Power and Privilege: Essays on Politics, Economics, and Government

By René B. Azurin

In this book of essays, veteran Filipino journalist Rene Azurin tries to bring to bear elements of history, political and economic theory and philosophy on public issues in an effort to extend the perspective of the reader beyond the narrow confines of his own particular interest group and into the economy at large and society in general, so that more Filipino citizens will have a better understanding of what public policies will best serve the general welfare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9789712729539

Book preview

POWER

AND

PRIVILEGE

Essays on Politics, Economics, and Government

René B. Azurin

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Copyright to this digital edition © 2010 by René B. Azurin

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For my mother Edna

who taught me math and things of |absolute value|

with love, gratitude, and profound admiration.

Table of Contents

Preface

This volume represents a collection of selected essays that originally appeared in the newspaper BusinessWorld from May 2008 to July 2010. It is the second such collection.

Appearing under the column title Strategic Perspective, these Thursday offerings of mine to the readers of BusinessWorld cover a wide range of subjects—from politics and economics to management and morality—and, as a matter of intention, try to present a broader and deeper analytical viewpoint on issues that invade—or should invade—public consciousness.

By bringing to bear elements of history, political and economic theory, and philosophy on public issues, my object is to expand the perspective of the reader beyond the narrow confines of his own particular interest group and into the economy at large, society in general, and time beyond the present. As a teacher (basically), my hope is that this broadening of viewpoint will eventually spread into the general populace and give more Filipino citizens a better understanding of what public policies will best serve the general welfare. Admittedly, the reach of my own voice is limited but I can hope that those with wider audiences will somehow be persuaded by my views and translate these into a more accessible message in more accessible mediums.

I am very grateful to BusinessWorld publisher Vergel Santos and the enlightened editors of BusinessWorld for providing me space in that prestigious publication to freely (and without any constraints whatsoever) expound views that are often harshly critical of the powers that be. Vergel, who is also a Director of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, has a deep understanding of the role of media in any society that styles itself as democratic and has always been in the forefront of the fight to defeat emerging threats to press freedom in this country.

A recurring underlying theme in my writings is that the problems of our society since its birth have essentially been caused by concentrated, unchecked power wielded by a privileged few. Such concentrated power is bad for any society because the lopsided distribution of power will produce uneven societal outcomes. Unfortunately, those wielding such power invariably use it—for as long as they are unrestrained—to benefit themselves and their private interests. Consequently, the general thrust of my own position on various public policy issues is toward the dispersal of power and toward the building up of different—and competing—centers of power in society.

The overriding object of social action, I believe, should be the creation of counterweights to any power center, particularly mighty government. Those who may temporarily administer the monopolistic coercive powers of the state must be effectively restrained from using such powers to promote private interests and subvert public ones. In this connection, the actual effectiveness of such restraints depends on the relative strength of other societal institutions that may wield some degree of power (like the media, the judiciary, organized citizens’ groups, religious institutions, professional associations, the academe, etc.) in the community of citizens.

It is my hope that this small volume will help disseminate this point of view a little more and convert those who read it to this line of thinking. This is, I think, the key to arresting the accelerating downward slide of governance in this country and ultimately solving the still-unsolved problems of our deteriorating society. It is, I believe, not too much of an aspiration.

René B. Azurin

Makati City, Philippines

August 2010

I.

On taking stock

Privilege and predatory

power

Hindi mo ba ako kilala? (Don’t you know who I am?) is a line that may very well describe the root cause of the ills that have bedeviled this nation since its birth. In the news and in various blogs because of its invocation by a small-town mayor in a golf course altercation, it is a demand for privilege, an assertion that the invoker thereof deserves special treatment because he (or she) holds some official title that confers on its bearer the authority to wield even a tiny bit of the power of government.

