On Federalism and two-party politics

For tonight’s topic on Straight from the Sky, we bring you once more another thorough discussion on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), the politically correct term for philantrophy in the new millennium. Today many multinational companies practice CSR as a way of giving back to the community that they do business with. Here in Cebu, the Aboitiz Family has been in the forefront of CSR from the days of Don Ramon Aboitiz, which is why he created the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation Inc. (RAFI). Eventually the Aboitiz Group of Companies created its own Aboitiz Foundation (AF).

Yet many of our people still don’t understand what CSR is or even suspect that businesses that are very aggressive in helping those who have less in life must be doing it for some hidden agenda, like a tax shelter. This is what our guest, Mr. Augusto “Sonny” Carpio, Managing Trustee of the Aboitiz Foundation, will tell us tonight in SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00pm. Hopefully, those local companies whose businesses are flourishing can also go into CSR.

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I got an emailed response to our article about Federalism and what we must do to make it work. Here it is in full.

“Dear Bobit, thank you for a more sobering thoughts on the brouhaha over the recent impetus to move towards federalism in the Philippines. Aside from your more practical points on which I mostly agree, you may like to point out two more important prerequisites for successful implementation.

One is the importance of a very professional and high qualified civil service. Without an apolitical and qualified civil service corps, the Philippines will end up to become a more fragmented and fragile state than what we have now. China’s success and relative unity is because of the communist party. The CCP is the glue that holds the country together which is Mao’s historical legacy. Before him, the various Chinese empires, including the great empires of Genghis Khan, was held together with a very professional civil service.

In a democracy, it is a professional and apolitical civil service that determine the success of federalism. Politicians come and go, but the civil service holds the state together, including the British Empire and the present United Kingdom. The other important prerequisite is a functioning and apolitical judicial system. In a democracy and decentralized governance, there will be a lot of conflicts and the interpretations of the laws. A highly qualified and apolitical judiciary becomes the important unbias arbiter of the law. Without the rule of law as the basis of governance, we will end up fighting against each other.

The recent event in Georgia is one example of why these two prerequisites are needed. Other examples of the importance of these two requisites in which federalism have fairly been successful are in Spain, France, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, and your favorite country, the USA.

As to your comments and critique of a multi-party system as supported by Cory Aquino, I have to beg to disagree with your position. In a democracy, you need to be inclusive and everyone should be given a stake in the country. There is a distinction between the working political system and a democracy. What I believe you support is that a two-party system, like the US but you are referring to the political structure of governance.

The UK parliament and most European countries have multi-party system but political parties need to “past the post” before they can be part of the political structure of governance. I still believe that a democracy requires the existence of a multi-party political system. However, if you believe in a democracy, then, you also need to learn tolerance and to learn to build consensus through coalition building so you can have an inclusive development and society. Filipinos are very conscious of consensus, barkadahan, and fraternal behaviour even to the extreme.

 As JS Mills wrote almost 200 years ago and later Sir K. Popper in his concept of open society, both thinkers suggested that for democracy to bloom and for society to grow, you need to have the freedom to form groups, build coalitions, and most important, to be tolerant even of deviant behaviour. It is only through such openness can a society grow and human beings bloom to their fullness and potentials. Thank you for a thought provoking article. Tony”

Thanks Mr. Tony Lim for this wonderful dissertation on our political system. Yes, he disagrees with me on the multi-party system, because I am staunchly for the return to the two-party system.  I do not dispute Mr. Lim’s view when he says that in a democracy we must learn to be open to a multi-party system; unfortunately, Filipino are still politically immature. I still believe that a two-party will bring this nation the political stability we need. Then someday, we’d be mature enough to embrace other parties.