Sheila S. Coronel

	Sheila S. Coronel, PCIJ executive director

WHEN the board of the Foreign Correspondents Association asked me out to lunch late last year, I knew something was up. Journalists, you see, rarely treat others to lunch. Usually it is the other way around: Others treat them.

I should have known that there is no such thing as a free lunch. It was in the course of the meal that I was asked to keynote today’s event. My first reaction was: You are scraping the bottom of the barrel. They agreed with me. For all our faults, journalists — sorry for the colorful language — do not give each other shit. We get enough of that from the people we cover.

Like many among you, I have in the last week been glued to the election campaign. I’ve been watching the caravans of movie stars and listening to the catchy jingles. I have been reading about the barbed exchanges among various contenders and viewing the attention-grabbing advertisements that are in fashion in the current political season.

All this is very entertaining. But it is also nothing new. Politics has been about entertainment for a long time. Even before Joseph Estrada came along, bread-and-circus types of political campaigns have been the norm. The only difference is that, in the past, politicians brought entertainers to their rallies. Today the entertainers are taking over politics.

In terms of entertainment value, our political system is top of the line. But it fails in many other respects. It is no longer responsive to the needs of a country that is very young and very troubled. The Philippines is like the bright kid in a class who underperforms because he has attention-deficit disorder. While the hardworking and less gifted ones around him make progress, achieving prosperity and aspiring for even more, the perpetually distracted child lags behind.

We are attention-challenged because our politics is so distracting. The distractions are manufactured because they hide the awful truth. And that truth is that we are trapped in a political system whose organizing principle is the division of spoils. In such a system, elections are fundamentally about determining who gets to feast in the public larder for the next three or six years.

This may be too harsh an indictment. After all, for all its faults, the system is enduring and resilient. It is a system that has driven us close to the edge, that is true, but has also prevented us from falling into the abyss. It has mired us in a rut, for sure, but it has also snatched us from the jaws of anarchy and civil war.

We have been through this cycle before. In the 1960s, an electoral and political system that was based on patronage and spoils was breaking apart at the seams. Elections were getting more and more expensive, more and more violent. The rivalries among competing elites were increasingly more vicious. Meanwhile, the discontent of the poor primed them for recruitment by a nascent communist movement. Something had to give. The system was ripe for either a rebellion of the poor or an authoritarian takeover. Democracy was digging its own grave.

In 1972, the system gave. Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law and made himself dictator. Fourteen years later, the first Edsa happened. It resurrected from the grave a system that was very old and very feeble. People Power I and II were like blood transfusions into a weak body politic. They are temporary measures. Popular uprisings have not rid us of the roots of our malaise.

EARLIER this month, I was invited to speak at the Ayala Young Leaders Conference, which included the best and the brightest among our students. No one in the group was older than 25. When I asked them whether they were satisfied with the way Philippine democracy works, only two raised their hands and said yes. All the rest expressed a deep dissatisfaction.

Yet all of them also had faith in democracy and believed it was the best system for the country. But like the youth in the 1960s, they perceived that democracy was digging its own grave. The question I was asked, again and again, when I sat down with some of them over dinner was, Is there still hope?

In this election, we face a crossroads. One route is toward a movie-star millenarianism exemplified by the emergence of a silver-screen messiah, a man on horseback who promises salvation. We took this road not too long ago. It was a perilous journey, but it remains an attractive option to the poor who have been left out of the loop for so long. This millenarianism is their rebellion against a system that has not served them well.

The second road is the authoritarian alternative. The days of military adventurism, for one, don’t yet seem to be over. In addition, certain sectors of the business community and the middle class are attracted to the idea of strongman rule. We have also taken this route before, also with disastrous results. But because other options have not provided the solutions we need, authoritarianism remains a seductive alternative.

The third route being offered is the same system reformed, either by a shift to a parliamentary form of government or through measures that will bring about better and more effective governance. This may look like the safest route to take. Its greatest danger, however, is that the system will remain fundamentally unchanged, that we will only be postponing the resolution of problems of mass poverty and gross inequity.

The very real possibility is that whichever of the three routes we take, we’ll still end up trapped in the politics of spoils. We’ve taken all three routes in the past and we are still where we are now.

