In the cocoon of families

There are two issues in the national debate that I wish to take up in this column. One is the Smartmatic-PCOS machine election in May that is only weeks away and the other is political dynasties in government.

Both should be dealt with in order to build a strong Filipino nation.

The first — Smartmatic-PCOS — demands an urgent response because it will destroy the sovereignty of citizens in elections. We are merely eight weeks from the threat.

The second — political dynasties — the election of families that control our government for their private benefit have to be stopped.

There is no argument that both issues have to be addressed by Filipinos to reform our system of governance. In this battle for ideas, it is my opinion that the first should be prioritized. It should be the engine of the reformist campaign. The political dynasty issue is not being sidetracked, it remains an important component of reform but it will take more than one election to accomplish.

Because of the time constraint to May 2013, it becomes tactically imperative to switch into manual elections. We should make as many voters aware of the evil of Smartmatic PCOS machines taking over our sovereignty. Political dynasties make up the oligarchy of the Philippines. It is about how a few families have taken over the economy and resources of the country for their private interest through elected offices. As soon as a member is elected it becomes a hereditary right of the family to stay in power election after election.

The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines states in Article II Section 26, “The State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.” That is the catch. “As may be defined by law” means it will not happen because oligarchs will not legislate themselves out of power.

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This is a well-thought out political strategy about control. It includes diverting attention from what should be the main issue facing the Philippines today. To divert attention, worthwhile causes will be promoted at the same time. This is a tactical maneuver we must carefully watch.

How do we keep our focus on this armageddon of democratic destruction when other issues compete for attention? Political dynasties ie the oligarchy monopolize access to economic resources. It cannot be solved before elections in May 2013. But we can stop the wholesale fraud to seize power through electronic election or at least make people aware of it.

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It is paradoxical that families can be both a bane and a boon to nation building. Families are the cocoons in which great and heroic individuals are nurtured. Families are also the carriers of tradition and hand down skills and knowledge from generation to generation.

In the past week, I had the opportunity to witness examples of such families.

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Last Thursday, Asuncion Lopez Bantug, the grandniece of our national hero, Jose Rizal died at the age of a hundred years old. She will be remembered as the author of “Lolo Jose,” an intimate family biography of the Rizals.

I was having lunch with my brother, Tony and his wife, Cecile (a Rizal great grandniece) when they learned of her death. On a nearby coffee table lay the book “Lolo Jose.” While Cecile was on the phone talking to Bea, a daughter of Asuncion, on arrangements for the wake, I glanced through the book and thought...“this is the same family, circa the 21st century, that Rizal grew up in.”

We owe a lot to Asuncion for patiently recording the comings and goings in the Rizal family. These she interweaves with our hero’s love of country and eventually dying for that love.

“We must be thankful to Mrs. Bantug for deepening our understanding of Dr. Rizal’s life and career, his selfless brother Paciano and varied personalities of his other sisters, for nothing exhibits the man so clearly as do anecdotes preserved by members of the Rizal family who knew well our leading hero. The new light she sheds on Rizal’s personality illuminates the intellectual and cultural atmosphere in which he and his colleagues worked and lived. In life as well as in death, Dr. Jose Rizal has remained the greatest single illustrious son in all modern Philippines,” wrote Serafin Quiason in the book’s foreword.

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From one family celebration to another, I attended the launching of former Manila Mayor Lito Atienza’s autobiography “Light from My Father’s Shadow.” The light he writes about is the heritage from his father Jose “Don Pepe” Atienza who was one of the founding members of the Liberal Party. He writes in his book that he is obliged to recall events before, during and after martial law to expose too many “Johnny-come-lately” who he writes “have hijacked the party.”

He gives his perspective as an insider in most of these events including accounts of the murder of Evelio Javier and how a small core group that included Belinda Olivares Cunanan convinced Cory Aquino to run for president.

I wish though that he had written more on what it meant to be a son and a political ward of Don Pepe. After all, it is the title of the book. It should have pursued that main thread so we could better understand the history of the Liberal Party, what was its platform and the reasons why it has deviated from that original impetus.

I was in exile abroad and did not know Atienza as an oppositionist during the Marcos years.

He writes on “those who tested the limits in which martial law had corralled the dictator’s critics and those who paid the ultimate price in the mountains or right in the heart of cities. Of these he singles out “the charismatic Antique political leader Evelio Javier.”

Atenean Evelio never saw EDSA, having been killed when he decided to remain in his home province of Antique in order to complete the documentation of fraud in the snap elections of early February 1986.

It was the public outrage against poll fraud and political violence during the snap polls that triggered the Edsa revolt in which he and other oppositionists figured.

It is ironic that Atienza was a victim of the Smartmatic PCOS in May 2010. This book should boost the clamor against machinated elections in 2013.