Can Filipinos be saved from themselves?

Why we must criticise the poor for voting corrupt candidates into public office.

Image by Bullit Marquez/AP

I know what you’re thinking: who I am to tell poor Filipinos who to vote for? If they want to vote for a corrupt candidate, that is their right. Suffrage is a political right that any voter can exercise according to his or her conscience. Yet nowadays, I argue that many Filipinos just don’t seem to understand and appreciate this right. And it pains me so much that they waste away this opportunity to make true social and economic reform. 

The same corrupt governors, mayors, congressmen and women, and senators get elected every time. Why? From Cotabato, Iriga, Makati, Cavite and all the way up to Ilocos; the same families still rule these places. The Ampatuans, Alfelors, Binays, Revillas, and the Marcoses have dominated the political landscape. The economic conditions on these places have barely improved. Income is still pathetically low; jobs and infrastructure are still lacking. Everyone knows these people are corrupt. So why do they keep electing them back into office?

 

Perhaps the poor are too afraid to speak up? The proliferation of guns and goons has truly kept the masses in silence and fearing for their lives. How did the Ampatuans get that many guns in the first place?

 

Perhaps it is the sense of futility and helplessness? People are too tired to fight and to voice their rights knowing it will only fall on deaf ears. There is a constant perception that anyone who is in politics is guilty of corruption, so why change?

 

Perhaps poor Filipinos are used to living in poverty? Lack of education, coupled with religious superstitions, has moulded a generation of poor Filipinos too lazy to fight and assert for their basic rights.

 

Perhaps Filipinos have not truly seen the need for elections in the first place? Elections are purely cosmetic in Philippine society. I remember voting in Australia for the first time and I was disappointed. There were no people handing out money, no PPCRV, no flying voters, and no free lunch or sandwiches! Remember, we have barely tasted independence from Spain in 1898 when the Americans became our new colonial masters. All this time, Filipinos never saw the importance of the ballot, because we were too busy trying to kick out these colonizers. Generations of Filipinos never actually grew out of colonial infancy. Filipinos were in perpetual ignorance of the benefits of the ballot.

 

On the other hand, people in other countries have fought, suffered and even died for this right. In 1917 America, President Woodrow Wilson encountered a few dozen women suffragists protesting silently outside the gates of the White House with one of the banners reading: “How long must women wait for liberty?” The women were harassed and beaten and were later jailed; one named Alice Paul launched a hunger strike and was sent to the psychiatric ward. The women suffered immensely throughout the incarceration. President Wilson eventually felt the growing pressure from the public and media. He later pardoned all the women and in a few years, through an amendment in the US Constitution, the women were finally able to vote. It was an astonishing achievement.

 

The famous civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. recognized the ballot as a powerful tool to combat blatant racism in 1960s America. Together with then President Lyndon Johnson, the Voting Rights Act was called ‘‘a triumph for freedom as huge as any victory that has ever been won on any battlefield’’. But winning the right to vote is one thing, exercising it is another. Martin Luther King Jr saw that problem when he said, “that the ballot would only be an effective tool for social change if potential voters rid themselves of the fear associated with voting.” Back then, black voters had to contend with the onslaught of harassments and attempts of states and counties, using regulations and tests, to deny them the right to vote.

 

Many developing countries like the Philippines are still constantly battling election violence that deters many people to vote. But election violence can be minimized, and perpetrators of election violence can be put to justice. The Ampatuans were brought to justice. The current Aquino administration lately has been very successful in going after corrupt politicians. We saw the Chief Justice Corona booted out of office. We saw Benhur Luy testified against Napoles and three Senators. We saw former Makati vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado's testimonies against Vice President Jejomar Binay. For the first time in many years, I am confident to say I trust the justice system in the Philippines.

 

For the first time too, I will temporarily stop criticising corrupt politicians. I am going after a new target, the “bobotante” (stupid voters). Because no matter how thoughtful and rational my selection process of candidates is, the bobotante still outnumber conscientious voters. If Noynoy Aquino did not run for President in 2010, we would have Joseph Estrada, a convicted plunderer, back in Malacanang, no thanks to 8 million voters!

 

It took Western civilization over 300 years fighting for the right to vote; obviously the Philippines cannot wait another 300 years for Filipinos to realize the importance of the ballot in nation-building. The change must start now.

