ELECTION AS A DEMOCRATIC INSTRUMENTALITY APPROPRIATED IN PHILIPPINE POLITICS VIA THE AGENCY OF THE COMMISSION ON ELECTIONS (COMELEC)

Ruel F. Pepa
Trinity University of Asia

-I-

The free election of government officials in a country is said to be a classic legacy of democratic politics. In the context of the Philippines, it is a legacy of what we have come to know as the American brand of democracy. Generations before the Americans came to colonize the country after more than three centuries of Spanish colonization, US democracy had already been an institution in its own right where elections happened at all levels of government and hence were an institution in themselves. Through time, a general impression has been created in the minds of the peoples of different countries that in one way or another have been substantially influenced by US politics largely through its imperialistic foreign policies. The Philippines is one of them. In Benedict Anderson’s “Elections in Southeast Asia,” the author mentions that

National-level elections were introduced in the Philippines by its American conquerors in 1907. The immediate background for this innovation was Asia’s first modern revolution, the successful insurrectionary movement launched in 1896 against Spanish rule which began in the environs of Manila and later spread through much of Luzon and tangentially into parts of the Visayas. While the movement was led largely by small-town notables and provincial gentry, it also involved widespread participation of the popular classes, and by women and adolescents, as well as by adult males. Hence the Americans’ counter-revolutionary intervention required a ruthless military campaign which may have cost up to a quarter of a million Filipino lives. (Anderson, pp. 272-273)

I would like to believe that the Philippines is the country most influenced by US politics to the point of actually having been “brainwashed” to think that the single measure of a democratic political way is the regular holding of elections at all levels of government. In fact, the general feeling of the adult population segment when Marcos declared martial law in 1972 was democracy died because no more elections would be held henceforth. In a sense, there is some theoretical truth to such a feeling and belief. I myself am prone to believe that theoretically, involvement in elections is a very concrete manifestation of a people’s actual taste of democratic life in the politics of a nation. Choosing the leadership of one’s barangay, municipality, province or country should create in a person a feeling of importance for being a part of a nation’s political dynamics. If this situation is a reality, it could be confidently said that democracy is truly alive and well. This is what we call true people’s power—a political condition where the majority reign and where they reign, elections are the best channel.

Free elections are certainly not all there is to democracy; but in every modern nation that is generally called democratic, free elections are, as they always have been, the basic device that enables the people to control the rulers. In short: No free elections, no democracy. (Ranney, p.158)

-II-

It had not been the case in the distant past from the time of primitive communalism to the time of feudalism. During those days, brute force exercised in warfare, both internal and external, always with the intent of the powerful to overrun the weak and characterized by elements of greed, deceit and murderous drives, catapulted leaders of immense power. Those early stages of social development were in a political climate that bred a highly stratified social context also known as caste system. The nobility occupied the highest stratum while denizens of less-than-human recognition inhabited the lowest.

The latter were the farmers and workers who bore the burden of society’s economic productivity in a situation of exploitation that pushed them to poverty, hunger, sickness and even death. They were a major factor in sustaining the economic base of society, yet they were the most dehumanized and disempowered in terms of political signification. They gave the most of what they could in a society’s economy, yet they had been pushed to the outer fringes of their society’s politics and government. In fact, a relevant case in point as we discuss this matter is the society of the ancient city-state of Athens during the time of the first classical philosophers. Those who belonged to the lowest rung of the Athenian society were not even considered citizens. Hence, ancient democracy as it was inaugurated in Athens during that time was not the democracy we know today.

Later within the same wide temporal scope, political power established through sheer brute force was sustained by the succeeding generations of immense wealth of geographic scope characteristic of the magnificent monarchies that ruled the world. If the caste systems were inaugurated in the earlier generations, they were strengthened and institutionalized during this period. The advent of true democracy, its guiding principles and ideals, was yet a distant possibility whose reality was not even dreamt of by the most idealistic political theorist of the era.

As people in feudal societies of the past realized more and more the value of their humanity, freedom became an ideal to be pursued for such freedom was the only way whereby their humanity could authentically be expressed. In the inter-subjective sense, an individual’s freedom was as important and inviolable as any human being ‘s freedom in a society. This was the germinal seed of what later on developed into what we now call democracy where individual freedom to be meaningful in the social context should not only be guaranteed but in the process should also be subjected to certain principles that will promote general human welfare and flourishing. In simple terms, we say that the adult populace of a society, under normal circumstances, is given importance, empowered and granted certain political responsibilities to make the society healthy, strong, progressive and dynamic. At this point of modern time, the general will of the people, regardless of their economic situation in life plays a highly responsible and active role in politics and the best expression of it should be in the choice of their leadership through the instrumentality of fair and free elections.

