CHURCHILL ONCE said that democracy is government by amateurs. We have carried that principle to the extreme in the last few elections, populating our elective posts with people who are as popular as they are incompetent. The trend has made our policy-making process more vulnerable to populism and less amenable to tough policy choices.

Since 1987, we have progressively depreciated democratic practice in the Philippines. At this point, there are enough vested interests in that continued depreciation that it will be difficult to change course.

The only way to alter the political economy of Philippine elections is to dramatically alter the method by which we elect out leaders — possibly by taking costly and corruption-engendering national elections out of play through a shift to the parliamentary form. But the conservatives have stood in the way of renovating our constitutional order.

The forthcoming elections of 2007 will see the worsening of the most undesirable characteristics of our practice of electoral democracy.

That worsening will be due to the increasing scarcity of private sources of electoral financing. Economic liberalization has encouraged best practices in business and a much-diminished dependence on political brokerage for enterprises to succeed. The increasing concentration of our economy in the formal corporate sectors that require the predictabilities of the rule of law over the uncertainties of political patronage dramatically lessens the incentive to "invest" in candidates.

Depoliticization of the economy is good for us in the long run. But it dramatically reduces the importance of financing candidacies. For as long as elections continue in the normal, costly mold we have been used to, driven by celebrity-power rather than by real policy debate, the political party system will continue to be non-existent. The reliability of solid party adherence to a program of government will continue to be absent.

The incumbents, both at the local and national levels, will continue to enjoy an advantage because of their access to state resources. That, in turn, will encourage leakages in public funds and highly politicized spending.

And our elections will continue to be the circuses they have become.

Alex R. Magno teaches political science at the University of the Philippines and writes a regular column for the daily Philippine Star.