The myth of Philippine Independence

It has been a long 116 years since our first Philippine Independence, yet one thing should be crystal clear to all of us Filipinos: we are still not free. It should be obvious to everyone that Filipinos are far from being truly independent. We may be free from foreign governments, but the country still remain largely controlled by ruling political oligarchs and dynasties, competing religious groups and private business regimes and interests. We may be called a republic, and our political and social framework is democracy, but many Filipinos, most of them poor and the youth, still have no idea what these means: ignorant of the many root causes of our problems, and incapable of critical thinking. The few rich and ruling families have taken advantage of this predicament. Instead of helping, they have employed violence, and fear in places they ruled politically, and often with religious collusion as well. Religious and political authorities have dictated and ruled the physical, social and mental lives of many Filipinos for centuries and until now.

I can rattle off the injustices perpetuated by the ruling class we have today, but that will not mean anything to these people. They rule the roost! They will just ignore these clamours. They will maintain the status quo. We cannot depend on them to initiate change. While we appreciate the ruling class has produced Jose Rizal and Ninoy Aquino. We need the Jose Rizals and Ninoy Aquinos to come out more from the masses, and not just from the well-off of society. And this is where education becomes useful. Not the kind of education where teachers just teach what to know, but education where students learn how to think critically. This strategy starts by teaching students to be skeptical; to doubt established norms and conventions; to employ dialectical thinking; to question and even laugh at authority. To quote the journalist Christopher Hitchens, “The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.”

However, this mentality, this attitude, no, this character will not flourish in a society where children are taught to just follow and obey authority, even if the authority is wrong. Filipino families are typically like this. This so-called “value” was inherited from our theocratic past, from the frailes, from the foreign religion called the Catholic Church. The frailes taught the natives that if they did not obey them, they will go to hell. This value has been passed on to generations of Filipinos up to now. How did it come to this? It was said that the Philippines, after the Spaniards learned the country has no viable mineral resources like gold (actually they didn’t know where to look), was decided to become a religious experiment where the Church had free rein to do whatever it wants with little regard to its economic and social future. Filipinos were sent to a nunnery, to a seminary for 4 centuries. As a former seminarian myself, I know how that feels. But many Filipinos today do not notice the distinction. Many feel that being caged in by centuries of religious indoctrination is a badge of honour. There is hardly anything honourable or respectable being brainwashed by priests who tell you not to think.

To be independent means to be fully free from outside control and not depending on another’s authority. It is to be free from authoritarian rule whether religious or political. But before suggesting that education is the solution, we must face the fact that many Filipinos hopelessly have a flawed concept of education. Let me explain. Generations of Filipino families have valued education as the only inheritance they can pass on to their children. Yes, we value education so much to a fault. Parents will go through every hardship just to see their children, usually more than 5, to earn that precious university degree. So it’s not that Filipinos abhor the concept of education, in fact, we cherish education. But Filipino parents only want education for their kids so that they can function in a society still ruled by the elite, the political dynasties, the religious authority and economic regimes designed to unfairly rule them. That is not real education. Real education should not just be functional; it should empower people. Not just the emotional or nationalistic kind of empowerment, but empowerment by critical thinking. One such organization called Youth4Nature empowers the youth of Tawi-tawi to care for nature.

True ‘people power’ is when people own and lead the revolution. However the revolution I suggest is not an overthrow of a government, although that would be also necessary to end totalitarian rule, but a revolution in creative thinking and creative learning. Ken Robinson, for example, envisions schools that take into consideration the students’ passion and individuality which encourages growth and development.We have sold ourselves into a fast food model of education. And it’s impoverishing our spirit and our energies as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies. We have to move to a model that is based more on principles of agriculture. We have to recognize that human flourishing is not a mechanical process, it’s an organic process. And you cannot predict the outcome of human development; all you can do, like a farmer, is to create the conditions under which they will begin to flourish.” One of the conditions is by allowing free thought, a precious resource that is under attack in many parts of the world. In these countries people would rather accept a pre-packaged box of answers from tyrants; people would not want to think for themselves. Thinking for them is hard. As Bertrand Russell would say, “Most people would rather die than think; most people do.”

Here lies the challenge for us Filipinos. Jose Rizal said that the youth is the future of the Filipinos. The youth must learn the break the chain of the past. If this happens then our Independence will really indeed bear fruit.