It hardly matters that the title acquired may have been obtained by buying votes from election riggers or by selling one’s soul to obtain appointment to some desirable puesto. And, whether the title is mayor, secretary, undersecretary, director, chairman, congressman, senator, governor, president, or just paper shuffler, it allows holders to insist on privileged treatment not only for themselves but also for their spouses, their children, and even their cousins thrice removed.

The news about such privilege being invoked violently on a golf course struck such a responsive chord among large swaths of the citizenry because (I believe) almost everyone has, in the course of a lifetime, invariably had the experience of being browbeaten—either physically or psychologically—by some power holder who reveled in being backstopped by the coercive might of the state. The reason the alternative version of the incident now being purveyed by the mayor, his Cabinet secretary father, their lawyers, and their PR machinery is dismissed as incredible by ordinary citizens is that it simply goes against the grain of our collective experience. Unarmed citizens have not been known to pick fights with visibly important people who strut around with guns and bodyguards. On the other hand, public officials intoxicated with the sense of their own importance have been known to be afflicted with the notion that others must surely recognize just how important they are and act subserviently. Bakit hindi nila kami kilala? (Why don’t they know who we are?)

The country is plagued by monstrous corruption and atrocious governance fundamentally because public officials have too much power and their insistence on privilege cannot be restrained. Granted, this sad situation had its beginnings in an American regime that allowed the political and economic elite of the time to consolidate government power completely in their hands and use this to obtain privilege and economic advantage. Still, in the 63-odd years since Americans ruled this country, the situation has worsened and deteriorated. Today, most Filipinos view their political leadership as the most privilege-invoking and corrupt ever.

We have today a government led by predators who view government power as the best route to a life of wealth and privilege. With very few exceptions, those who seek to control choice portions of government power in this country do so with the deliberate intent of using this to extract tong from the powerless public. Accordingly, we citizens cannot count on such officials to act to promote the public welfare. They only do so, occasionally, when actions that advance their private interests also incidentally bring about some public good.

We citizens who have been victimized in various ways by government power should ascribe this to the fact that government, like war, is essentially a predatory activity. As my favorite iconoclast, the brilliantly perceptive sociologist-economist Thorstein Veblen, wrote acerbically in his classic The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), government is the vehicle through which a non-productive ruling elite—a leisure class—can forcibly extract what amounts to tribute (tong) from the producing members of a society. We see this demonstrated in our society, not just today to be sure, but today in particularly extravagant measure. The question we should ask ourselves is, how do we defend ourselves against predators?

Tribute consists not only of the material wealth the predators steal from us through kickbacks, through overpriced government purchases, through rules that favor selected entities, through sweetheart deals that allow cronies to acquire lucrative monopolies, through diverting public funds (sometimes in plain paper bags) to private pockets, through padding the national budget with pork barrel and other discretionary allocations, through the control of established rackets like jueteng and smuggling, and through assorted other public perfidies. Tribute also consists of the acceptance the predators demand of boorish and arrogant behavior. An environment of privilege allows one to imagine that one’s public display of the trappings of power—like guns, bodyguards, wang-wangs, and even mistresses—is acceptable or even envied when this really can only be viewed as detestable and obscene.

The golf course incident may be amicably settled eventually because ordinary citizens do not emerge unhurt from banging their heads against the wall of government power and official privilege. In cases like these, ordinary citizens are usually well advised to just withdraw and lick their wounds in private. This is simply the way it is in this unfortunate country where there is one system of justice for you and me and another for privileged and powerful predators.

Still, logically, a point must also be reached when powerless citizens throw up their hands and cry, "Enough! Too much! Sobra na! Being a patient and forgiving and forgetful people, however, such a tipping point" is typically slow in coming in this land of the silently suffering and smilingly enduring. Maybe a basic character flaw we have as a people is that it takes us some time to perceive when our individual interests are actually joined and threatened. Acting in concert to defend what are intrinsically common interests against violation by predators is apparently not, for us, an instinctive inclination.

