Power to the People
by Conrado de Quiros (There's the Rub, PDI)
A FRIEND told me she had a conversation with a Malaysian recently, and her Malaysian friend teased her: "Why don't you just scrap elections altogether since they don't seem to work for you anyway?" My friend laughed at the joke, but was quite bothered by it. It did seem, she told me, that we were becoming something of a joke for our leaders having short shelf lives.
This reminded me again of a story an American friend, a journalist, told me some years back. This really happened, she assured me. On a trip to the hinterlands of Cambodia, she asked an old woman what she thought of a coming election. The old woman answered: "What can I say? We're having another one again. That means the last one didn't work."
I personally am not bothered by comments about this country making a joke out of its institutions. Or about us having developed a bloodlust we mount king-hunts, or queen-hunts, at every turn. At the very least, who the hell cares what others think of us? At the end of the day we, and not they, will have to live with the consequences of our actions, or the lack of them. Indeed, who the hell cares about the opinion of people who would do well to discover People Power themselves and oust leaders who rule with an iron fist and stay for as long as they want? And send opponents to jail on trumped-up charges, as Mahathir did to Anwar Ibrahim.
But it's more than that. What's weird about the perception, local or foreign, about this country making a travesty of its elections or its institutions is that the campaign to oust President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is in fact a staunch defense of this country's institutions, chief of them its elections. The campaign to oust Ms Arroyo is not a throwback to the move to oust Joseph Estrada, it is a throwback to the move to oust Marcos. Its only resemblance to the oust-Estrada campaign is that Ms Arroyo is accused as well of plunging the country into a gangster's paradise, one ruled by gambling lords, including her son, Mikey, and by people who like to murder journalists. Lest we forget, this country has become the second most corrupt in Asia and the most dangerous place for journalists in the world. That's worse than Estrada.
But the move to oust Ms Arroyo resembles the move to oust Ferdinand Marcos and not Estrada because of one fundamental thing. It is a move to oust a president who is not the president at all. The only one who can demand with any credibility that this country respect its institutions, chief of them elections, is Estrada -- and he does so to this day. He was at least clearly, decidedly, overwhelmingly elected President of the Philippines. Neither Marcos nor Gloria was, or is. Marcos at least after martial law: He was elected twice before that. After martial law, Marcos ruled by force; before martial law, Ms Arroyo rules by farce. Marcos ruled by decree, Ms Arroyo rules by Garci. Law was the last thing Marcos had on his side, but it was the first thing he kept invoking. So does Gloria. God must truly be merciful to be sparing with his thunderbolts.
To oust Ms Arroyo is to defend this country's democratic institutions, it is to defend the sacredness of its elections. It is to affirm in the most forceful way that no one is above the law, no one may mess around with the elections-much less so in the brazen way Ms Arroyo did with Garci -- and get away with it.
Indeed, even if Ms Arroyo had been voted into power, what of it? If she had committed the same crime as Estrada -- and her descent into ignominy has been arguably faster and steeper-then she deserves the same fate as Estrada.
So what if we have People Power III and IV and V and VI? If that is what it will take to stop candidates from raping the electoral will, then by all means let us have them. If that is what it will take to prevent public officials from pillaging the country's wealth, then by all means let us have them. If that is what it will take to remove every last scoundrel and every last act of villainy in public office, then by all means let us have them. People Power is the last resort of the poor and oppressed in this country. It is their only means of redress. It is their only source of restorative justice. This is a country where the media are routinely ignored and their members routinely decimated when they pry too deeply. This is a country where the courts are owned by the rich and powerful, and decisions are auctioned to the highest bidder. This is a country where the law enforcers are the law-breakers, where the lawmakers are the ass-lickers, where the leaders and their coteries are gangsters.
This is a country in fact where the only choices given to the citizens are to leave it or fight to reclaim it. I leave those who leave it to justify it -- to themselves as much as to others. I choose to fight.
In the profoundest sense of things, People Power is the staunchest defense of the institutions of democracy there is. It is not a genie that can be summoned at will from a magic lamp, and those who imagine it to be are free to come here and try it. The only occasions when People Power arose in this country were when the democratic institutions became so perverted, so removed from the public weal -- when the law has become an instrument of injustice in the hands of tyrants, when the courts have become an instrument of oppression in the hands of a Mafia, when elections have become a weapon to bludgeon the sovereign will in the hands of Gloria -- that there was no recourse but to move to cleanse them, to rise to restore them.
What are our institutions but the physical emanations or tangible embodiments of our democratic will? And what is People Power but the direct expression or restorative intervention of our sovereign will?
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