How badly does the devil want our elections?

The Philippines is much too rich a country to be left in the hands of Filipinos. Our foreign friends in the West know this, so they try to free us from the odious task of running our own affairs. They try to run our economy, our politics, our moral and religious code, our basic rights and liberties, even our right to choose our type of elections. They cannot stand it when we say with our Constitution: “The Philippines is a democratic and republican State. Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.”

Very few talk of Lincoln’s government of the people, by the people and for the people anymore. Government authority often emanates from those who exercise it. The Hebrew scholar Jacob Leib Talmon invented the oxymoron “totalitarian democracy” to describe a system where the people in principle still choose their leaders but are completely excluded from making the decisions affecting them. This is what PNoy has instituted in the Philippines. He must have had a hearty laugh when he said that we, the people, were his “bosses” and some of us were naïve enough to believe he meant it.