Yet, one can always hope. Judging from the no-longer-concealed rage that seems to reverberate in coffee shop conversations and in e-mail exchanges about the golf course incident (not to mention the Constitution-changing efforts of overfed politicians), the tipping point may already have been reached. We shall see.

(January 8, 2009)

Disconnection

Citizens who need to resort to shouting in the streets clearly feel a profound disconnection from the people who run government. What I said to a TV talk show host who asked me on his program if people were not just causing traffic by marching in the streets when House Resolution 1109 (a congressional initiative to amend the Philippine Constitution) wasn’t in effect yet was that people who feel alienated from their government will express themselves in the only ways they think they might still be heard. That the venue is the streets means that people feel that their elected representatives are not listening to them.

The irony is that these protests happen even as we celebrate Independence Day and the birth of our democracy. This should cause us all to raise the essential question: are we truly democratic? My view is that we have certainly imbibed the procedures of democracy but we are also really great at subverting them. This is somewhat like saying that we have what we might call a procedural democracy—the analogy is admittedly not precisely in tune with what political scientists actually mean by the term—but not yet a substantive one. We speak the words—e.g., the voice of the people, the rule of law, the mandate of the electorate, the common good, etc.—and we go through the motions and (legal) procedures but, if democracy means that the people actually wield power in this country, then we have made little progress in this respect since June 12, 1898.

Actually, it is not fair to reckon the time we’ve had to build a nation from June 12, 1898 because the nascent Philippine republic was engaged, at that time, in a war with brutal American invaders and could not realistically focus any attention on developing a democratic government. Moreover, that first republic was short-lived because we lost that war. The more appropriate reckoning date is July 4, 1946 because it was then that Filipinos were (at least nominally) in full control of their government, the nation was finally at peace, and the political leadership was free to set the national agenda (OK, OK, granted, this was as long as they agreed to parity rights for the Americans.)

Thus, the opportunity existed after July 4, 1946 to build a proper democracy. Unfortunately, the victorious American general Douglas MacArthur quickly absolved the Filipino political and economic elite (who had been his friends) of charges of collaboration with the defeated Japanese invaders, and this elite quickly re-acquired and then monopolized political power in the country. Consequently, the fledgling democracy’s agenda was effectively dominated by their interests and this has largely remained the case to this day. As my friend, the distinguished political scientist Felipe Miranda, never tires of pointing out, the oligarchic structure of Philippine politics persists. Prof. Miranda has famously written, the legislative and the executive serve (only) as an arena for the various elite groups… to compete in.

Agreed, there have been some positive developments over the years, and political and economic power is a bit more dispersed today than it used to be. Even so, though, the agenda of government today is still in large measure crafted to promote—or, at least, not endanger—the interests of those who govern (and their relatives and cronies). The people at large—the citizens with minimal political or economic power—are disconnected from the whole process of government and essentially relegated to the role of spectators to the exploiting of the nation’s resources by a privileged few.

In this connection, what House Resolution 1109 represents is part of a multi-pronged attempt for the present ruling politicos to perpetuate themselves inpower. The sheer arrogance behind this shamelessly obvious attempt is what powerless citizens like me find so abhorrent. Representatives who are supposed to represent assorted groups of voiceless citizens simply turn deaf to what their constituents say because the promise of lucre and more lucre is impossible for these politicos to resist, to hell with the public interest and the common good. Only self-aggrandizement appears to matter.

Pollster PulseAsia has reported that 64% of Filipinos (2 out of 3) are against amending the Constitution and a whopping 81% (4 out of 5) are against term extensions of any kind for both national and local elected officials. This survey finding is consistent across all geographic areas in the country and across all socioeconomic groups.

Expectedly then, Resolution 1109 will evoke angry reactions from the Filipino public.

Sadly, 111 years after Aguinaldo waved the first Philippine flag one afternoon in Kawit, Cavite and 63 years after we Filipinos acquired self-rule, this country remains mired in a political system that is still largely controlled by elite vested interests and that is still based on patronage. Right now, various groups of elites are once again competing for domination of political—and therefore economic—power, seemingly unmindful (or maybe just indifferent) that the garapalan and kawalanghiyaan that characterize their machinations may provoke a cataclysm in Philippine society.

