Intellectual masturbation is one of the habits of the Yellowidiots. The other day, former presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda posted an essay about the need for a disruptor presidential candidate in 2028 asserting that the “next leader must be a disruptor: someone unafraid to break the old machinery of power that has long served politicians instead of the people.” That candidate is none other than, who else, Risa Hontiveros.
Today, the non-related by blood Quezon scion writes — in his usual roundabout manner — about the need to amend the 1987 constitution if we’re to effect institutional reforms in our otherwise inherently-corrupt government. In his Inquirer piece “Disruption”, Manuel L Quezon III writes…
I am of the belief that the rules determine political behavior, and if the Constitution can be compared to an operating system, then the Philippine government’s 1987 Constitution is unique on two counts: it is now long in the tooth, but more importantly, it has never been updated since it was loaded into our political system. Here, this combination of being old and obsolete isn’t unique: our banks, programmers will tell you, creak along, and it was not so long ago that companies had to have ancient PCs in their inventory, because the Bureau of Internal Revenue would only accept submissions made through Internet Explorer, which can only be found, because only on them can it still run, on obsolete PCs.
Supposedly the parliamentary form of government lost by only one vote when the constitutional commission voted on it in 1987. Recall that then President Cory Aquino appointed the members of the commission to write a new constitution to replace former President Ferdinand E Marcos’s 1973 constitution, which was its own version of a parliamentary form of government. Indeed, his 1973 constitution replaced the 1935 constitution which was largely an American imposition. The Malolos Constitution of the revolutionary government was, itself, parliamentary in nature as per the prevailing majority in Europe and Asia at that time, since the colonized traditionally followed in the footsteps of their colonial masters.
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This raises the confronting question: Where does the fault in our political system actually lie? Is it in the system of governance or is the social construct also a factor, given our history with the Spaniards who didn’t impart democratic governance or the Americans who did impose their own system on us but allows its corruption in order to obtain the cooperation of the ruling class to bend to its wishes.
It may actually be a combination of the two but no one brings up the elephant in the room which is, that the practice has withstood the test of time. Our more prescient problem is the fact that we don’t have a younger generation of leaders who will not succumb to the temptation of easy money from public funds. The best example of how low we’ve stopped is our present situation. Our public intellectuals are social media influencers and Filipinos are divided into three major political camps. Not much different from the tribal nature of ethnicities; tagalog, capampangan, ilonggo, waray, bikolano, bisaya etc., etc.
Perhaps the best solution is to break up the “republic” put together by the Spaniards and the Americans. Since everyone is busy protecting their own interests, no one has bothered to notice just how fucked up our so-called country is.
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