| A Strong Republic By Antonio C. Abaya July 25, 2002 As expected, President Arroyo made as theme of her state-of-the-nation-address or SONA the building of �a strong republic� which, she said, �will serve as the bedrock of the victory we seek over poverty within the decade.� �I am determined to build a strong republic by breaking the back of terrorism and criminality��..Indeed, we are at war: at war with the terrorists, at war with the kidnappers, at war with the drug lords. And we are determined to win decisive victories on all fronts. As Commander-in-chief, I am taking a direct hand in the war against the enemies of the people�,� she vowed. Those are fighting words. Would that she meant every single word, and that she would have the political will to translate her words into action. Soon. Readers of this column know that I have expressed similar sentiments in these pages, that I have called for a strong state and a strong government, to take the place of the soft state and the succession of weak governments that we have had, from one president to the next, with the exception of the kleptomanic Ferdinand Marcos and his greedy family. The soft state and weak governments that we have had are an unwitting inheritance from the Americans whose liberal political wisdom is enshrined in the Jeffersonian concept that �the best government is the one that governs least,� which is particularly resonant with the Republican Party. In other words, no government interference in business, no government interference in media, no (federal) government interference in state and local affairs, no (executive) government interference in the legislature and the judiciary, etc. This may have worked well in the unique environment of the USA, where strong institutions, both inherited from the cradle of Anglo-Saxon culture (Great Britain) as well as developed in the American heartland, took root early in their history. But transposed � lock, stock and barrel � into the feudal society of the Philippines in 1898 and onwards, before strong institutions could take hold, has meant that the soft state and weak government (which govern least because of inefficiency and corruption, not because of ideological choice) became the personal and familial preserve of feudal lords and their successors-in-interest, the trapos, most of whom no longer come from the traditional landed elite, but from the middle and lower classes, fired by ambitions to transcend their humble origins in the shortest possible time. That is why public office in the Philippines, whether elective or appointive, has become the fastest way to fabulous personal and family wealth, and enormous fortunes are invested in order to win it, through fair means or foul, including massive cheating during elections and the murder of political opponents during and after the campaign. When the public office is won, the huge investments are recovered many times over through rent-seeking and other scams. Anyway, the soft state and the weak government are not capable of enforcing the laws strictly, consistently and equitably, so why lose sleep abiding by those laws, when you can get away with breaking them as long as you have right lawyers? It is an attitude that feeds on itself, like a malignant tumor. In a weak republic, there is no rule of law, only the rule of lawyers. ***** It is not a coincidence that all the successful countries in this part of the world, whether capitalist or communist, have at their core a �strong republic� , meaning a strong state and a strong government that intervenes in practically all aspects of society, setting the rules for all activities and making sure those rules are followed strictly, consistently and equitably. Thus the �strong republic� in South Korea impelled the government to charge and convict and sentence to death and life imprisonment two former presidents (later pardoned) for corruption. The �strong republic� recently indicted two sons of the incumbent president for bribery and influence peddling; it previously charged, convicted and jailed the son of the previous president, also for corruption, even while that president was still in office! The �strong republic� in Thailand (which, of course, is a constitutional monarchy) empowered the Comelec of that country to expel from the Senate ten newly elected senators whom it SUSPECTED of winning by fraud in the elections four months before. In the �weak republic� that is the Philippines, the election protest against Juan Ponce Enrile, who benefited from massive cheating in 1995, was made to drag on for six years, totally eating up the term of office for which he had been (apparently fraudulently) elected, without any resolution. The �strong republic� in Malaysia (also a constitutional monarchy) empowered the prime minister to outlaw, disband, confiscate the assets of, and jail the leader of, an Islamic fundamentalist sect that had the effrontery to train an armed force of (only) 300 men in the jungles of southern Thailand.In the �weak republic� that is the Philippines, the weak government signed an agreement with an Islamic secessionist group recognizing their 24 encampments in Mindanao where they trained and armed 24,000 jihad warriors. The �strong republic� in Indonesia just the other day sentenced to 15 years in jail the billionaire son of the former strongman Suharto for, among other things, masterminding the murder of a judge who had found him guilty of corruption, only four years after the overthrow of his father. In the �weak republic� that is the Philippines, not a single member of the Marcos family has been sent to jail, 16 years after People Power, despite more than a hundred court cases against them. In any of the �strong republics� of East Asia, leaders of military mutinies would be court-martialed and, if found guilty, executed by firing