Nowadays, politicians are busy campaigning for the national and local elections of 2025. This election is a make or break for the Duterte group, as this is going to be a stepping stone for the presidential elections in 2028. It is, therefore, imperative for them to get majority seats in the Senate to prevent from a possible impeachment of the Vice President.
At the local level, politicians here have tried to capitalize on the DDS’ “fervor” by siding with the Duterte group – more or less similar to what the President’s sister-Senator is doing.
At the end of the day, and I’ve always belabored this point to my students, it is the Filipino people who will almost always bear the brunt of all this political drama. With all the issues that have transpired, it seems clear – from the survey results – that majority of the Filipinos will still vote from name-recall, and they will also still vote for those traditional politicians who will give them money, perhaps through that ayuda that is not their personal money, to begin with. Whoever gives the people more money gets the people’s votes.
I believe it was the German historian and philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel who said that “we learn from history that we do not learn from history.” Or we can put it in another way: people at present tend to redo, not prevent, the mistakes of history.
In the case of the Philippines in retrospect, the Filipino elites have always had the desire to play a bigger role in politics, even dating back to the Spanish period. Unfortunately, they were not given such a chance by the Spaniards as their role was only limited – the highest position they can attain was simply to be a gobernadorcillo or the town mayor, whose influence was little to none.
These Filipino elites started to gain influence and power in national and local politics when the Americans came. William Howard Taft was cognizant of this, and even commented that much as these elites demanded for more liberties, they still “needed as much education in practical civil liberty as their more ignorant fellow countrymen in reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
But the Americans had no better choice but to cooperate with the elites. As historian Michael Culinane asseverated: “The cooperation of this steadily growing group of Filipinos was felt to be essential in order to bring about a lasting peace and to carry out the multiplicity of functions intended by the insular government.”
That being said, the Americans had a conundrum – as they did not necessarily or fully trust the Filipino elites, but they did not have a better choice but to depend on them for reasons of practicality (as it was too expensive to send American colonial officials to the Philippines) and the amelioration of the relationship with these elites, whom they can – in the future – depend.
This so-called American ambiguity apropos of dealing with the elites would somehow engender the kind of government we have now. Inasmuch as Taft and the American government wanted to “protect the Filipino masses from the menacing upper classes”, as Culinane stated, they still had to make compromises, and appease these elites.
Fast forward today, it seems that the American colonial officials’ ambivalence towards the Filipino elites –and their failure to protect the masses from these elites’ self-interests – paved the way for the current political situation we are in.
At present, we are an elite democracy – a government ruled by elites who have, in a way, found loopholes to hijack the system and continuously rule over the credulous Filipino voters who still incessantly vote for them. As a result, we continue to live in a society where the privileged people – the wealthy and the well-to-do – always have the advantage over the less privileged, and the latter always remain credulous in spite of the education that has been readily given to them.
The Filipino elites have effectively monopolized power in government and, with taxpayers’ money, have speciously proffered a narrative that they are necessarily in power because people chose them, or that the people wanted them there. Political dynasties, therefore, exist today because of such a view or justification – that there is nothing wrong with political dynasties if they continue to help the people.
This practice of monopolizing power and influence has had its roots back to the early years of American occupation. Culinane has argued that the focus among Filipino elites during that time – early 1900s – was more on politics, and not so much on effective and/or efficient governance.
In fact, he stated that “in anticipation of the municipal and provincial elections in 1902, the Filipino politicians immediately set out to build up their local power bases, conveniently associating themselves with one or another of the emerging political groups.” At the national level, Benedict Anderson has also argued that the creation of the Philippine Assembly (or the legislative body) in 1907, and later on the bicameral legislative body in 1917, paved the way for a “solid visible national oligarchy” – one which still exists at present.
What lessons can we glean from all of this?
First and foremost, and ideally, we must remember that we always have the power to vote and choose the right individuals in government.
In doing so, we should try to avoid the mentality of choosing the “lesser evil”, as “lesser evil” is still evil. Let us avoid saying that I’m voting for Candidate A because I don’t like Candidate B – and it seems that Candidate A has a bigger chance of winning if I vote for him. You are only making yourself part of the problem if you do this.
Secondly, it is important for us to inveterately look back in history, and learn from the mistakes of the past.
While it’s axiomatical that the Filipino elites have strengthened their base in politics, and it’ll be difficult to get rid of them, it still helps to educate ourselves, and be more historically conscious. We have to think critically and be skeptical of people’s (especially the politicians’) intentions. For example, most of them always show the intention to help us, but for what? People almost always act out of self-interest. Good if they don’t ask for anything in return – for me, that’s how it should be.
Lastly, we have to find a way to extirpate elite rule in the Philippines.
These Filipino elites – more than a hundred a years ago – have been considered as a threat to democracy even by the Americans themselves. And now, we are feeling the deleterious effects of their rule yet, we do not know how to get rid of them. Unfortunately, they are deeply entrenched in Philippine politics, and it’ll possibly, or probably, take a radical upheaval to uproot them. Perhaps the best solution is to build a democracy “from the bottom up”, as what the Americans have envisaged but failed to uphold.
For now, however, I do hope that the Filipino people will be less gullible, and try to have a nuanced perspective in voting – not just voting for the lesser evil or voting for one notorious political elite because you hate the other.
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Author’s email: JJAbulado@norsu.edu.ph