What I view as a positive development in all this is that citizens and civil society groups—media, NGOs, youth groups, professional associations, the academe, religious groups, business groups, etc.—are (as in 1986 and 2001) trying again to make their presence felt and their voices heard, so as to stake their claim to a say in the country’s future. For me, this is a welcome indication that Filipinos have not given up the fight to transform our democracy from the merely procedural into the substantive. I am actually optimistic that the Filipino struggle for democracy will prevail over all attempts to undermine it.

As the railroading of Resolution 1109 in Congress shows, the country’s future cannot be left to those who pretend to represent the Filipino public’s interests in Congress. It shows, without a doubt, that government and the politicos who run it cannot be depended on to change or reform our dysfunctional politics. I think it will require the vigorous and committed efforts of the citizenry, of the people working with various institutions of civil society, and, yes, of the citizens marching in the streets to bring about a democracy that truly serves the Filipino public’s interests. Working together and in tandem, these citizens’ groups must not tire of exerting pressure on self-interested and self-aggrandizing politicians to compel them to act according to what is best for the nation as a whole. A concerned, vocal, mobilized, and fighting citizenry is the real key to reconnecting all the people to their government and, thus, making the democracy our ancestors started fighting for in 1898 finally mean something of substance.

(June 18, 2009)

II.

On perpetuating political power

Once more with feeling

We’ve been over this road, in 2006 when the so-called Peoples’ Initiative to change the nation’s form of government to a parliamentary system was being railroaded by minions of the present administration. Fortunately for us, they got stymied then when a paper thin 8–7 majority in the Supreme Court ruled—on an action filed by the citizens’ group OneVoice and other parties—that the Peoples’ Initiative was bogus and characterized by fraud and deception. We should remember that now Chief Justice Reynato Puno argued against the then majority view and voted to uphold the charter-changing initiative.

Today, the President’s allies in the House of Representatives are once again fast-tracking measures to make amendments to the nation’s Constitution. As I’ve said countless times before, it doesn’t matter what the charter change (cha-cha) proponents say their intentions are. Their true object is the same as it was in 2006: to change our bicameral, presidential form of government to a unicameral, parliamentary one. Their basic argument is also still the same: the change to a parliamentary form of government will solve our nation’s problems and lead to greater economic progress.

Of course, they couldn’t logically explain then and they can’t logically explain now exactly how a parliamentary system—where the ruling majority in parliament exercises the powers of both the executive branch and the legislative branch—might solve this country’s problems and speed up economic growth. Given that graft in the form of overpriced government purchases, diversions of public funds, and bid riggings to award lucrative sweetheart deals to administration cronies are the really serious problems in this country, one must wonder how the pro-parliament politicos can even argue that these will be solved if the checks and balances built into the presidential form will just be removed.

It certainly makes no sense, from a systems design point of view, to change from a system with strong formal controls to a system with weak controls when the problems besetting our society precisely revolve around the ease with which public officials and their business cronies seem to be able to plunder the nation’s resources. In an analogy I often used in debates in 2006, the correct response when one is already experiencing burglaries in one’s neighborhood is to install stronger locks and iron grills, not to remove the locks from the front door. Yet, that is exactly what pro-parliament politicos want us to do: remove the locks and make it easier for thieves to ransack the national pantry.

I believe that it is essential that the checks and balances inherent in a system where the executive branch decides and implements while the legislative branch provides funding and oversight be retained because the powers already vested in government officials are enormous and easy to abuse. Logically, what this country needs are strong controls and a justice system capable of enforcing these controls.

As it is, even if we now have a theoretical separation between the executive and legislative branches of our government, the independence that gives this separation the desired elements of control is spectacularly absent. Huge presidential discretionary budget