What’s Next For Most of Us?

I would have entitled this entry “the national hangover”. I thought it would not be too accurate. Hangovers last for at most a day. It can even be cured by good sleep, paracetamol or having another shot of what it was we were having last night. But, the 2010 elections will tend to stay with us much longer.

But, the elections, in a certain sense have the effect of a hangover. For the past few months, we were treated to mental and emotional opiates that need not be taken through our bodies. Candidates promising a future that may take a millennium to accomplish took us away from what it was that we needed to do at present. Daily scandals titillated our ability to discern electoral strategy. Even the new modality for electing public officers absorbed us in various conspiratorial theories. For many Filipinos, somehow, our daily toil became a little bit bearable. There was the possibility of a better future. We could participate in it. We did discourse, dialogue, debate and then take an actual vote. To those in power, we suddenly mattered. For this period, we felt the essence of citizenship--of being Filipino. Let me call it the opiate provided by a republican liberal myth that citizens are important because each of them can cast a vote.

But, after the results of the elections become official, how much will we really matter?

The next President of the Republic of the Philippines will have the constitutional and legal authority to appoint thousands of public officers. These few will exercise state power, their discretion will matter. But there are just millions of us out here--many struggling to have our children educated, many tolerating seeing theirs fail to have the proper food on their table. Many depending on, and affected by, the results of the decisions of these few.

Of course, we can still discourse, dialogue, debate amongst ourselves. Perhaps, those who we have elected into power may listen. But in the final analysis, they will be the ones who will make the decisions. In many cases, these decisions will be compromised. Perhaps, the next administration will be less corrupt; but remaining in power, accommodating those who care more about the status quo (religious institutions, corporate power, local politicians, military, foreign interests, investors) qualify the values of those elected. After all, there is the next election to look forward to.

The institutions of accountability through which we could exact responsibility and relevance have been severely compromised. I do not speak only of checking corruption (i.e. the ombudsperson, the impeachment process, and independent judiciary); but likewise the ability of broader constituents to actually craft the agenda and influence the vote of every member of Congress. Do we really have the ability to ensure that the President does not simply do what he wants, but that he does what we think he should. And the “we” in that last sentence of course is a troublesome problematic that must also be consciously and deliberately addressed.

If “we” are to remain true to our concept of genuine democracies or meaningful freedoms, “we” have to find our own means to make ourselves heard over the monopolies of media, over the threats of subtle religious institutions, over the popular names of politicians who do not really deliver. This should be our agenda: to make ourselves heard regardless. It should not be to ask whether whoever wins in this elections will really listen.

The day after the elections feels like a hangover: waking up to the crude realities of our present lives after the temporary stupor. But unlike a hangover, this present cannot be cured by good sleep, paracetamol or a shot of what we were having the last few months.

May 11, 2010