“Ikulong na ’yan, mga kurakot!” (“Jail the corrupt now!”) has been the chant in the rallies protesting the massive corruption scandals of the recent months here in the Philippines. It’s catchy but also quite curiously inert, being as it is an obvious demand that should have not needed warm-bodies on the streets to express. Criminals should be jailed, whether the masses raise their voices in public spaces or not, and perhaps the fact that we have had to do so is indicative of the maturity of governance in the country.
Realizing this, some have started adding more specific and less obvious—but no less important—calls for action to the cacophony. One of the more important ones is the push to abolish political dynasties, dynasties being both a critical symptom and a persistent cause of our stagnant and regressive political culture.
Randy David, in his recent Inquirer.net column entitled “Beyond the outrage”, repeats his key assessment of our politics as being stuck in a premodern phase, and enumerates the difficult projects still to be taken up, above and beyond the already formidable task of finally implementing the constitutional directive against dynasties:
It is not enough to ban political dynasties; we need genuine political parties and strict campaign finance rules. Eliminating pork requires curbing discretionary funds at every level of government. Patronage will persist as long as access to public services depends on connections rather than on a rules-based system. A professional civil service is impossible while presidents appoint the unqualified to critical posts. And we cannot hope for competent governance if the congressional confirmation process remains a venue for extracting favors and settling scores, instead of testing merit.
David understands the difficulty of these tasks: “None of these can be dismantled overnight. Some require constitutional revision; others demand bureaucratic restructuring. All require civic engagement and a citizenry that refuses to retreat into despair.” In other words, all these movements demand perseverance, endurance, and hope from the citizenry. A tall order, but if the past months have really been a massive test for the political sphere in our society, a true watershed moment in the life of the nation, then perhaps the motivation and energy could be found to realize this rare opportunity to effect profound change in our society, and advance its much-delayed progression into modernity.