Mikey’s thoughts
Mikey, my good friend, fellow musician and a good student leader reacted to my posts in YM. Im reprinting them along with my reactions:
hi alay, nabasa ko lang kasi blog mo… kaso wala akong friendster account kaya dito na lang ako naki-epal sa usapan…
judging from what you wrote last, i perceive that you are pro-CHA CHA. I agree with your assessment of parliamentary/federalism being more applicable to the Filipino context. That’s why I am also pro-CHA-CHA.
but to my knowledge, if we read the draft for Charter Change from the congress, it’s like they’re entrenching more the problems of our society. to my knowledge, most of the provisions that were drawn up in the 1987 constitution to safeguard against executive authoritarianism (i.e. Martial Law),were effectively taken out of the draft. Sure, the system they’ll be putting up is in theory, more applicable to the Filipino context. But to me, kung tatanggalin nila ang mga "checks and balances" against government in favor of popular sovereignty (to quote John Locke), then this present incarnation of CHA CHA has to be stopped.
:::i didn’t know about that detail on the chacha about the removal of the safeguard against executive authoritarianism. well, we could disagree with that detail. but my point is, we don’t want to scrap the whole idea because of a possibility. and we owe it to ourselves, if we disagree with that detail, to express that concern. but if the majority still votes otherwise, we should learn to accept defeat and respect the decision of the majority. we now have to be vigilant(in the proper sense of the word) to guard against the abuse of the charter. pero di ba? let’s move on! let things happen!
and to comment on your status message - - "are we, as a society, mature
enough to handle something as sacred as democracy?" - - it’s actually
very Western, parochial i think to say that democracy is deserved
because, in my view there are things implicit to this claim. On one
hand, democracy has a single fashion, a single expression, and that on
the other hand there is some form of standard for people to be
deserving of democracy. My contention is, is that democracy is
different all throughout contexts. And because it is different
throughout contexts, there cannot exist any form of standard that we
can use to say people are "mature" enough for democracy. In the end, i
think the appropriate question has to be "what has to be done to
achieve OUR kind of democracy? our Filipino democracy?"
:::i understand your view on democracy. but as i said, our democracy is borrowed from the western format whose population composition is different from ours. the current model is made for a population whose majority is middle class. it won’t work with ours. it wouldn’t work because we don’t understand how it was developed. the system developed naturally as they went through their lives. it was brought to our society, already developed, but it’s thinking is different and we haven’t understood how it would work for us. we just think we do. ack. i can’t explain it. ah, metaphor: it’s like a liver transplant. the liver was developed in another body with a different lifestyle, different habits etc. di ba it’s natural for the body to reject it even if your brain knows that you need it. ang mahirap sa ‘tin, mukhang iba pa yata ang blood type. so talagang di pumapasok. di natin maintindihan ang mga proseso ng decision making at ng ethics nito. kaya dinadala sa kalye ang decision making at sinasabing it’s democracy at work. but it’s actually democracy not at work! it’s democracy if the only definition of democracy is the people make the decisions. pero di ba hindi naman ganun kasimple ang democracy? we have a system to make the people make the decisions. it’s called representation. that’s why we have the congress. and it’s frustrating that the congress is not doing it’s job properly.. that’s what we don’t understand. well you and i do, but the majority don’t.
let me be clear that i am not, in anyway, against democracy. im asking the question "do we deserve it?" because it’s being abused. Democracy is sacred for me. but it’s being raped by the uneducated majority who don’t understand the whole thing. i agree that it’s not something that needs to be deserved. but that’s why i said we don’t deserve it. Our society has become too chaotic, mindless and anarchical to deserve something that doesn’t even need to be deserved.. gets? ayun. salamat sa pagreact. kwentuhan tayo minsan about it.
