Senator Mar Roxas with Youth Leaders

As far as I remember, the first time I heard of Mar Roxas aspiring for "THE SEAT", for President, was when Kevin Ray Chua launched and rallied for the Mar Roxas for President in 2010 blog, which is #5 in the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs for 2008, where my blog Manila Foodistas also won. This was different from the bloggers "soiree with Mar Roxas", which I was not part of. They intended to utilize the new media, particularly the Blogosphere, in order to advance their campaign during August last year.






Last night, youth leaders from different schools and localities gathered to listen to what Mar Roxas had to say, and get to question him on different issues and concerns of the youth of today. The crowd was made up of mostly UP Students, some of them were from Ateneo, DLSU, UST, and others.






This is my opinion (as objective and positive as possible). Yes, on the outside, Mar Roxas is a presence on stage, he can articulate and give his two cents and explain himself in a manner that you would listen and tend to genuinely believe him. He was fair enough in his speech. He is very knowledgeable about the present situation, political and social aspects of our society, and the context where we are in right now. But sadly, I found the "meet and greet" quite lacking and a bit of a disappointment. For starters, he didn't really elaborate and concretize on "The Role of the Youth in National Development" - the point of us being there.



I think that he should have used that opportunity to "address" the youth of today, and how they would "fall in the scheme of things" and how they could "act" collectively and individually, and tackle the pressing issues and problems of and about the youth, and the tangible and concrete solutions and projects he might think of with and for the youth (case in point, for the college students in attendance) and our country. I would love to hear and engage him for the second time, and hopefully in another forum or other fora.






As an aside, (this is where it manifests that I am a foodie) we were treated to a scrumptious dinner of pasta, BBQ, lumpia and rice. Drink all you can, then the beer (which we didn't drink). We had Dilly Bars right after (for the win)!






Right now, I can't say that I am endorsing Mar Roxas. I want to see all of them first, if possible talk to them, scrutinize their vision, platform and plans, then comes my decision. For now, it's premature for me to do so, given that he's the first one, among those who have "signified intention" for presidency, I met.



There will be more meetings with Mar, so I hope he'll redeem himself. Don't get me wrong, so far, I can see him as one of the best (slash) most probably candidate that would be rallied upon by people, but he has to really step up and shape up to get our vote. One thing's for sure, you must be critical, hear all sides, and you must have standards in "searching for our voice in 2010" :)









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Philippine Political System: An example of an Elite Democracy

Democracy in the Philippines is not a product of internal class struggles, but instead, it is said to be a set of political practices imposed by the outside colonial power, the Unites States.



In the "Democracy" that the Philippines got from the Americans, the electoral process we have now in our system is one of the "political practice" that's imposed to us. Since then, we have instituted a system of electoral competition, which served as a mechanism for the transfer of power among the elites while it gave the illusion of democratic freedom and choice among the masses.



"Elite democracy drives its strength from the fact that no matter how cynically the Filipino citizenry might view the electoral process, most Filipinos see no alternative to the ballot as a legitimate means of succession" (Bello and Gersnman, 1990)



In form, the "Philippine political system was a mirror image of the American in terms of presidential leadership, separation of powers and two-party system" (Curato, 2009), but in substance, "it's a marriage between feudal paternalism and Chicago-syle 'machine politics'" (Bello and Gersnman, 1990)



Martial Law came, and temporarily interrupted the pre-existing modes of elite rule and succession by establishing a dictatorship. If we looked back, we only see how bad that point in time was and the imposition of martial rule. But during that time, Martial Law was allowed by the Filipino people, meaning they consented to it, at first, probably because they saw the need to give the president such powers with what was happening that time.



There came a point that a lot of people were fed up and didn't like what was happening, so it all resulted to the EDSA Revolution that the Philippines was known for all over the world.



But see, EDSA Revolution terminated a dictatorship but it never gave us a clean break. "There were discontinuities as well as continuities: some old faces in new roles, some new faces in an unchanged bureaucracy. Movement leaders became bureaucrats overnight, isolated from one another by intimidating chores of running a government from day to day. They could not initiate meaningful changes within their own departments and offices because they discovered, to their dismay, that the very things they wanted to change fulfilled certain functions. And the alternatives were not available." (David, 2001)



End-all it just displaced the elites Marcos put into place, and those who were elites back then got their power and place back in the "grand scheme of things". A classic instance of the way elite democracy defuses and derails mass dissent was provided by the debate over land reform.



Despite the massive clamor for land reform, 90% of the House of Representatives during Cory's time were big landlords. While the House didn't officially oppose land reform, "it adopted a land reform bill that stipulates enough loopholes, evasions and contradictions that its implementation was castrated." (Bello and Gershman, 1990)



And at present, the Elections we have is one way for the elites to legitimize their power, to get voted at large by the masses, whose choice is both an illusion of "democratic power" and a manufactured one, because of predetermined set of candidates by the elite (also).



This relatively peaceful competition of power by the elite still exists up to the present, and I think will still continue unless the masses get educated, and clamor for genuine change in the system, or with our kind of democracy.



Sources:

Editorial Cartoon from NYU and Bertell Ollman

Some text and quotes are from Neeks Curato's Lecture 7: Political System, 2009









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