Our circus of a democracy

I am sure the ancient Greeks would be shocked we are claiming we have a democracy. We can excuse ourselves by saying we just learned it from the Americans.

The scene at the Comelec last week would have been really funny, if only the joke wasn’t on us and on our country’s future. It was weird.

It was as if they declared a weeklong furlough in that institution in Mandaluyong. They say you have to be crazy to enter politics and this is probably what they had in mind. At final count, there were 130 people who filed their COCs for president. What our country needs is quality not quantity.

An election is not a fiesta, but that is what it has become. Bands and dancers accompanied those who filed their COCs. No amount of electoral reforms introduced in the Election Code could overcome our cultural inclination to use an election as something like Christmas… with its merriment and gift giving.

One candidate for president wants to legalize the four seasons and outlaw the rainy and dry seasons in our tropical country. Hmm… finally we can sing Dreaming of a White Christmas as if we know what that is.

Not to be outdone, there was someone whose platform is to make us part of the United States. No, it wasn’t Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario. It is also not a new platform for presidential wannabes. There were a few of those even during the ’70s who wanted to make us the 51st state of the US, as if the Americans want us.

One of those who used to run on this platform is running again, but this time he is anti-China. He dramatized he means business by burning a Chinese flag in front of the Comelec. Hopefully, he doesn’t throw again those iron studs in our dark EDSA underpasses to catch attention. Totally KSP… kulang sa pansin!

A pastor who claimed he was the one who discovered titanium also wants to be our president.  Then there is one who claimed to have Russian blood and probably inspired by Putin, promised to run an “in-your-face government”, whatever that may be. He wasn’t as weird as the one who claimed he is Adolf Hitler.

Who can forget the one who claims to be in communication with aliens, as in extraterrestrials? What got me was his platform to give us free and fast Wifi connectivity. He knows how to get our attention.

I guess some people just wanted their few minutes of fame, specially because the Comelec provided a stage, a lectern and a microphone for any candidate to address waiting media reporters. Unfortunately, we are suckers for the man-bites-dog story and the weirder the candidates are, the better it is for audience ratings.

Good thing the Americans were ahead in this carnival with the Republican Presidential Debates with Donald Trump as its principal star.  No American can laugh at our weirdos after the Republican presidential hopefuls already set the pace for this sideshow.

Fun as last week might have been, it does not augur well for the country’s future. Maybe because our Constitution is overwritten with details, it is now outdated and needs drastic reform.

It is becoming more and more obvious the Cory Constitution, drafted not by elected men and women but by those handpicked by Tita Cory, must be made more responsive to our current and future needs. A new one must also only deal with general principles and let our legislature fill in the details. It is easier to amend a law than a constitution.

A lot of things have happened in the last 30 years since we promulgated that Constitution amidst the euphoria of EDSA 1. There are now 100 million of us and a good part of that population were not even born in 1986.

Technology has also changed a lot of things in the way we communicate and live our lives. The world has drastically changed too in terms of the balance of power in the economic and political realm.

Our post EDSA leaders must have also messed up badly. Some people are able to say life was better under the dictator’s reign and they are not always successfully challenged.

Indeed, how is it possible the son of the dictator we ousted is on his way to recovering Malacañang? And the feisty judge who dared to go against the dictator has now picked the unrepentant dictator’s son as her running mate.

The human rights lawyer who fought Mr. Marcos was ready to team up with the dictator’s son. Ironically, it was Marcos Junior who had the sense to reject the team-up because of the ex-human rights lawyer’s shady reputation as a public official.

How do we start doing things right? A Constitutional Convention should be in the agenda, but I worry that as in the ConCon I covered as a journalist in the early ’70s, it will also be captured by the same vested interests that kept our country poor.

 Assuming we can figure out a way of ensuring a better quality of ConCon delegates than the folks we elect for the House of Representatives (a bad assumption, I know), we need to consider changing our form of government. This popularity contest of a presidential election that is also so expensive cannot be the way we choose our leaders.

We can perhaps consider still voting for a president at large but keep him or her as a ceremonial head of state, like Singapore. The heavy lifting of governing will be done by a prime minister whose competence should be proven by going up the ranks of a major political party.

Yes, a unicameral parliamentary form of government is more cost efficient than what we have now. Who really needs a Senate whose members include a number of professional clowns and political mercenaries?

Then we need to get rid of that insular way of thinking many of us have on the economy that is so out of date. I suspect it is the oligarchy that is fueling supposedly nationalist sentiment because they do not want competition. This system has kept our people poor and must be changed.

We need to find a way of breaking up not just the oligarchy, but also the political dynasties too. Unless we do that, our democracy means nothing. Our system perpetuates vested interests that have been there since the Spanish era.

Maybe there is a way of apportioning members in parliament so our large population of young people is properly represented. I see them as well as the emerging middle class of OFWs and their families as our hope to eventually have an honestly functioning democracy. The young people have their dreams and the OFWs have seen and experienced properly functioning governments and will demand we have one here.

In the meantime, let us make sure the new administration taking power next year has the right priorities that go beyond slogans and speeches. Job creation must be on top of any list because we still have close to half of all our people to lift out of poverty.

Everything springs from that very basic objective of creating jobs. The educational system should prepare students to get and hold on to jobs. Our economic policies should likewise have this focus. Our labor laws should not just cater to labor unions, but also to the large segment of our labor sector that do not have jobs and need to have jobs.

As the campaign period starts, let us grill the candidates on what they plan to do. Do not let them get away with just the platitudes in their written platforms. The questions to ask are: How will they get these promises done and when?

There is nothing wrong with getting entertained by the freak show we saw last week at the Comelec. But beyond entertainment, we need to fix things so we can face the world with pride.

We have been abused enough by an inept government that cannot provide us many of the basics and a lot of the amenities our neighbors enjoy. Yet, our OFWs and BPO workers are among the most sought because they are good, competent and trustworthy. Why can’t we get people to run our government as if they are OFWs and BPO workers?

That’s our challenge as we move on to the campaign season. We must all figure out how we can use this election to improve the lives of every Filipino.

If we cannot truthfully justify our choice of candidates will further national good, it may be better to skip voting altogether because voting is useless and may be dangerous. Let us think of our nation, let us think of our nation’s future and we will be alright.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco.