Crazy ways of a crazy race

It is said that only a crazy would want to be President of this country of a hundred million ungovernable people. There sure are lots of them: 130 filed presidential candidacies at the Comelec last week.

Most of the 130 aver it was God they heard beseeching them to lead the Filipinos out of misery into the Promised Land. A good number think they heard a voice in the wind. A handful believes party-mates and survey forecasts that they have an even chance of winning. But there’s only one Presidency at stake, so no consolation prizes.

Every six years on presidential elections they grow in number. Seen to make a mockery of the political system, the Comelec had to warn them beforehand against creating a circus. Still they came, for the newshounds to feast on.

Social scientist Prospero de Vera attributes the phenomenon to the Filipino’s simplistic notion of political leadership. Indeed the 130 presidential filers offer one or two platforms that they see would – Presto! – solve all the country’s complex and day-to-day problems. They watch the President on TV doing something presumably big, like reading the typhoon warning or delivering a speech – and they presume they can do better. Not to forget, of course, that the families of the filers should have given them their tranquilizers and restrained them to bed. Many good citizens of this blighted land have lost their mooring when frequent disasters took away the spouse, children, or parents, then got no psychiatric care.

Crazier are the political leaders for allowing the mockery to recur again and again. There’s a proposal to impose hefty cash bonds on filers for President, to stun the certified lunatics against filing. Expect other fools to question its anti-poor bias. Others say that only nominees of Comelec-accredited parties should be allowed to run for the highest post in the land. That’s no solution either, as the Comelec listed 123 parties for the 2013 congressional elections, and 137 filed for new accreditations last week.

Obviously the solutions lie deeper than mere Comelec screening or congressional legislating. The Constitution needs to be overhauled. For starters, the country must decide once and for all between a presidential system, in which case a U.S.-style two-party set-up should evolve, and a multiparty set-up, which thrives in a Europe-style parliamentary system. If presidential, the voters can compare the candidates of the two dominant parties in terms of platform and experience, not popularity. If pure multiparty, then various sectors truly would be represented.

Presidential with multiparty will never work. Personalities will prevail to form instant parties. Presidential debates will be farcical, de Vera says. Popular frontrunners will only snub it, for attendance would give survey floor-sweepers the chance to shine at their expense. And what kind of debate is it where candidates get five minutes each to answer one question, by the end of which the show is over?

The odd mixture of presidential-multiparty was in fact the result of time constraints. After months of grueling debates, the deadline came for the 1986 Constitutional Commissioners to vote on the form of government. A unicameral multiparty legislature was decided on the penultimate session, and presidential won by only one vote on the last day. After which, they all went home with no one reconciling the contradictory provisions. That is why, with the original vote on government form to be for parliamentary, at least six provisions in the 1987 Constitution are vague on whether the Senate and House of Reps are to vote separately or as one on crucial matters. Foremost of these is on the very amending of the fundamental law.

Such incongruities in the Constitution breed deadlocks. The Senate is averse to any constitutional change, for in a joint voting its 24-man voice would be drowned out by the 292 congressmen. So there’s no way seen yet to improve the system.

In short, the Constitution fell victim to two bad Filipino traits: first, the “mañana” habit of procrastinating; second, the “puwede na ‘yan” attitude of accepting the mediocre.

Begging for constitutional attention as well is the need for only one national leader to prevail, de Vera says. A vote for the President should be a vote for the VP running mate, and vice versa. Alongside that, senators must be elected by administrative region, say, two for each of the 18, to make 36 in all. As it is now, de Vera says, 24 senators and one VP, likely from the opposition, all nationally elected, wake up each day declaring to be better than the President and so must be listened to instead of the occupant of Malacañang Palace.

But then, if such reforms come to pass, the circus will be over and the people will return to their dreary workaday lives.

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