The Day of Reckoning: Is #Halalan2022 Worth the Wait?
[This article was originally published by SINAG on July 26, 2020.]
2022 is a much awaited year.
Beyond the understandable desire for 2020 to end, so much hope is pinned on election day two years from now.
A quick search of #Halalan2022 reveals the public’s overwhelming grievances against the government and its recent actions. Lines such as “remember their names” and “never again” were plastered all across posts and tweets alongside the faces of widely despised lawmakers. As outrage grew with the passage of the Anti-Terror Law and ABS-CBN franchise rejection, several netizens marked the names of politicians who will not be receiving their votes. The condemnation was strong and immediate.
To be perfectly candid, I did go over the names a couple of times. In an email urging my elected representative in the legislature to junk the then Anti-Terror Bill, I also felt compelled to warn him that his stance on the issue at hand will influence my vote come next election.
Admittedly, there is a certain comfort in holding our votes over the undeserving politicians’ heads.
But while the 2022 elections is popularly perceived as the day of reckoning, two years is a long time.
With this much anticipation directed towards a single event, it is worth asking: are elections truly the game-changer they are claimed to be?
The farce of elections
Elections supposedly allow the public to democratically choose their representatives. This choice, however, reveals itself to be superficial as we take a closer look into the country’s political parties.
To mince no words, the existing major political parties are fundamentally the same. They are primarily funded by imperialists, compradors, and landlords — often at the same time. This ensures that big vested interests prevail, regardless of the winning political party.
The illusion of free and democratic leadership through elections is perpetuated to provide a fig leaf of legitimacy to their offices. Such farce is a primary tool wielded by the bureaucrat capitalists to exploit the masses.
While the term may be new to some, the truth of bureaucrat capitalism has always been silently recognized. Bureaucrat capitalists — or in more recognizable terms, trapos — have long run the government for the sole purpose of enriching those in power, extracting the maximum “profit” possible from their offices which they treat more as personal property rather than public trust. They treat the resources and machinery of the government as tools to entrench their families and allies in power.
There is no need to look far in illustrating its realities. The unfettered corruption is a clear testament that it is at work.
It is futile to end corruption under the current system. While we are made to believe that they can be held accountable by rival parties, a system of “check and balances,” and even through the public’s demands, it does not take much for competing factions of bureaucrat capitalists to reach a compromise behind closed doors. The country’s worst plunderers have gotten away one too many times.
Any politician who runs under the slogan of eliminating corruption delivers nothing more than lip service.
One may fashion himself as the hero of the masses and the enemy of the oligarchs, but such fabricated narratives ultimately fall flat. The reality is that those who seek public office oftentimes are either pawns or members of the ruling class themselves.
Duterte, despite his populist bravado, is no exception.
Rappler reports how the biggest contributors in his 2016 presidential bid include Davao businessmen Lorenzo Te of Honda Cars Davao, Inc., Dennis Uy of Phoenix Petroleum Philippines, and Samuel Uy of Davao Farms Corporation, each donating P30 million.
Other donors can now be found in his cabinet. Carlos Dominguez III, who donated P3 million, now serves as the finance secretary. His current executive secretary is Salvador Medialdea, who donated P500,000.
Clearly, Duterte was never a breath of fresh air in Philippine politics. In fact, he personifies the worst of a bureaucrat capitalist. With the cruelty of a landlord and tremendous greed akin to compradors, his regime is nothing short of a nightmare.
In just four years, we have experienced the worst joblessness and underemployment post-Marcos, a glaring escalation of attacks directed towards critics and dissenters, and the highest count of state-sponsored killings.
The rot in the system
But while Duterte’s administration exposed the rot in the system, it did not start with him. It will not end after his term either.
This is why a mere change in leadership yields no genuine change. Replacing a part does nothing to a rigged system. The only solution is a complete overhaul, building a better one.
This is not to say that voting is useless. By all means, vote. While voting alone cannot end the country’s ills, it helps protect the most vulnerable as we strive for systemic change. We should never give up our legal democratic struggle in the electoral arena against the regime.
But this cannot be the extent of our democracy. Democracy is not something we merely “exercise”; we have to endlessly defend it. We have to fight for it, if we must. And we must.
Elections cannot be the be-all and end-all.
Because while it offers a certain comfort to hold our votes over the politicians’ heads, two years is a long time.
For the neglected workforce, targeted minorities, landless farmers, and the families of the tens of thousand casualties, two years is too long of a time to wait.
The corpses have piled up. Our lands have long been bloodied. In a tyrannical regime, inaction is an act of violence. The time to hold them accountable is now.
Tomorrow, Duterte will deliver his fifth state of the nation address. It will be what is expected of a bureaucrat capitalist: tragically incoherent, shamelessly dishonest, and completely detached from the realities of the toiling masses.
But the future of this country is not his to dictate.
We owe it to make history to those who will never get to see it. The streets await.
