Walang Ganyan Sa States (Part 1)

The Philippine Government and Its Officials

Marshmallow Democratic System:

I once got into an argument with my law professor regarding democracy. In a nutshell, it led to him asking me if I wanted to remove democracy in our political set up, to which I hesitantly lied and answered "No sir" and gave some BS answer showing my support for the big D word(No, not the reproductive organ, silly. Wag gross, this is an intellectual article) The truth is, we don't deserve democracy.

What is this fancy word 'democracy' anyways? De-mo-krasi, in essence means "The rule of many". The truth is, democracy simply does not work for this country.  Why? Immaturity. We are too immature for this political system to flourish. Remember the marshmallow experiment where kids were given marshmallows with a promise that should they choose to wait, the marshmallows given would be doubled? The smarter ones reaped bigger rewards of sugary goodness by waiting... er no, we are not the smarter one in this case. We're the kid who just stuffed himself with the white puff as soon as the door closed. Sorry, but that's the truth.

Being the impatient kid who lives in the perpetual present, we attack the marshmallow with gusto, "get in my mouth now, marshy! Nomnomnom!!!"

In economics, one of the important concepts is the power of incentive. It is the motivation that influences an individual to the choice he will make. During elections, this incentive is known as "perang naka-ipit sa sandwich ni 'ateh' at 'koyah'." Now, the power of these incentives are less influential when the 'ateh' or 'koyah' has a fatter wallet, or is educated enough to see behind that charming smile flashed by our politicians; these educated individuals may vote for reasons which have a longer term of effect than those damn sandwiches, i.e. better political climate, improved business stability, lessening of corruption etc.

Weighing the amount of people easily influenced by the sandwiches versus the amount of people voting for more long term reasons, who wins?  According to the NSO, in 2012, we had 4.2 million people living in poverty(which increases yearly), poverty defined as living with an ANNUAL salary of Php 18,935. That's Php 1,578 per month, or Php 394 per week, to be divided by let's say, a family of 5.  Wala ng pangload si ate.  Obviously, these numbers are grossly conservative.

So is it really a democratic system when the rule of the many is determined by uneducated votes of sandwiches with extra palaman? Is it democracy when the "choice of the people" is strongly influenced by the necessities of a hungry tummy which in reality is brought about by those being voted for in order to remain in power? In other words, is it really democracy when your choice is pre-determined by powerful individuals who want to keep "the people" hungry and controllable?

What I'm saying, if you're still with me here, is that in the Philippine setting, democracy is basically the rule of the most number of influential sandwiches and we don't deserve it.

Role Playing Geniuses

From a nationwide perspective:
In 2016, elections are coming up, hence, we see our highly respectable Congressmen vying for their moment in the spotlight by conducting these extremely important televised Inquiries "In Aid of Legislation" to investigate anomalies which happened right under their noses. Yes mga sirs, talagang wala kayong alam kung paano nangyari mga yan, hence the need to inquire.

The problem with this is that they(the Congressmen)  firstly, under our system of government,  like to pretend that they are a court of justice, forgetting that their job is to legislate and not to determine if someone is guilty or innocent.   Claiming that these hearings are done "in aid of legislation", where exactly are the fruits showing that they have indeed crafted laws to avoid repetition of such anomalies? So they scrapped the PDAF and just renamed the damn thing to circumvent the laws they just crafted.

What does Donald Trump do when an employee fails to perform his functions? He looks at the under-performing employee like he's vomit, and says "You're fired!" I'm not saying that Congress is under performing, God no. I mean, it only took them more than a decade to enact the R.H. Bill which is just one of the MOST IMPORTANT BILLS in Philippine history.  Neither am I saying they look like vomit, c'mon we've got "Sexy" and "Pogi" in office, diba?

Secondly, investigating anomalies done by yourselves or by your peers? Allow me to provide a couple of words describing their act; conflict of interest, biased, politicized... in short, highly unnecessary gestures to recover the "trust" of the people. Y u waste tax money, silly Senators?

On the Executive(President) side, we've got an administration who gets confused or pretends to not know any better, forgetting that the budgeting process belongs to the Congressmen.  So basically, in making the national budget for the year, the President can only recommend the amounts to be used in the budget(this acts as a limit to the maximum amount that can be appropriated by our super honorable Congressmen.)

The President cannot say "oh, put X amount of pesos in this project." (but that's exactly what he did with the DAP.) Under the Philippine Constitution, he can only say "hanggang X amount of pesos lang for that project, okay, you group of selfless individuals reeking of honor and trustworthiness(Congress)?"

His power is limited to getting savings from the executive branch projects(which was already determined by Congress in their creation of the national budget) in another executive project.  He used this power to defend the DAP. Really? Savings is the amount left over from an expenditure. It's basically "oh may natira sa Project Z, ang galing, ilipat ko nga sa Project Y." Mr. President, I don't know what dictionary you're using, but taking a budget before it is used for that purpose is in no way "savings". Stop this silliness.

So we've got Congress who thinks it's a judge, and a President who thinks he's Congress itself. Really, these people should go open their Constitutional Law books before running for office.

Selfless Servants Of the People

What's the difference between a foreign public official versus that of a Filipino public official? Clue. It has five syllables. Delikadeza.  It means a sense of propriety regarding to sensitivity to the limits of proper behavior.  Let's face it, politics is dirty business all over the world,  but you've got to give it to the Filipinos to be the most kapal muks.

Riddle me this:
A. Which Senator refused to go on leave despite solid allegations of graft and corruption? Whoops, trick question, because the answer is all of them. However, if you thought of Jinggoy Estrada, you still get a cookie for being up to date Yay.
B. Which Vice President became a President, and after her term ran for lower office in order to help avoid her prosecution? Clue. She's so special that her timely medical problems can only be properly treated abroad. Sirit? If you guessed GMA, congratulations! You get another cookie.
C. Which Congressman was convicted for raping a minor and claimed that he shouldn't be imprisoned because "the people" will be deprived of political representation to their detriment? Clue. He got to leave the compounds of prison whenever he wanted to. If you guessed Jalosjos, congratulations!  Sorry, wala na akong cookie.
D. Which executive appointee was caught in a video playing in a casino with her feet up on the slot machine, which is prohibited by law?  It's LTO Chief Virginia Torres who claims that she was just attracted by the lights of the machine.  May lahing lamok pala si Chief eh, naattract ng ilaw.

In fact the rarity of delikadeza is so rare, that the Senate itself applauded former Senator Zubiri when he resigned from his post back in 2011 when it was proven that he won through election fraud.  He was called a "gentleman" for doing so.  Our standards for proper behavior has sunk so low that a cheater caught cheating is already a gentleman for stepping down.  Huwaw.