squad. In the �weak republic� that is the Philippines, the leaders of the very first mutiny-coup against the Aquino Government were punished, by no less than the armed forces chief-of-staff himself, with, don�t laugh if you have forgotten, 30 push-ups! ***** Not surprisingly, the loudest criticism of President Arroyo�s �strong republic� came from the communists and their pro-communist allies in media, who are fearful that the �strong republic� would deal a fatal blow to their socialist revolution-in-the-making (as in fact it did in all the successful non-communist states in East Asia) and who would rather have a weak republic since such a political marshmallow would be much easier to massage into a state of anarchy, which would be conducive to their revolution. Their hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty do not cease to amuse me. In June 1989, faced with tens of thousands of high school and university students illegally assembled in Tienanmen Square to demand more civil and political liberties (and not necessarily the dismantling of the socialist state), the �strong republic� that is the People�s Republic of China solved the problem by sending dozens of armored personnel carriers plowing into the crowd, their machine-guns blazing. The massacre was universally condemned worldwide. The only ones who publicly applauded the Chinese were Joma Sison of the CPP and Crispin Beltran of the KMU whose Golden Rule seems to be �Do not do unto us what we would do unto you when we�re in power�. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the August 13, 2002 issue of the Philippine Graphic Weekly magazine. |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �A Strong Republic� August 5, 2002 FRANKLY I must say that I disagree with you on most points, although you raised valid ones. I always like to dwell on how pseudo-phrases like the one used by Madame Arroyo came into existence. My theory is this: some stupid , grade B writer like Bunye (Tiglao would not have committed such a stupid error) came across the writings of Gunnar Myrdal (indirectly, some stupid Jesuit whispered the phrase into his ears). Myrdal, as you know, spoke of the soft state and the anti-thesis to that, per Bunye and some stupid half-educated Jesuit, is the �strong state.� No need to dwell further into the substance of that phrase for there is nothing but an empty peanut pod whose seeds have been eaten by bok-bok. I rather take the view that we would be closer to the �strong state�, as clumsily stated by Bunye and his Jesuit mentors, had American colonialism lasted for another 50 years. We might even have a coroner�s jury and a jury system instead of the half-Hispanic, half-Malayan judge system where corruption easily thrives. And we would have better judges. This is just one. Would we have PPAs written on the sly allegedly by Ramos and his henchmen? Ross Tipon, Baguio City. [email protected]. ***** PARE�sale ka na lang sa ating New Spiritual Governance. Walang mangyayari sa politizing dito. Eco-village is the answer to Globalization�Nothing to do with Alleluia, just deep spiritual development�Critical Mass is all what we need to attain. �.and malapit na tayo�Heal Yourself�.Heal the earth. Edgard. Edgard Guevara. [email protected]. MY REPLY: Wake me up when you get there. ***** YOURS IS a very powerful and thought-provoking article, sir. Dissecting, clear and to the point. Perhaps a �strong republic� is just what our country needs. However � and this is the real tricky part � let us be very clear as a people how we define the term. Out of desperation, there may be again the tendency, I�m afraid, for the general population to equate a �strong republic� with that of a Marcosian brand of �authoritarianism� which would be a shame for it will be back again to square one. Let it be understood that a �strong republic� should be one that is populist, pro-people, free from political color and, above all, in the service of the general segment of society. The real danger here is, a strong administration might be just that towards the other side of the fence but not towards it own members. Meaning, an administration in power strongly prosecuting a wrong-doer belonging to the other party, yet turning a blind eye when the wrong-doer happens to be a party-mate. Which is nothing but a brand of cronyism. Thus a �strong republic� must be a system by itself regardless of who is in power, freed from the limitations of party affiliation or ideology. Truly yours, Wlfredo C. Derequito, Dharan, Saudi Arabia. [email protected]. ***** YOU WROTE: �Do not do unto us what we would do unto you when we�re in power.� Hahahahaha. Well said. Peter Capotosto. [email protected]. ***** ACTUALLY, the strength of a republic is inversely proportional to the degree that it intervenes in the day-to-day lives of its citizens. A government that tries to be all things to all men, like that of the Philippines does by mandate and the US government does by disregarding its own constitution, is inherently weak because of the internal stress caused by favoring one group over another. The US government USED to be strong because it did very little, and thus could afford to do that little very well. The few things that it did were for the GENERAL welfare, not that of the pressure group du jour, so they had general support. Now, of course, that is no longer so, and the US government is rapidly headed down the same slope as the government of this country. Marc de Piolenc, Iligan City. [email protected]. MY REPLY: You mean the interventionist states in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia were all mistakes? And that the least interventionist (because it is the least efficient) state, that of the Philippines, is the shining example for everyone to emulate? ***** OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |