Democracy in sick bay

BANTAY GOBYERNO 

Ike Señeres

It is a fact that our democracy has many faults and weaknesses, but it does not mean that it is dead or dying. Perhaps we could liken our analogy to our planet earth. It has many faults and weaknesses now, but it is neither dead nor dying. Even if we can say that it could be dying, we have no choice now but to nurse it back to good health, because it is the only planet we have. Same goes for our democracy. We may have many complaints about it, but it is the only political system we have. Compared to communism that is already perceived to be dying, our democracy is still worth saving, perhaps for lack of a better choice. 

Simply put, our democracy might have several ailments here and there, but none of these ailments are incurable. That is the catch however, because not unless we start diagnosing and start treating these ailments, there will be no cures and these ailments will continue to weaken it, perhaps it will even worsen.

In much the same way that we should look at the probable root causes in diagnosing ailments, we should do that too in diagnosing what ails our democracy. I may not be able to identify all the root causes on my own, but I will start the process and perhaps others can join the exercise. To start with, let us look at the pre-election period, the entire process that starts with the selection of candidates and ends with the official campaign period as designated by the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). As it is supposed to be, the political parties are supposed to have their own selection process, a process that is supposed to start with their own primaries and is supposed to end with their own party conventions. As it is supposed to be, the political parties are supposed to practice democracy on their own, hence the need to conduct consultations and elections within their own ranks.

Primaries are important and necessary, because these activities are the best ways for party members to know who are best qualified to run from among their own ranks, as a prelude to party conventions where the party members are supposed to exercise their right to vote for the best candidates, based on their qualifications and their proposed individual platforms. As it is supposed to be, these individual platforms are supposed to become the sources of ideas for the party to eventually come up with their official party platforms. As we already know, our political parties do not hold primaries at all, and they do not seem to conduct party conventions either. Perhaps as a poor substitute for both primaries and conventions, some of these parties would hold what they call caucuses, but these would usually exclude the participation of their general membership. The fact that these parties do not hold democratic elections within their own ranks could actually be a sign that in the first place, they may not have so many members, contrary to what they claim.

More often than not, some influential person within a political party would just anoint his or her personal choice of who he or she wants to run, again as a poor substitute for a real convention. As I see it, anointment violates the most basic principle of the democratic ideology, and that is to allow the participation of the party officials, but also of the general membership. Since democracy is supposed to be a two-way street, we could perhaps surmise that if the rank and file members of the political parties do not mind being bypassed or ignored, they may not care about practicing the democratic ideology at all. For some reason, it seems that the selection of prospective candidates based on surveys is out of sequence. As it is supposed to be, prospective candidates are supposed to increase in their survey ratings depending on their performance in the primaries. In the absence of primaries however, it seems that the alternative practice is to select prospective candidates based on survey ratings that are the results of advertising campaigns.

To be honest, I have mixed feelings about allowing advertising campaigns to boost the ratings of prospective candidates. On one hand, I think that these prospective candidates have the rights to free speech, in addition to having the freedom to bring out information about their advocacies. On the other hand however, it seems that the practice is undemocratic, because only the rich candidates could afford to spend for advertising campaigns, leaving out the others who could not afford the huge advertising budgets. Assuming for the sake of argument that these huge advertising budgets are contributed by donors, there should still be a transparent accounting of these contributions as the law requires. Suffice it to say that the bigger the donations, the deeper these prospective candidates would be to their donors. Assuming that these prospective candidates would win, we could guess that these donors would have a bigger voice than the rest of the ordinary citizens, and that by itself is undemocratic.

Hoping against hope, I wish that our political parties would mature, as the electorate would also mature. Sad to say, the preponderance of so many political butterflies is actually a sign that many of our politicians do not really believe in real party principles and perhaps vice-versa, our political parties really do not have real solid principles to offer to their members. Another sign of the immaturity of our political parties is the way the meanings of political alliances and political coalitions are being interpreted. As it is supposed to be, a political alliance could be likened to going steady, and a political coalition could be likened to getting married. As it is supposed to be, individual political parties are supposed to lose their juridical personalities when they coalesce with other political parties, just like the way corporations lose their juridical personalities when they merge with other corporations.\

As it is supposed to be, ideologies are supposed to breed political parties, and political parties are supposed to breed ideological leaders. In turn, these ideological leaders are supposed to be the ones who will present themselves as the prospective candidates in a selection process that starts with the primaries and ends with the conventions. That is how it is supposed to be, even if the reality is too far from the theory. By the way, I think it may be acceptable for an independent candidate to be adopted by a political party, but when official candidates of political parties are also adopted by many other political parties, we could already see it as a sign that there are really no ideological boundaries between and among political parties. Of course, we know that some candidates are driven only by their own political interests and not by political ideologies, but that does not stop us from hoping that somehow, everything could still change towards the better.

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