Lay of the land and the stubbornly indecisive

THE lay of the land is such that the independents seem to be dictating the shape of things for the Aquino administration come 2016. One would notice the offensive of the independents in the news cycle over the weekend, hugging the news and going on overdrive so it dictates the pace at the start of the week. Denials are made during the days going to the weekend, thereby creating a buzz. Even the so-called Third Force is gaining imagined strength when a major broadsheet decided to make it news and do a front-page shout out, “powerful 3rd Force shaping up.”

The Third Force has meaning in the sense of British and Canadian politics, not Manila. Third force does not necessarily shape the Anthony Giddens’ Third Way adopted and advocated by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and to a certain degree, by American president Bill Clinton. That it is still shaping is speculative but powerful is declarative and we know it is false. So which is which? How can it be powerful? Third Force has been tried several times in the Philippines and nothing happened from it because there is no money, no party, no local support and platform does not even echo Giddens’ “life politics” (the politics of self-actualisation) may become more visible than “emancipatory politics” (the politics of inequality); that new social movements may lead to more social change than political parties; and that the reflexive project of the self and changes in gender and sexual relations may lead the way, via the “democratisation of democracy”, to a new era of Habermasian “dialogic democracy” in which differences are settled, and practices ordered, through discourse rather than violence or the commands of authority.” When a major daily becomes the propaganda machine of independents, you truly wonder what has happened to Philippine media.