Daily Star logoOpinions
Bacolod City, Philippines Saturday, May 12, 2012
Front Page
Negros Oriental
Star Business
Opinion
Sports
Police Beat
Star Life
People & Events
Eguide
Events
Schedules
Obituaries
Congratulations
Classified Ads
 
 
TIGHT ROPE
WITH MODESTO P. SA-ONOY

Power game

TIGHT ROPE
WITH MODESTO P. SA-ONOY

The new political equation in Occidental Negros is no surprise. That several politicians of various stripes came out just now is not a wonder as well because it is as expected as the sun was to rise in the east and would set in the west.

Such is the history of political game in this country. Whoever is in the presidency attracts like cakes to ants that see what they can get and not what the nation as a democracy needs. The power game, like the television series, Game of Thrones, is not a question of what or who is right but who can maneuver the most and the best and the best is the money.

Ask anyone who has recently joined the party of President Aquino, the Liberal Party that had been moribund for years until Aquino came to power on the shoulders of a grieving nation. Would they have joined for altruistic and patriotic reasons or because they believe in whatever that the party stands for?

If one notices those who were to be inducted had to undergo a seminar, a day at most, about what Liberal Party is all about and what it believes in and what it intends to do within the framework of this political ideology.

The seminar came after they intended to join, a reverse process. Normally one joins because he or she believes and not otherwise.

But then this is what can be a tourist attraction: “fun in the Philippines.”

Then Sen. Mar Roxas who alone can claim loyalty to the party of his grandfather and his father, and had remained with the party despite the marauding by the ruling regime of President Marcos and the successive parties in power, was sidelined.

Sure the father of President Aquino was a Liberal when he was incarcerated and later went into exile but his mother, Corazon Aquino, rose to the presidency not as a Liberal but a candidate of several political groups that formed the opposition to martial law.

Thus it was not the party that came to power in 2010 – it was a personality.

That is why this swearing in of new party members, the new Liberals, is nothing but an Indonesian shadow play of caricatures of a political party.

We cannot blame them or condemn the new Liberals. That is the reality of the power game in this country and we just have to live with it until perhaps in future will emerge real political parties that revolve around an ideology and present a platform of government that will provide the people with a real choice of where to swing in the political spectrum.

Through the post-World War II we have coined various derogatory names for those politicians who have taken the easy path of shifting party loyalty. We called them turn-coats, political butterflies and balimbing but despite this the bandwagon to the party in power continues. It has become part of the political scenario every time a new president comes to Malacanang.

Students of Political Science are baffled by this phenomenon. There really is nothing mysterious about this behavior. It is the result of political patronage system, the pork barrel.

In theory Congress holds the purse and rightly so as provided for in the Constitution but the key to the purse belongs to the President who disburses the funds of government. The pork barrel is thus used as a mechanism for this system of political patronage that is at the core of the power game in this country.

While this system of check and balance in the utilization of public funds is strong and even sacrosanct in the United States where we patterned our governmental system and in other democratic societies, there is a difference as we practice it here.

Our political parties have no ideological difference so that the party in power can manipulate the use of the pork like a carrot to induce those in the supposed opposition to kowtow to it. To survive or profit from this situation politicians, not being adherents to an ideology jump where the carrot is.

There was a time when turn-coatism was an election issue. Nobody talks about that anymore because scarcely can we find a politician who can claim he has been a loyal party member. Vice Governor Lim-ao Alvarez claims he has been an NPC member for 20 years but what was he before the NPC was organized?

We must therefore understand this absence of party loyalties because there is none; only opportunities.

Gone are the days when a politician can be classified with his party label but today's Liberal will be whatever the next time because Aquino will not stay forever in Malacanang.

Perhaps they will then jump into the bandwagon of the Vice President if by some destiny he becomes President in 2016?*

           

 

back to top

Google
 
Web www.visayandailystar.com

  Email: visayandailystar@yahoo.com