But more than that event, it is Martial Law – chalking its 43rd year of infamy this coming September 21 yet – that is getting the greater remembering, public memory stoked by a media feeding frenzy.
No Marcos loyalist here, in fact a martial law victim myself, but I sense method to this madness, and malice to the method of this upsurge in Marcos denunciation: The glare of the spotlight on martial law abuses blinds the nation to the utter failures of EDSA, as well as its own excesses.
Nunquam iterum! So we raise our voices hoarse at martial law. Terrified as we are now at the specter of its resurrection in Marcos Junior. So, rightfully, should the sins of the father be visited upon the son?
Never again! So we may equally shout at EDSA. Given where it has led to – from the tragedy that was Ninoy to the farce that is Noynoy.
And the farce goes on. Just look at the buffoonery in the five-ring circus that is the presidential campaign. Which makes me think all the more of Marcos. Not so much for his tyranny, as for the breadth and depth of his keen understanding, if not mastery, of Philippine politics. Thus:
MORE OFTEN the politician neither legislates nor administers so much as he intervenes and mediates.
He achieves a personalized relationship with his constituents as individual persons, more anxious about doing things for each of them rather than for all of them. A bridge, a school, or a rural development project, although important, is not enough. Has he been approachable? Has he managed to place a son in a Manila office?
Where was he when a fire broke out or a typhoon came? How personally generous has he been with the needs of certain influential leaders? If he fails in these personalist tests, he fails as a politician.
Are the people to blame for this state of affairs? Hardly, for conditions are such that the majority depend on the government. But are the politicians, who are simply responding to the situation as they see it? I would say Yes.
Within the undeniably practical limits of political survival, politicians can and should try out some innovations that will transform the political culture from being populist, personalist and individualist to being more nationalist, institutional and socialist, in the strict meaning of being more conscious about the needs of society and the national community…
One reason for the pervasiveness of corruption is that in being part of the system, everyone it touches seems to benefit…The corrupt politician who is at the same time accessible to his constituents has more chances of staying in power than an honest one “who has not done anything.
” He probably takes his legislative or executive work more seriously, concentrating on collective goals to the detriment of political “fence mending,” but he is more often judged by the populist, personalist and individualist standards of the political culture.
A true politician should be able to lead his constituency in a precarious present toward an uncertain future, but he dares not initiate or innovate unless he can be sure it will not cost his position.
It is easy to condemn him for lack of moral courage, but what good is a businessman without a business, a politician without policy? “I must see where my people are going so that I may lead them,” an Athenian politician was supposed to have said. There are certain conditions, however, in which this attitude cannot be a useful principle of democratic leadership.
AS TRUE today as 42 years ago when penned in Today’s Revolution: Democracy.
Populist. Personalist. Individualist. Marcos distilled the essence of all that is wrong, aye, the very evil of politics in the country. Proof positive once more of the Great Ferdinand’s mastery of political domain.
Even more – testament anew to the persistent prevalence of politics as plunder in the Philippine praxis. EDSA Uno no matter. EDSA Dos, whatsoever. BS Aquino III, no bother.
Indeed, Santayana, by our disremembering, we are nation deserving of our damning.
