Will the 2010 automated elections be a failure? Part 2 of 2

Our happiness ought to be the leader-candidates’ platform in this election

Pretend kapit-bisig for the candidates, all of the National Elite

This post answers the other question on election failure, that of the political scientists and many people in the streets: If the purpose of elections is to select the best leaders, will the 2010 automated elections fail?

Unlike my answer to the same question asked from the election observers’ perspective in Part I, Post 196, this time my answer is, “Yes, the 2010 elections has already failed!”

Introduction. I started Part I thus:

Pundits argue that the main purpose of elections is either (a) to select the best leader or (b) to express the will of the people.

Which purpose do you agree with?

Political scientists and most people on the streets will stand by purpose (a) that elections are for choosing the best leader.

Election observers think that the purpose of elections is (b) to express the will of the people (no matter how right or wrong).

Thus, for this Part II, the definition of “failure of election” is different given the other purpose that, that taking the perspective of the political scientist and most people on the streets, I think elections ought to have.

My definition of failure of elections in relation to other objective of selecting best leaders. For the question asked by political scientists and most people on the streets, the definition of failure of election is not as legalistic and as based on the process of voting as defined by the Comelec .

In fact, the failure to select the best leader that I describe here is that of the whole citizenry for allowing the situation to stay where these best leaders do not emerge from the candidate selection process.

In this sense, I consider the 2010 elections to be already a failure because the present frame of candidates do not represent the best set of candidates – though, individually, most do have some skills, talents and experience – that ought to have come out to campaign for leadership in the country. My reasons for this sweeping statement I give below.

For one, it has not prevented and, in fact, has resulted in more candidates running who belong to political dynasties. It is almost as if many places are run as fiefdoms by royal houses.

Furthermore, it is inconceivable that in a nation of 90 million people, a small body like the Senate with just 24 people could allow election of a parent and a child or of siblings at the same time as in the last few terms.

Not villains. Note I do not consider the leader-candidates as villains. As the image I used above shows, to me, they are more like faceless protagonists whose
campaign platforms represent their own interests, even as charity, and who cannot envision any structural change that will harm their cohort’s interest even if these structural changes are good or the whole nation in the long run.

Likewise, without questioning the individual capabilities of any Senator, it would be safe to assume that the consideration of national issues by blood relatives will overlap as one set of interests. There must be something in the structure or process of our formal leaders selection that leads to this anomalous condition.

I may tackle political dynasties as sub-optimal social change management in another post (or I may not).

For this post, my focus is on my perceptions on structural issues related to management of social change based on the set of candidates for the office of the President.

Problems with National Governance. With the benefit of hindsight, the 1987 Constitution to me, while ratified by more than three-quarters of the voters at that time and with a preamble dedicated to the people’s welfare, was written with too much of a reaction to Marcos and Martial Law and is one main reason why I think there is already a failure of elections.

For example, the single six-year term for the nationally-elected President has at least four disadvantages from a review of recent history:

• First, it increases the campaign spending to get elected by a factor of 50% compared to the four-year term as this spending, as a planning consideration, is directly proportional to the total potential corruption for the term or duration in office. In a national election at large, only the extremely rich can be a candidate for President.
• Second, having local and legislative elections in the middle of the six year term gives the sitting President the opportunity to turn Congress into his rubber stamp as has happened in the past giving him the keys of the national Treasury as has happened in the past few terms. This creates the opportunity, as we have seen in the past, for the President to move against the interest of the citizens in favor of himself.
• Third, the long six-year term allows the President to stuff the Supreme Court with his appointees thereby weakening the system of checks-and-balances. Likewise with other constitutional bodies made so with the purpose of assuring their independence like – the Central Bank, the Civil Service Commission, the Commission on Election among other – the overlap of incumbency allows a sitting President to stuff these supposedly independent bodies with a preponderance of office holders who may be beholden to him for their appointments.
• Finally, with so much potential for wealth acquisition, recent history has shown that the sitting President will always try to control the incoming administration to prolong his power. This creates a bias for traditional national elite and a situation – that is analogous to leaders of a small feudal town in Mindanao – where members of this national elite fight violently among themselves for a bigger share of a shrinking pie – the shrinking because of poor management that, in turn, is caused by a misalignment of incentives to a weak structure that leads to a weak state and so on ad nauseam in a vicious downward cycle.

To my memory, the situation has led to all Presidents after Cory to win with only a minority of the total votes – and as the 1987 Constitution does not allow for a run-off elections. The first year of the new President’s office is spent using government resources to reinforce a weak position and to gain control of Congress and the rest of the government machinery. This politicizes and weakens the bureaucracy.

While the 1987 constitution prohibits a President from running a second term, we have the regular spectacle of each sitting President trying to continue his control of the national Treasury every time the elections for President comes up in six years.

The provisions of the 1987 Constitution create motivation for the wrong behavior to emerge from the elected leader. The candidates that we need to choose from do not necessarily go beyond lip service to achieve the traditional goal of happiness for the people. Happiness, as highlighted by Karl Popper and Plato is the usual goal of national leaders.

Amending the Constitution. We must seriously plan on amending the Constitution. Maybe, we will negotiate with the candidates to agree to structural changes that would eliminate the disadvantages above that should apply only to the term of the President after him?

This amendment may be a return to a two term maximum by four-year term as in the 1935 constitution with the local elections coincident with the national elections. This system will allow a better alignment of the structure with accountability to the voters.

In retrospect, I do not think this 2 x 4 system was the reason why Marcos and Martial Law emerged. It is more the weakness of other countervailing institutions around the Presidency. The occurrence of three People Power uprising since 1987 indicates the same weaknesses persists.