One of the requirements for a free election is what is often called universal suffrage: that is, the rule that all adults have an equal opportunity to vote. However, this principle has never been interpreted to mean that everyone in the community must have the right to vote. No democratic nation has ever permitted ten-year-old children to vote and no democratic theorist has ever called their exclusion undemocratic. Most democratic nations also exclude aliens, people confined to mental institutions, and criminals in prison, and a few people think this violates the principle of universal suffrage. (Ranney, p. 160)

-III-

In the context of the Philippines, the importance of elections is enshrined in the 1987 Constitution being a political right known as the right of suffrage. In Article V Section 1 of the said charter , we find the following provision:

Suffrage may be exercised by all citizen of the Philippines not otherwise disqualified by law, who are at least eighteen years of age, and who shall have resided in the Philippines for at least six months immediately preceding the election. No literacy, property, or other substantive requirement shall be imposed on the exercise of suffrage. (The 1987 Philippine Constitution)

Suffrage, however, is more than election. It also includes plebiscite, referendum, initiative and recall. (cf. de Leon, pp. 144, 145). The agency in the Philippines constitutionally mandated to oversee, manage and administer elections from the most basic political unit to the national is the Commission on Elections (COMELEC). Again, referring to the 1987 Philippine Constitution, the COMELEC is one of the constitutional commissions along with the Civil Service Commission and the Commission on Audit.

Constitutional commissions are independent bodies (cf. Article IX Section 1 of the 1987 Constitution).

In the exercise of their powers and functions, they are supreme within their own sphere and may, therefore, be considered, in that respect, coordinate and co-equal with the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Like the other organs of the government, however, their acts are subject to scrutiny by the Supreme Court on certiorari. (de Leon, p. 273)

Regarding the purpose of the COMELEC, de Leon (p. 296) comments:

The purity of elections is one of the fundamental requisites of popular government. It is obviousl that the sanctity of the ballot and the free and honest expression of the popular will can best be protected by an independent office whose sole work is to enforce laws on elections. The Commission on Elections is organized for that purpose. The intention is to place it outside the influence of political parties and the control of the legislative, executive, and judicial organs of the government. It is an independent administrative tribunal, co-equal with the other departments in respect to the powers vested in it.

-IV-

However, the kind of democracy we have in the Philippines is simply a semblance of what we find in truly democratic states. We may have the political structure of democracy but the cultural orientation of the Filipinos has not been given the chance to inhabit the inner chambers of such structure. Perhaps the forces that prevent them to do so are just so strong or the structure itself could be illusory and hence non-existent. In the political evolution of the Filipino people, they have not really broken away from their feudal past and they have not really imbibed yet the democratic way of life. And if democracy in our context is flawed, so are its instrumentalities as they operate and function in practically all political exercises we engage in even the elections we have had since the first time they were experienced by our American-inspired ancestors. Because of our colonial and feudal past, we presently have a very peculiar kind of political experience where the essence of such past and the forcible ramming of theoretical democracy of American design down our throats have not actually found a connecting point of harmony. This is basically the reason why the Philippines has not achieved yet political stability and economic strength. The artificial blending of colonial feudalism and superficial US-brand democracy more aptly termed by the Irish historiographer Benedict Anderson “cacique democracy” is actually a parody, for how can feudal lords—even warlords—or “caciques” become politically dominant in a truly democratic social arrangement? As we have determined earlier, the entire set-up has totally engulfed the way the instrumentalities of democracy function in the Philippines to the detriment of the nations economy, government and culture.

In the same vein, Philippine elections are therefore as less democratic as they can be for generally, warlords are the ones calling the political shots in both the municipal and provincial levels of government. Only those who have “guns, goons and gold” have the supremacy to run in elections, making every election a contest of cacique powers. And where do we find the masses? They are simply as disempowered as they always are—sycophants to candidates or simple nobodies. In places wallowing in poverty, vote-buying is a common thing and the general order of the day is, the more money a candidate has, the better are the chances of winning an election. Besides this, cheating is rampant in all parts of the country during the conduct of actual elections as well as during the counting of votes. Even if the major mandate of the COMELEC is to safeguard the sanctity of the ballots and protect the purity of the electoral process, this mandate has never been effected. The resonance of violent drives characteristic of ancient power play are, in fact, still heard in the sounds of gunfire during the heat of campaigns, during the election proper, even during the post-election period.

Democracy is corrupted in the graft and corruption found in government people and offices. Hence, we have all the reasons to say that even the political instrumentalities—and the electoral process is one of them—of a government that has continually corrupted democracy are themselves tools of corruption and deception aimed to perpetuate corrupt people in power. Related to this, Anderson comments:

Naturally enough, the form of electorism introduced [in the Philippines] was modeled, even if parodically, on America’s own. It is useful to recall that, in the first decade of the twentieth century, the United States had arguably the most corrupt form of electorism among all the industrial powers. Not only were women excluded from the vote, but so were millions of adult non-white males. Poll taxes and gerrymandering were widespread, to the benefit of court-house cliques and urban machines. Violence, in the South and the West, was far more a part of electoral politics than in advanced Western Europe. Furthermore, the United States of that era was quite peculiar in the general absence of a national-level professional bureaucracy, such as had emerged in Britain, Sweden, Germany, or France. (p.273)


We are therefore not surprised if in reality even the very agency that is mandated to make elections credible becomes itself an instrument employed by the forces of corruption and deceit to destroy the very foundation of democracy



REFERENCES

Anderson, Benedict. The Spectre of Comparisons, Nationalism, Southeast
Asia, and the Word. Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press. 1998, 2004.

De Leon, Hector S. Textbook on the Philippine Constitution (2005 Edition).
Quezon City. Rex Printing Company, Inc. 2005.

Ranney, Austin. Governing: An Introduction to Political Science. Singapore:
Prentice-Hall Pte Ltd. 1999.

©Ruel F. Pepa