|
THE MAKINGS of a debate have cropped up along with
the scandals that have come to the fore after simmering in the
backburner for sometime. Or, shall we say, the skeletons are
rattling in their closets. We know they are there but have not quite
seen them yet.
What is critical is how do we get
to see them and indubitably determine that they exist. Then, how do
we carry on? In the everyday way to identify a skeleton, it requires
a mere manifestation to the senses. In the political, governmental
and judicial way, there is a process that should certifiy its
existence.
There are institutions through
which these processes should work ideally. But from today’s events
conditions are not ideal to get at the truth.
The issue too is whether the
institutions are strong enough and flexible enough to keep their
processes as they were designed and come up with the results that
would be factual, correct and acceptable to the majority.
We are a democracy with
democratic institutions that seem to be weak and ineffective. When
something goes wrong like a scandal or a crime, these weak
institutions have to deal with them. That these institutions under
partisan or less-than-independent personnel have handled them poorly
and come up with questionable decisions brings on the question of
whether they should be strengthened, ignored or done away with.
For example, since the civil
service has been weakened by numerous incompetent appointees, do we
abolish the Civil Service and do away with every civil servant
because there are a substantial number who are unworthy of being in
it? Or, do we revert to the merit system and remove the chaff but
keep the grain of the institution of civil service and in the
process make it a better institution?
If elections have become tainted
and unworthy candidates who have manipulated the law and cheated for
votes have taken office, do we do away with elections as an
institution that is unreliable, corrupt and useless? Do we take to
the streets and on the strength and size of crowds decide who will
go and who will come into office? Or, do we demand and organize to
fight to preserve and save the institution of elections by
reinforcing it through a better Commission on Elections, a more
vigilant citizenry and a more focused media that would pressure the
appointing powers to accede to the demands of the electorate for
genuine choices?
If the Constitution is ambivalent
and ineffective, do we abolish it and make ad hoc laws and rules,
or, do we come together and reason out what should be done to make
it the fundamental law of the land in all senses from theory to
practice?
It seems in our path of nation
building we have come to this junction. What to do when things do
not work. In what light to view what must be done. How to make
things better despite the powers that be making them worse.
Democracy is an institution that may be easy to believe in until
crises set in. When that occurs, the democratic protocols become
difficult to maneuver and understand. Democracy may be the rule of
the majority in elections, but not quite in a crisis situation.
We are now confronted with which
way to go as we navigate through the corruption issues that have
come to plague us. We are in the middle of dialogues and debates,
discernment and decision. How do we define our institutions and how
much do we value them? Is democracy as we know it suitable for the
circumstances we find ourselves in? Is the military, a dictatorial
form of government, an oligarchy, the option?
If we proceed with reason and
patience through our national debate and dialogue, we will perhaps
see that in a democracy, as with any significant issue, one does not
throw away the baby with the bathwater. That a controlled fury may
be better than a Samson-like temple destruction. Proceed wih courage
but do not throw caution and reason to the winds. We have to arrive
whole and in control, not swept by a tsunami of irreversible
destruction.
This is a wake-up call for the
basis of our present and future democracy.
Friends and former associates of
the late teacher and drama director and actor Sarah Joaquin will be
pleased to know that her family will launch her memoirs Friday,
March 14, 6 to 9 pm, at the Filipinas Heritage Library, Makati
Avenue, Ayala Triangle, Makati City.
Sarah Joaquin, sister-in-law of
the National Artist Nick Joaquin, taught English, Spanish and acting
at the Far Eastern University. She was drama director at the FEU for
many years.
At 87, Sarah Joaquin directed the
three-act zarzuela, “Ang Kiri,” (The Coquette) in Washington DC,
starring the noted Filipino soprano Evelyn Mandac. She finished
writing her memoirs shortly before her death in 2002.
|
