My friends inform me that any attempt to cause a change in the way Filipinos elect their leaders is doomed from the start.
"Filipinos will always elect those who give them the most money, who promise them jobs, who spring for that goiter surgery that some voters need from time to time," my friends tell me, "even - and perhaps especially - if the candidates they elect are corrupt and routinely send out their goons to force their will on the public."
It's just the way it is, my friends tell me.
And, my friends are right. Philippine democracy is a big joke. People do not embrace the concept of the greater good. There's only the personal good, or the welfare of the extended family to think of. The country be damned, it's damned anyway already.
Why is Philippine culture so everyone-to-himself, the-country-be-damned? There are several theories about this. One theory is that the Philippines is made up of 7100 islands and each large island or island chain developed over time into a separate nation. The provincial, or the parochial psyche developed and went into full bloom, while the nation remained an elusive ideal, a chimera.
The second theory is poli-cultural, i.e., both political and cultural. In Nick Joaquin's famous essay, he bemoans the fact that the country's culture is a culture of exploitation. One is either an exploiter or the exploited. One's job and lifetime preoccupation is to remain an exploiter if already one, or become an exploiter if not one already. Those in government exploit the citizens and do not serve them.
The third may be the explanation for the second. The landed gentry in the Philippines, which became the aristocracy in the vastly agricultural Philippines during the Spanish era, were installed by the Spanish crown, notoriously by Queen Isabela, who granted her favorites large tracts of land in the Philippines. These royal grants created a European-style feudal system that forced the native populations into a position of servility vis-a-vis the feudal lords who were supported by the Spanish crown through the dreaded Guardia Civil.
Unlike in the wild west of the United States, where adventurous Americans acquired properties through homesteading and commercial acumen, the native inhabitants of what would eventually become the Philippines almost suddenly woke up to find that large tracts of land that they might have hunted on and might have cultivated now belonged to powerful feudal lords, as mandated by the Spanish monarchs. The distinction between the Philippine experience and the American West experience is, of course, an oversimplification. The native Americans (Indians) were in fact deprived of their hunting lands by the hordes of frontiersmen and women looking for land and gold, with the U.S. Federal government serving as brutal enablers.
Over nearly 400 years of Spanish colonial times, the native populations in the Philippines became wards of the owners of the big plantations and eventually became so dependent on those owners that they surrendered even their thinking processes to them.
The natives learned not to think for themselves; they depended on the big bosses, the big landowners to think for them.
By late 19th century, the winds of change were already howling, and a new intelligentsia class had begun to challenge the social order. This intelligentsia class, schooled in Spain and trained in the intellectual concepts of European Masonry - most of the Philippine revolutionaries were Masons - rebelled from the Spanish-installed aristocracy and friars and successfully erected the first Philippine Republic on June 12, 1898.
The new revolutionary government, however, never actually sat in power. The emerging interventionist global American power intervened and the Philippine-American war of attrition began.
Much of the Philippines was unaffected by what was going on in Manila. Much of the Philippines was still feudal, exploitative, provincial, parochial and clannish. Throughout the rest of the Philippines, the Manila government - now run by Americans - was for the most part a foreign power.
The Americans introduced Filipinos to American-style democracy, but it seems that they were content to democratize only those in Manila and the surrounding areas. The rest of the country remained feudal. Examples of American modus operandi are today's Afghanistan, where the Americans have democratized Kabul and other important cities, but not the great Afghan countryside, which is ruled by warlords and the Taliban.
These were the conditions that were present at the time of the Philippine independence from the U.S. in 1946. Not much has changed. People in the provinces still vote for the candidates who can give them the most money, who can promise jobs for relatives, who come with medicines in times of need.
The idea that people should vote for those candidates who are projected to do good for the country is still alien to them. Their likely reply to entreaties from people like me is: "Define what's good for the country" or "Define country."
This may no longer be true in the not-too-distant future, however. In many cities and towns of the Philippines, local leaders and intellectuals schooled in Manila, Cebu, Davao and other major cities, are already trained - have long been trained - in thinking in terms of what's good for the country.
