Cha-Cha redux

…NOT A few citizens have gone to calling the Senate as a body of wimps. And hark back to the times of Recto, Tañada, and Diokno.

Towering intellectuals and nationalists all, theirs was the Senate that actualized the noblest elements of the national life, articulated the intellect of the nation, wielded the power of reason against the force of numbers, affirmed the “sanctity of right against the brutality of might,” preserved, protected and promoted the ethos of the Filipino.
Ours is a Senate of…oh, God, what grievous sin have we committed to deserve this punishment?

…With a House of Representatives cleaved, cowed and co-opted – some in the Opposition would deign corrupted – by the executive branch, the Senate – its infirmities notwithstanding – is called upon by the nation, if not by Providence, to rise above the vulgar plane of party politics and fulfill its primordial role in a republic: To “curb the propensity of a single numerous assembly to yield to the impulse of sudden and violent passions,” as The American Commonwealth plainly and so precisely enunciated.
As though written but yesterday, in the wake of the Senate-House of Representatives bitter row over the latter’s insistence of a constituent assembly – by themselves – to change the Constitution, the paragraphs above are actually part of a piece titled Creeping despotism in my Free Zone column in the Feb. 16-22, 2006 issue of the now defunct Pampanga News. Ah, what sameness do nearly 12 years still make! As in the time of Gloria, so too in the regime of Duterte. Kindred spirits do they make, indeed. To continue --  

Passions the administration so arrogantly tried to contain with its rule of law and majesty of numbers in a House that caninely pandered to every wish of its mistress, salivating at the prospect of pork from her table. (Make that term extension under Duterte).
House members filling the Cabinet – Andaya, Nachura and Puno, among the latest – comes to me though less as a payback for their solid support of the embattled Macapagal-Arroyo at the time of the impeachment, than a call to a more important – to Malacañang, that is – mission: Charter Change.

With Puno recycled at DILG, expect the local government units to be reduced to a Cha-Cha chanting chorus. So, they will, with utmost certainty, claim they hold the majority of the national constituency. Theirs though would be that majority described by Goethe as “…a few strong men who lead, some knaves who temporize and the weak multitude who follow, without the faintest idea of what they want.”
Millions of signatures from the yoked and herded masa, resolutions from all fawning LGUs, NGO collaborators and vested interest groups are set to be heaped upon the nation to tells us “what the Filipino people want.”
…George Washington, for all his intellectual inferiority to Jefferson and Adams, did one over his first two successors. Finding resonance and relevance today in the Philippines is a passage from his farewell address: “The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.”
Still on the current frenzied steps towards Cha-Cha, especially as concerned its primary party pusher that is PDP-Laban, this take from Free Zone in the May 4-10, 2006 issue of Pampanga News:

Party line
THE primacy of party platform over the cult of personality is one warranty of the parliamentary system. As practiced everywhere else. Thus, Israel’s Likud and Labor, Great Britain’s Tories and Labour too, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, Germany’s Christian Democrats, and for sometime, even Italy’s Communist Party.

The state of high development of the named countries makes the greatest argument for the parliamentary system. Conversely, the state of undevelopment of this country makes an irrefutable damnation of the personality-centered presidential system.
So we go parliamentary. So, we irreversibly go full blast in economic development. So, Chacha, hallelujah! Let’s party!
Something in the Filipino psyche had to be lobotomized though, for party politics to even set root hereabouts.
The master of politics himself, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, knew this by heart. Thus, his immortal take on Philippine politics as “personalist, populist and individualist” upon which he founded his fuehrership, and, with his beloved Imeldific, propagated their Malakas at Maganda apotheosis.
All Filipino politicians come from the Marcosian mold of “personal, popular, individual.” All pretensions to party advocacy are, well, pretensions.
So Quezon ranted: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.” God bless him.
Party loyalty is a contradiction in terms; loyalty to the country is as true as Judas’ devotion to Christ. Where politicos are concerned.
The pre-eminence of the individual politician over his party is inherent in Philippine political story. Thus, Nacionalista Party-Roy Wing, Liberal Party-Kalaw Wing, Liberal Party-Salonga Wing in the not too distant past.
Thus, a Liberal Party sundered by anti-GMA and pro-GMA flanks winging to Atienza-Defensor on the right, Drilon-Pangilinan, et al on the left. Poor Jovy Salonga, tottering at the fulcrum.
On another plane, witness how political parties hereabouts are hitched on the tides of fortune of their founders: the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan was an invincible monolith at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, only to crumble to dust after EDSA Uno. The sainted Cory took Mitra’s Laban to the promised land, then pulled the rug from under and emerged with El Tabako’s LakTao, that’s Lakas-Tao for you, that evolved into Lakas-NUCD-UMDP. And where is Erap’s Partido ng Masang Pilipino now? Or the Reform Party of Maid Miriam?
The Philippine political experience has made a mockery of party politics. A change to the parliamentary system is bruited about as the harbinger of political maturity, and consequently, the supremacy of a party’s platform of governance as the dominant factor in the choice of national leaders.
It is not bad to dream. But, kung mangarap ka’t magising, na ikaw ay ikaw pa rin, para anupa’t ika’y patulugin? Baka ka lang bangungutin.
Charter change? Parliamentary over presidential? Yes, we need systems change. But what we need more is a change of men. And what we need most is a change in men.

YEAH, AS that French wag said "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."
In the currency of Philippine politics: the more things change, the more Marcos becomes Duterte.