THE LEGAL FRONT

Justice Art D. Brion (ret.)

People, particularly candidates, find words cheap during election time. They freely invoke democracy, the rule of law, and other high-sounding ideals to draw attention and attract voters to their cause. They make promises without considering their promises’ implications, attainability and accompanying costs.

We should all be aware that our democracy (or government of, for, and by the people, according to western tradition) is not a way of life native to our culture. From the earliest communitarian-type system of our self-governing barangays, we became a colony for almost half a millennium before we began independent, western-style self-government. As a result, we may have become confused on who and what we are, and how we should govern ourselves.

In the course of adjustment to democracy, we committed (and are still committing) mistakes, further adding to our deep-seated uncertainties. Mistakes, however, are unavoidable; all nations err at some point. The successful ones surpass errors and even profit from them through the lessons and values they learn and take to heart.

We should not therefore berate ourselves because of past errors and because we have not fully embraced the ideals that western standards require. We do not need to compare ourselves with others, even with the West, since situations vary from nation to nation and ours are unique to us.

We should know, for example, that our Asian neighbors’ governance ways were built upon established Confucian values that largely influenced how they embraced, or have adapted to, new concepts. In contrast, we lived under changing foreign domination and thus may need time to adjust to any new way of governance. Presently, we are not even a hundred years as a self-governing nation, counting from the independence that the US “granted:” we are still firming up our democratic ways and values as a nation and as a people.

But we have already achieved significant gains, although not in the exact ways that western democracy has idealized. To be sure, we are now past the starting point and only need to dig into; reflect on; derive lessons from, our past experiences; and internalize these lessons and the values we choose to keep. This is a continuing process whose results we consistently need to draw upon, especially in choosing our leaders.

Notably, some of us still grieve over “wasted” Marcos years, not realizing that little has really been wasted as our past represents experiences that we can draw lessons from after reflections, as we work our way towards a better and more effective governance.

Ferdinand Marcos had visions of where he wanted to lead the country and how he could attain this objective. He failed in his quest, while Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, with similar ambitions for his country, succeeded under Singaporean circumstances that he ably controlled, a feat that Marcos failed to duplicate.

Marcos did not succeed for various reasons, among them, our ingrained colonial mentality, worsened by the contributory greed of individuals for power and riches. Marcos, however, still implanted seeds that later flourished in fertile grounds. Many of his initiatives (among them, land reform, the Labor Code and the presidential decrees still in force today) are still with us, now further enriched by the responses we made to emerging new challenges. In this sense, we learned and gained, and should now be richer for the lessons and values Marcos left with us.

We replaced Marcos in the name of democracy, but we squandered our once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; we governed ourselves ineptly and elitism still prevailed. People gave their support but we forgot them along the way. All these left lessons that we cannot simply cast away.

Post-Marcos, democracy was a word in everyone’s lips, but it seemed that we could not find the right formulation to apply as newer challenges came.

Along the way, we tried a leadership with a military background, but even this failed to yield satisfactory outcomes. We thereafter tried the populist approach by promising priority and attention to the poor. But problems cropped up, among them, misjudgment in our choice of leaders and top-level incompetence. Again, these are experiences replete with lessons.

The next time around, we opted for competence, but partisan politics reared its ugly head, together with our old adversaries - cronyism and greed. Thus, we veered away from the path that should have yielded productive results, leaving for naught the economic initiatives that were competently started. We ought not lose these kinds of opportunities again.

Thereafter, we went back to our thoughts of democracy and turned for leadership to elites mouthing western democratic ideals with facility. What elitism left us are still evident today.

In desperation perhaps, we voted for a local executive who had brought order and progress to his locality. A major stumbling block this time was the threatened disorder that our developing drug problem brought with it.

Our new leader addressed the problem through his proven “local” way, somehow thereby halting the drug menace. The usual politically partisan crowd, however, fortified by appeal for foreign intervention, now claim violation of the democracy enshrined in our Constitution.

Shorn of the claimed ideals, this development effectively weaponizes our commitment to democracy while exposing us to foreign meddling. These are developments whose implications we cannot just disregard as usual incidents of politics.

All these experiences bring us back to basic questions that our candidates and we, as voters, should be answering during and beyond election years:

• What lessons have we learned and what values should we treasure after examining our past?

• Do we see these values in our present candidates?

• Are we ready to resolve our problems by and for ourselves, and thus govern ourselves democratically, as our Constitution directs?

• Can we identify our chosen candidates from the perspectives of these lessons and values? Let us all pause and reflect as we look for answers that would hopefully lead us to a governance of, for, and by nation-loving Filipinos.

art.brion.spc@gmail.com

Brion (ret.) Justice Art D.

COVID-19 and teaching law

Reflections on democracy, values and elections

Glimmer of hope

Rekindling our hopes against corruption

New PJP: The assessment process