[Newspoint] Why insist on a broken system?

For those who after all this time still remain unconvinced the system is indeed broken, here’s a compelling spectacle that should give them pause.

Congressman Sandro Marcos, the President’s son, rises on a point of exclusive privilege – that point, by the way, cannot be found in any manual of parliamentary procedure, except in the special one in current use. Anyway, he proceeds to make a motion for the committee on budget to stop looking, even before it can actually begin to look, into the P125 million of taxpayer money Vice President Sara Duterte is said to have spent – in merely 19 days! The committee obeys with a prompt vote, leaving the tiny, tyrannized minority talking to the wind, asking a perfectly moral and reasonable question but getting no answer:

If the incredible profligacy were true, how did Sara Duterte manage it?

The moment affords her a chance to not only explain herself but do the nobler duty particularly incumbent upon her as concurrent secretary of education – to lead by example. And what does she do? Amid the objections, she stomps out of the hearing, entourage in tow, without so much as a bye your leave.

(In the Senate, its single-member opposition, Risa Hontiveros, is able to keep her in her seat and expose more of her deficient education and capability. Under sharp questioning, she is unable to explain herself, not even with all her prompters, but so what – she will still get what she wants from the Senate, as from the House; she will get more of our money to squander, confidentially.)

For Sara and Sandro, there seems not much of a place for either moral sense or reason. Necessarily, it has to do with breeding, or, as they like to call it, in order to make it sound loftier, “legacy” – a legacy, that is, of autocracy and impunity. And you could say that the legator in both cases was Ferdinand Marcos Sr. After all, Sara’s father, Rodrigo, proved to be the dictator’s most faithful legatee, whose draconian presidency most resembled his own.

Now, the two dynasties are in an apparent plot to monopolize power in perpetuity. And with Ferdinand Jr. having four years and nine months yet remaining of his presidency and Sara positioned to succeed him and Sandro to succeed her, that will be 16 years and nine months added to our already miserable lifetime.

How we came to this pass would be no great mystery if only we were not in denial. Indeed, the tragedy might have been avoided if we had not allowed ourselves to be fooled by Rodrigo Duterte’s pretensions to populism. Thus, we enabled him to do a Marcos on us, stopping short of officially declaring martial law only because he did not need to do that.

Just by manipulating our culture of patronage, he managed to co-opt Congress, the courts, the police and the military, as well as much of the rest of the bureaucracy into his corrupt and murderous regime – thousands of predominantly young lives were ended summarily in his war against drugs, which, owing to a wide appeal of its own, provided a distraction from his other crimes. By the end of his term, he had secured arrangements for his protection that suit his successor just as well.

By his own admission, Ferdinand Jr. coveted the presidency to protect and preserve the “family legacy” – there’s that word again; it is actually plunder. Junior and his family have been under prosecution as heirs to the $10 billion worth of loot their patriarch amassed. Obviously, they, too, will need future protection. Thus, has begun the grooming of Sandro Marcos for President. And, as further insurance, he is sworn in by his father to lead a federalist party intent on – is it so hard to guess? – herding the nation into a federation of dynasties.

The Marcoses and the Dutertes are getting their way because they have hijacked the system, and not without our help. Yet, we continue working within it, broken as it is, in the name of some patriotic, if clearly impossible, mission that vows not to leave unrescued a single drowning soul from our increasingly swamped nation of 110 million.

So, if I may repeat my suggestion:

Granting the process credible – which scarcely it was, given newly uncovered traces of rigging – the last presidential election, which drew a definitive line between us and them, gave Ferdinand Jr. more than twice the vote for his closest rival, Leni Robredo – 31 million to 15 million. It was from those 15 million presumably that the million-strong crowds deployed themselves for her campaign rallies.

That reflects a quality of moral commitment unequaled since the people-power crowds that booted out the Marcoses and drove them to foreign exile, in 1986. Fifteen million should definitely make for a critical-mass-sized constituency, one that can set up a system of its own by which it can make a difference, for itself initially, self-help fashion, and in time, hopefully raise the politico-moral standards for the rest of the nation by example, coupled with people-power initiatives.

If anyone has any alternative to offer, they should put it forward. Just keep us out of this damned broken system. – Rappler.com