Lately in the news, we hear about charter change or federalism or some new draft of the constitution. Two years ago, during the 2016 elections, "Change is coming" was the buzzword especially for now President Duterte. Proponents of the charter change in favor of a federal or parliamentary form of government push for such and their reason goes as follows:
- Our current form of government is broken
- We need to either fix or replace it
- Our current form of government makes it very difficult or impossible to fix
- We need to replace it.
Truth be told, I am for replacing our broken system of government, and to this day, I still do feel this way. I feel the current system has devolved into a democrazy of sorts. We, Filipinos, are currently under a system where the will of the minority is almost always overshadowed by the will of the majority ... EVEN IF the will of the majority is wrong.
Our democracy has turned into a mob rule type of democracy where our leaders simply submit their will to the that of the majority. One instance I can recall from recent history was during the trial of then Chief Justice Corona. One senator (now the Senate President) gave as his justification for his guilty vote was that that was what he thought the will of the majority was. While it might sound good to the common person, the idea that his own personal opinion didn't matter was a signal to me that this person was acting as a puppet to the majority.
Another piece of evidence of a broken democracy is when certain personalities choose to run on the national level because they know they won't be able to win on the local level. This logic seems to me very contrary to what a good election should be. Some people would rather run on a stage where most people have no idea who they are as opposed to running in local elections where they're known more.
Absolute democracies do not work. It's this kind of democracy that eventually devolves into a democrazy. What our democracy lacks is the mechanism that limits the rule of the majority. What we need is the power to limit the rule of the mob. A parliamentary, a federal form of government, or a combination of both does have that power. And i support that move.
My fear, however, is that the way things are going, we might be replacing one type of democrazy with another type of democrazy. One thing we should get right at this early stage of the drafting of the new constitution is that the majority SHOULD NOT be able to choose the head of state or the president or the prime minister. We should elect people in local elections who will then vote for the head of state (as in the case of a parliament or the electoral college in the US).
This process gives us at least a slightly bigger assurance that political parties will choose competent leaders from amongst themselves as opposed to fielding candidates who win by popularity or name recall. We see this time and time again with Pacquiao, Duterte, Noynoy, Erap, GMA, Binay. We can argue about competencies of these people (some of them are) but they all won their elections due to name recall or popularity.
Ask the normal passerby on the street what competencies the candidate they voted for last 2016 had and most of the time, you'll get a slogan or something about their personality. Almost never will you hear about their platform. This process actually incentivizes political party to field more competent candidates as opposed to more popular candidates since all elections would technically be local elections. It also incentivizes the political parties to naturally merge into two distinct parties, a dream I've had for so long now.
An argument can be made that a federal form of government would actually promote political dynasties more and I would disagree but that would be for another post.
It's time we limit the rule of the majority. No to democrazy. And if the absolute democracy we have now has to go as well, then good riddance!
This process gives us at least a slightly bigger assurance that political parties will choose competent leaders from amongst themselves as opposed to fielding candidates who win by popularity or name recall. We see this time and time again with Pacquiao, Duterte, Noynoy, Erap, GMA, Binay. We can argue about competencies of these people (some of them are) but they all won their elections due to name recall or popularity.
Ask the normal passerby on the street what competencies the candidate they voted for last 2016 had and most of the time, you'll get a slogan or something about their personality. Almost never will you hear about their platform. This process actually incentivizes political party to field more competent candidates as opposed to more popular candidates since all elections would technically be local elections. It also incentivizes the political parties to naturally merge into two distinct parties, a dream I've had for so long now.
An argument can be made that a federal form of government would actually promote political dynasties more and I would disagree but that would be for another post.
It's time we limit the rule of the majority. No to democrazy. And if the absolute democracy we have now has to go as well, then good riddance!
No comments:
Post a Comment