Cartoon By: Aron Paul C. Caril
EDITORIAL
An imperfect art
Politics is an imperfect art.
This statement from Commissioner Edmundo G. Garcia stood out in the journal of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, which drafted the present constitution. The battle cry then was to prevent the resurgence of another dictatorship in the future. Hence, the popular view was to prevent the sitting president from seeking reelection and to stomp out a one-party dictatorship that ruled the country from 1972 to 1986. The generally accepted idea among the commissioners then was to develop a multi-party system to avoid one party having a monopoly of power.
Against the popular, Commissioner Felicitas S. Aquino believed that leaders are better tempered and tested in the various forms of mass struggles and organized work. If the people are encouraged to have a sense of responsibility in national leadership, what ultimately matters is the political determination of the citizenry to chart their national destiny. Hence, the Constitution should allow the people to exercise their sense of proportion and imbibe the salutary effects of their strength to curtail power when it overreaches itself. She stressed that in the final analysis, the Commission cannot legislate the essence of new politics into the Constitution as it is a chastening experience of learning and unlearning. (Journal No. 039, [July 25, 1986], of the 1986 Constitutional Commission)
After almost four (4) decades from the time we ordained the 1987 Constitution, Philippine politics continues to operate under the multi-party system with the underlying assumption that the citizenry can chart their national destiny.
As we journey towards what the constitutional framers envisioned as a mature citizenry under a multi-party system, we have seen how the system’s inherent defects exacerbate the lingering problem of patronage politics.
In his paper, An Anarchy of Parties: The Pitfalls of the Presidential-based Party System in the Philippines, Julio C. Tehankee noted that Philippine political parties ‘remain candidate-driven alliances of provincial bosses, political machines, and local clans based on clientelistic, parochial, and personal inducements rather than on causes, ideologies, and party programs.’ The weakness of political parties has promoted the mobilization of pork barrels and other state patronage by presidential administrations to push for their legislative agenda in Congress. No wonder for the 2024 national budget, Congress deliberately added P449.54 billion to what the executive branch initially requested as ‘unprogrammed funds’, making the pork even juicier.
While Commissioner Aquino’s vision of a mature electorate could have forced, or at least ushered in, a more democratic multi-party system, the idea remains utopian in light of the Filipino people’s continuing struggle for an equitable distribution of the country’s wealth.
We should not blame the framers of the 1987 Constitution for our current mess. True and long-lived constitutions should be broad enough to meet every exigency and specific enough to stoutly protect the essentials of a true democracy.
What the Constitution should have addressed is left for Congress to legislate. But our current legislators sat on the proposed Political Party Development Act, a legislation that might help mitigate some of the weaknesses of the party system, such as money politics, constant party switching, and weak citizen–party linkages.
Indeed, politics is an imperfect art. The Filipino people almost always bear the brunt of its imperfections.