Real Talk: Dancing Campaigns for People to "Vote Wisely", Under the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines, is a Waste of Time
Section 2. No person may be elected President unless he is a natural-born citizen of the Philippines, a registered voter, able to read and write, at least forty years of age on the day of the election, and a resident of the Philippines for at least ten years immediately preceding such election.
Within the current constitution, one of its problems is the lack of qualifications. Until now, I still believe that President Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr. is a dropout from Oxford. Honestly, by academic qualifications, Atty. Maria Leonor "Leni" S. Gerona-Robredo is actually more qualified. But why in the world did Bongbong win against Leni? If we think about it, did the current qualifications according to the law of the land, require presidents to be college graduates? Bongbong is a registered voter, albe to read and write, and he's past 40 years. Bongbong hasn't been residing outside the Philippines. That would've already made Bongbong qualified to run for president!
It's stupid when people praise Singapore, but when I talk about the parliamentary system, they still say, "Oh no! Please! We tried it during the Marcos era! It never worked!" Are they taking their information from Raissa Espinosa-Robles? That's why I wrote if Mrs. Robles understands the role of the president, in the parliamentary system. If they want someone like the late Lee Kuan Yew or Prime Minister Laurence Wong, they couldn't get it down overnight.
In fact, Alex Magno of the Philippine Star writes this truth that we all need to hear, if we want better leaders:
If Malaysia had a presidential system of government, Mahathir might have never become its leader. Tough-talking, brutally frank and often abrasive, this man could not win a popularity contest.
Even if, hypothetically, Mahathir was elected president of a Malaysia under a presidential system, the man might not have accomplished what he did in a parliamentary setting. The legislature would have obstructed his most dramatic innovations. His team might have spent precious time and energy attending endless congressional investigations. Other aspirants to the top-post might have constantly conspired to cause his failure or smear him in the public eye as a means to undercut his base of public support.
The phenomenon of a Mahathir – or a Lee Kuan Yew, for that matter – would be difficult to imagine outside the framework of a parliamentary system of government. That system of government encouraged the full development of political parties that, in turn, built public support for innovative policies. The parliamentary form, along with the strong party system it fosters, ensure the cultivation of an ample supply of prospective leaders ready to take over and provide a consistent and reliable quality of leadership,
After all, the emergence of strong nations and strong economies is a process that requires generations of leaders. It is a process that takes longer than a single political lifetime.
It is, likewise, a process that requires the reliable institutionalization of political commitment to a strategy for progress. A national project of achieving a modern economy is, after all, a task that is too large even for the greatest of leaders to undertake singularly. It is a task that requires the sustained effort that only a committed party can ensure.
Without diminishing the personal qualities of great Asian leaders such as Mahathir or Lee Kuan Yew, it remains that their feats of statesmanship could not have been done without the strong network that only a stable political party could provide. The parliamentary form of government ensures superior conditions for evolving that stable network.
When Lee Kuan Yew, and later, Mahathir Mohamad, reached the point when it was best to withdraw from their leadership roles, the transition was never traumatic. The process was never uncertain. The continuity of the policy architecture was never in doubt.
When Mahathir endorses the parliamentary form for us, he is not offering an opinion from the ivory tower. He is speaking from the vantage point of a successful leadership episode. He is speaking with the richness of experience of what this form of government has made possible for him to accomplish despite the adversities his people had to face.
Great leaders do not fall from the heavens and perform overnight miracles of national development without a stable governmental platform.
At the risk of sounding tautological: great leaders can only emerge from political and institutional conditions that make great leadership possible. The most important characteristic of those conditions is that they do not rely on the mysticism of leadership and do not fall prey to the destructive tide of personal ambitions as well as personal jealousies – both of which are in abundance in our politics today.
If we think about it, people are more prone to thinking democracy is the rule of the majority, rather than democracy as a government of the people, for the people, and by the people. Democracy actually dies not only when a president is a tyrant. Democracy also dies for the nth time when the majority silences the minority. Democracy actually dies for the nth time through thunderous applause and when popular opinion, matters more than facts and credibility. Democracy dies for the nth time when popular (but not credible) people win because the majority wants them so. When you have a rule of the majority, it's merely the tyranny of the majority! It's unlike the parliamentary system where the majority party faces off against the minority party. Wouldn't it have been better if we had Uni-Team as the government while it answers to the Angat Buhay Opposition? Sadly, some people still treat the 1987 Constitution of the Philippines, as if it's this "inviolate text". Then they wonder why less and less people want to raise families!
Looking back at history, has vote wisely truly worked? I'd say most of the time, not at all. Why do you think athletes and actors who know nothing get into power? What's the use of looking down at Senator Robinhood Padilla for being an actor, all the while, such people are voting for actors and athletes, way before Padilla ran for senator? At least, Padilla has constitutional reform on-hand! What about those actors and athletes that kept getting into the Senate back in the 1990s to 2000s? I even wanted to be an actor at one point, so I could enter politics. Being in office isn't my thing either. It can be more tiresome for some people. Not everyone is qualified for politics!
That's why I've had enough of this "vote wisely" campaign. The problem is what caused the politician to rise into power. We do need to fix the mess that politicians created. However, what's more important is fixing the mess that created the politicians, that created the mess. The presidential elections is just history repeating itself every presidential elections and eveyr midterm elections. The reason is because popularity-based elections hardly respect credibility!