The recent voters' revolt in Pampanga, which installed a lowly and most unlikely priest as governor, is the strongest hint yet that Filipinos are waking up to the need for good leaders. Before that, the election of Estrada demonstrated that the common tao - the drivers, maids, sidewalk vendors, farmers and slum dwellers - would buck their masters to embrace a politician who vowed to fight for the welfare of the downtrodden and dispossessed.
While nothing seems to ever change in the Philippines, there are strong hints that the country is on the cusp of revolutionary upheavals in its electoral process. The groundwork has been set for a coming revolution in the ballot box.
While the intelligentsia and patriots never win elections, there is evidence that someday they will be racking up big, important wins. This despite contraindications in many small towns and municipalities, where people are still falling in love with the most popular and highly-visible personalities such as actors, TV hosts and boxers like Manny Pacquiao.
What this all means is that the electorate is becoming neurotic. Changes are happening quickly, unexpectedly. Voters are telling their political bosses that they themselves must determine the leaders who will receive their votes. Unfortunately, their choices have made things worse for the country and not a whit of difference for them. They are still dirt poor and their only salvation now is a one-way ticket out of the country. People do not understand why.
People are conflicted over the presidential election of 2004, when the clearly superior candidate Gloria Arroyo may have lost to the clearly inferior but supremely popular candidate, Fernando Poe, Jr., but allegedly resorted to widespread cheating to emerge the "victor."
Mrs. Arroyo, apparently stung by accusations of electoral fraud, seemingly lost all interest in appearing virtuous and is allegedly ruling as a corrupt and ruthless tyrant whose political moves consist of laying the groundwork for escaping prosecution once out of office.
First there was complete surrender of their democracy to the whims and caprices of their masters. Now, Filipino voters are beginning to break loose from their masters' hold and asserting their right to choose their destiny. Unfortunately, they are exercising this right by choosing the most inept, corrupt and unqualified candidates.
Philippine elections have become, for the most part, a joke. So why do I assume that it is possible to convince Filipinos to suddenly adopt a concept that is completely foreign to them: the idea that the public officials they elect are responsible to them, and that if those public officials do not do a good job, they - the people - must fire those officials?
I do not know that the coming Revolution in the Ballot Box is real or an illusion. I do not know that any efforts on my part to help this coming revolution along would yield any actual benefits. What I do know is that if not enough people pool their energies to help it along and focus that energy, it could fizzle, die on the vine.
Over the years a lot of Filipinos in the intellectual and elite classes have tried to educate Filipino voters to vote for the most qualified, not the most popular or the most generous with their ill-gotten wealth.
Most have failed. There is a very strong possibility that I will fail and others will fail. I'm in the bettors' paradise of Las Vegas, and I know that the odds for this coming Revolution in the Ballot Box that I'm talking about are in million to one territory.
But what if the idea of the Revolution in the Ballot Box catches fire on the Internet? What if enough people forward it and it makes the rounds in the Philippines and in the diaspora several times over? What if people actually take this call to arms seriously?
It is a simple concept. Do not vote for a re-electionist candidate. Vote for the most qualified opponent. Do it in protest. Scream from the rooftops that you are tired of incompetent and corrupt officials. You want justice, you want a future for your children. You want to live in the Philippines and not have to work as a maid or day laborer in some foreign land. You want to be safe from floods, from mudslides, from the rubble of buildings that collapse because they are not built to withstand medium-strength earthquakes.
You don't have to go through hoops or take extraordinary measures. Just don't vote for the incumbent public officials in your town, in your province, in the national government. Vote for their opponents.
And keep doing it until a new class of politicians emerge that serve you and serve you well, and do not have their hand in the collection box.
If the corrupt and incompetent politicians offer you money, take it but do not vote for them. They have been deceiving you all this time. Deceive them back. They are mostly Machiavellians; be a Machiavellian yourself. Deceive the deceivers.
If you keep doing this enough times, starting in May, 2010, someday - 20 to 30 years from now - you or your children will wake up and find a new Philippines being run by elected officials who serve their constituents well, who work for the public interest, who do not steal from the government.
That is what Revolution in the Ballot Box means.