It may be better to move even farther to, say three-year term, parliamentary system where all elections are local. The parliamentary system removes the need for expensive automated elections that are the result of the continuous cat-and-mouse games between the cheaters and the observers/managers.

The parliamentary system also allows more interests to be elected at lesser costs because terms are shorter and geographic areas are smaller. The national leader who emerges will not be one who is personally powerful but with the other skills like persuasion and compromise among the varied interests of different sectors of society.

Resistance from vested interests. We have to overcome resistance from sectors like the Senators, and the national elite supporting them, who have the self interest to keep the President elected nationally because they themselves have developed a national constituency. They have reason to fear local elections because many of them would not win in their home districts.

We also need to overcome the unholy alliance between the national elite above those of the Left (in their two political camps) whose ideology mandates big government and makes them the shock troops against change as they have the reflexive fear that the reason for change is because the incumbent President wishes to stay in power.

There ought to be simple means like requiring that the constitutional changes will take effect after the term of the sitting President to minimize this problem.

GMA as example. On the example of President Arroyo, notwithstanding any alleged sub rosa agreement with any of the present candidates to protect her or to make her Speaker of the House as the rumors go. I think if that candidate wins, he will make sure to break that unwritten agreement as it creates another locus of power that will work against his own interests in the future.

Finally, I do not think the President Arroyo has the skills to stay on as Speaker of the House even if, by inertia she gets elected for the position early in the next term. My proof – compare her personality with all the previous big Speakers like Villareal, Mitra and de Venecia and one can see the light of day in the contrast.

As soon as her hands let go of the pen that signs on the spending, she loses her seemingly impregnable power. She can then rest easily on the legacy of her leadership as measured by history.

The Goal of Government. Our system of electing leaders has turned into the classic and recurring Roman bread and circus entertainment for the plebeian masses.

The first goal is to return the election of leaders to its traditional purpose, the happiness of the People according to Plato (and Karl Popper).

My Definition of Happiness. As I have given in the page on Change, happiness for each citizen involves being able to do what one wants or having the opportunity to work towards that want without impinging on other people’s right to also do what they want for themselves and without being burdened unnecessarily by an inefficient and free-loading state machinery of government.

For Filipinos today, I translate this definition of happiness from the same page through a set of Socratic questions (as our milieu in this page is ancient Greece) among others that demand an emphatic yes for an answer:

• Gainful jobs at home: Is the Filipino able to find gainful work close to the bosom of his family, the basic unit of society as enshrined in the Constitution? Is their a policy to create such jobs at home and slowly reverse the supposed to be temporary policy of exporting the poor and unempowered?
• Right for all to public education through high school that meets a set standard: Is he able to send his children to good schools so that they are able to compete in the work marketplace of the future?
• Right to health and healthcare that helps achieve the other goals: Does he have the right to attain good health so he can finish elementary education, for example, and healthcare if he gets sick?
• Right to a secure future and retirement: Is he able to save his peso so that it is protected from loss of value by inflation or from devaluation, the boom and bust, against the currencies of the world?
• Right to good government including property rights and the rule of law: Does the Filipino get full value in terms of infrastructure and public services from the tax pesos that he pays? Reversing the Lozada Rule, our highways and public services ought to be at least 20% more if the standard “corruption” is minimized.
• Right to equal opportunity: Does the public space given enough incentive for private innovation and entrepreneurship to succeed based on hard work and excellence or is it stifled by the burden of freeloaders and blodgers who make a living by kotong on others whether as officials or as bandits?

Happiness as campaign issue. I do not see any among the candidate that has a solid platform based on even just two out of the six specific planks above. This is to be expected as implementing a platform built on happiness involves a restructuring of the political economy that may go against the interest of the present national elite.

This elite – from the President, the Senators, the entrenched labor unions, the aristocrats of the Left, and the rentier businessmen (not the legitimately value-adding entrepreneurs) – will always seek and cooperate to promote their self-interest after the inconvenience of temporary disagreements that arise from the hard campaigning for the national elections.

More so, some candidates will have to go against self-interest or that of his family in some of the goals and I cite examples of the leaders:

• Manny Villar may not do anything to reverse the OFW and export labor services policy (that depends on a managed weak currency for competitiveness, i.e. a subsidy or transfer payment from our tax pesos). At least 70% of the sales of his real estate empire come from OFW and BPO employees; and
• Noynoy Aquino’s family needs continuous tariff protection for the sugar industry to maintain their wealth. Ultimately, tariffs are transfer payment that create a dependency based on experience globally that historically keeps industry uncompetitive. Beyond using political power, can they be convinced to innovate instead to keep their hacienda productive>\?

Right Leaders. The challenge for the right leaders is to implement the structural change that will come from a platform built to achieve the goal of ‘Platonic’ happiness and to convince the whole nation to delay gratification to accumulate savings for investments in this goal.

Restructuring the economy from being consumption-led and trading-oriented to one based on efficient value-adding (not necessarily on traditional industry) and retention, an economy that has enough respect for the currency to take out savings hidden in mattresses or overseas for investment in the Philippines to achieve happiness, will be a big challenge.

Do we have a national elite that has the nobility to become the right leaders? As one group, the evidence is hard to see though certain members must have such nobility.

Maybe we need to give incentive hard work and merit instead of the quick buck and attract more leader talent from the wider society.

Call to Participate and Vote. Should I reject the present election and boycott because I do not think any candidate represents the need of the people?

No! I will not boycott despite my belief that the leading candidates may not work for our happiness as a nation.

I will learn the lesson of the Left in 1986 who had the naivete to think that Marxist theory must make Capital fall and became marginalized thereafter.

Our messy democracy proved them wrong to their regret until today. Our Demos will continue to grope its way forward.

Maybe I will just vote for qualified and progressive senators. Indeed, I will participate in this elections!

Click here for Part 1 of 2.