrangement, the Philippine Congress is often placed in an awkward
situation, as it is audited by an external entity when in fact it should be the
one doing the auditing, being the appropriator of funds. Considering the fact
that the Philippine Congress has its own Ethics Committees and other monitoring
mechanisms, would it not be possible that many scams would have been detected
and prevented had it been discovered from the inside?
As I
understand it, the ideology of a political party should be different from its platform
and more so its programs should be different from its platform. In theory, the
ideology of a political party should never ever change, even if its platform
could change every now and then, perhaps during each and every election.
Understandably, the programs of a political party could change all the time,
but what is important is that these programs are implemented, reported and
monitored in an open and transparent manner. Unlike in the US where there are
only two political parties that are officially recognized, we have a multiple
party system here that practically breeds a free-for-all situation that is
difficult to control. In the US, the political parties are funded by the
federal government, and perhaps it would also be a good idea to fund our
political parties here.
It
should really be the ideologies, platforms and programs of political parties
that should differentiate one party from another. Unfortunately however, it is
very difficult to differentiate the political parties over here from one
another, because the lines over here are drawn between persons, and not between
ideas. As it should happen, political parties are supposed to produce the
leaders who would push their ideologies. As it is actually happening here
however, parties are formed by persons who almost always would have no
ideologies to push, thus our system here would have the tendency to foster the
so-called cults of personalities. Perhaps this is also the reason why political
dynasties would tend to prosper here; dynasties that would tend to promote
their own family interests rather than the broader national interests.
There
are many groups that are now advocating a shift to the parliamentary system or
a federal system, as the case may be. While I think that these may be good
ideas to consider, I think that first things first, we should fix our democracy
first before we decide to shift to another political system. For one, it is
obvious that if we could not have a robust multi-party system, no other new
political system would work, because if the political parties are bad or weak,
the new political system would still be bad or weak. On that note, I would say
that the real strength of political parties is its members who truly believe in
their own ideologies. Simply put, these members are driven by their ideological
persuasions, and not by their personal ambitions.
One way
to find out whether a political party is genuine or not is to observe whether
or not it is behaving according to the norm or not. As I am observing it now,
no local political party is planning to hold primaries or conventions. Instead,
we hear about prospective candidates being “anointed” to run based on the
personal preferences of party leaders, rather than based on the results of
primaries and conventions. Again I say that we copied the political party
system from the Americans, but we copied wrongly, even if all we had to do was
to copy. Perhaps it is too much to expect our electorate to become mature, if
our political parties do not mature ahead of the electorate.
We also
copied the pork barrel system from the Americans, but we also copied it wrongly
and that is why it also went awry. The Americans invented the pork barrel
system in order to provide funds to local projects that the US Congress “could
not see”. As it was invented by the Americans, certain projects could be funded
by the pork barrel by way of a development fund that could be tapped as a
chargeable account, meaning to say that the money was not physically
transferred to the account of a lawmaker. Over here however, the funds were practically
handed over to the pockets of the lawmakers, leaving it up to them to spend the
money anyway they like, certainly beyond where the Philippine Congress “could
see”.
As it
is supposed to be, political parties are supposed to have a large membership
base that could be validated all the way to the municipal level. In theory,
these members are supposed to be ideologically driven, very much like the cadre
of the communist parties that could be found down to the smallest village. As we
know it over here however, the only political parties that we could see or feel
are the usual politicians and their loyal followers. Let us no longer ask
whether these people are ideologically driven, because we might just be in for
a big disappointment. Much as we have many ideas about how to change our
political system, perhaps we should focus first on fixing our democracy by
correcting what we copied wrongly.
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