The reality is that every new president who is sworn into office brings with him or her a retinue of supporters and contributors. Many of these are only too eager to dip their snouts in the public trough.

All presidents have invariably said, I am my own man or my own woman. But all of them, even those who were elected without the support of big business or political groups, have succumbed to the politics of spoils. Sooner or later, appointments, policies, laws, executive issuances, contracts, and other perks are distributed to meet the demands of the politics of patronage.

If the head of state is unable to mobilize a coalition based on a solid platform and a clear vision, the politics of patronage will prevail. The president can get laws passed in Congress and compel the bureaucracy to perform — but only if he or she divides the spoils among politicians and bureaucrats who demand the perks of power.

For the longest time, the tradition of spoils, of horsetrading and dealmaking has disabled public office and made it primarily a tool for delivering patronage. Otherwise, it was a disaster in terms of catalyzing reforms and bringing about development. For decades, law and policymaking have been ad hoc and incoherent. The horizons of public officials have been narrow, their interests, short-term, and their attention spans, even shorter.

No matter how smart or how competent the new president will be, unless our political system is reformed, the struggle for spoils will remain the main organizing principle of political life. Patronage may be the glue that keeps an unjust and unproductive political system together, but the impact of the politics of patronage has so weakened the system that it is in danger of coming unhinged.

Today, we are trapped in a chain of perverse behaviors. Politicians use their powers to bring benefits to their constituents and supporters and to amass funds for their reelection. Constituents, in turn, make continued supplications, knowing that officials will use their office to deliver. Governance is distorted to meet these demands. Broader development and reform goals are forgotten. In the end, a system that mires the people in poverty is further entrenched and officials are stuck in the role of fighting for spoils so they could deliver the proceeds to demanding constituents.

Unless we break out of this cycle, the blame throwing will continue. Citizens will still blame the politicians for the dire state of the nation. The politicians, in turn, will blame citizens for demanding so much from them — jobs, money, basketball courts, whatever — and compelling them to be corrupt so they can give voters what they want. The media will of course blame everyone, but will refuse to see how the media themselves contribute to driving down the level of public discourse, thereby making it difficult for citizens to have any clarity about the state of the nation. This is neurotic and dysfunctional and we all know it.

The new president should therefore make political and electoral reforms the priority. The lesson from the Ramos presidency is instructive. President Ramos’s leadership made possible economic reforms, including those liberalizing key industries. But further reform was stymied by the need to cut deals with congress and other political actors, whose concern was short-term personal or family gain rather than long-term national interest.

The deals presidents make with lawmakers and local officials have only entrenched in power the same politicians that have brought us to this state. As a study we are doing shows, two of every three representatives in the 8th to the 12th Congress are members of political families. Most of these families have used the benefits of public office to hold on to power for two, three or more generations.

Many of them have also blocked tax reforms, land reform, and other redistributive measures that would allow government to respond to the needs of the poor. Yet, thanks to the politics of patronage, they are elected to office again and again.

Our political system since 1986 is becoming more and more regressive. The turnover in the legislature is slower, despite term limits. From 1946 to 1961, an average of 51 percent of all members of Congress were new. The average for all the five post-Edsa congresses is only 46 percent.

In 1962, only 27 percent of representatives were classified as upper class. In 1992, it was 44 percent. Over time, the assets of legislators have grown. In 1992, the average net worth of congressmen was P8 million, today it is P28 million. In the Senate, the average net worth increased from P33 million in 1998 to P59 million in 2001. A quarter of all senators today have a net worth of above P100 million. One should consider that many legislators under declare what they own.

Can we blame our young people if they believe that democracy has so far benefited and enriched mainly the politicians?

The last Congress has examined measures that would make the political playing field more open. We need a system that will distribute power-and the benefits of power-more equitably. Unfortunately, our lawmakers are not too keen on enacting fundamental reforms. Congress has not acted on measures that would impose party discipline, ban turncoatism, and ensure accountability and transparency in campaign contributions. Why should politicians want to overhaul a system that has been so good to them?

Yet few will dispute that our political system needs a drastic makeover. It takes more than a president to make this possible, and perhaps it will take more than one generation. But the president will have to start us off on this journey, lead us, and show us the way.

Let us therefore vote wisely. I am sorry that I cannot end on anything more profound than this.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen.