Reconstitute the Philippines
The Philippines is built on a colonial foundation – that of the principalia who got to rule the country. These were the datus that collaborated with the Spaniards to become the ruling class.
I must thank contributor Renato Mariano Pacifico of Joe America’s Society of Honor for this statement that set the ball rolling to a discussion with Society of Honor contributors giancarloangulo, Juana Pilipinas and Karl Garcia, as well as a final exchange with Joe America that led to me writing this article as the summary of collectively inspired thinking:
“Just look around us … From PDAF Babuyan Island to Muslim jolo …. half-naked children walking the streets dumpster diving for morsels of Jollibee.
Click this link to read the full posting at Irineo’s Blog
You may also wish to read this latest article by Irineo, in Tagalog: Ang Saligan ng Batas
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Reconstituted Milk
Yep, something similar… have fun reading. Joe, thanks for the peering/syndication… 🙂
To frame the ideas a bit… there were two kinds of revolutions in the 1970s:
– Marcos: Revolution from the Center (change top-down quickly)
– NPA: Revolution from the Grassroots (change bottom-up quickly)
Both groups wanted to rebuild the Philippines and pretty much destabilized it.
The effects are felt until today. Now coming from KM in my youth, this is translating the grassroots revolution ideas into grassroots EVOLUTION ideas. Duterte had a mixture of NPA grassroots revolution ideas (talk to people and shoot those who don’t cooperate) combined with community-building ideas. Leni Robredo has the community-building approach without the shooting which I find even better. Bottom-up is about buy-in.
The problem of the Philippines is that large parts of the population do NOT buy into the system. The NPA tried to solve it violently, Leni Robredo is solving it gently, gradually. Getting people to think about the Constitution from the bottom up is one aspect…
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Now I am beginning to see Mar Roxas as representing evolution from the center. Build institutions top-down gradually and not in the violent, quick and destabilizing manner that Marcos used. These methods of rebuilding are old – developmental dictatorships like Hitler, Stalin, Mao used them with quick wins and devastating long-term costs. Modern methods of restructuring and organization are better in the long term. Finally you need a good structure for your institutions (top-down) and stakeholder buy-in (bottom-up).
So probably the two approaches need to converge when it comes to the Constitution as well. Educate people about the 1987 Constitution and encourage discussions on their idea of how it should be – to be able to find out where their practical problems are and address them. Because in wide areas of the Philippines, buy-in towards the legal system and the state is not really there. Maybe because the real reason for certain things – like having a Constitution – is not even present among many educated people. This is a start…
Is the Philippines really a nation-state, or is it actually an archipelago of indigenous tribes that was lumped together when Spain “sold” its interests in this country to the United States for twenty million dollars? Who are we really? Are we Filipinos or are we Aetas, Batanguenos, Bicolanos, Bulakenos, Cavitenos, Cebuanos, Davaoenos, Ilocanos, Ifugaos, Pampanguenos, etc. with little or no collective interest and civic responsibility beyond our provincial boundaries?
That is exactly the question I am asking here all the time. When people here are talking about “the Philippines”, which Philippines are they talking about. Is it only the Metro Manila professional crowd – which sees itself as mainly Filipino because their provincial identities have become secondary. Cory Aquino was seen as Kapampangan. Her son is not seen as one anymore, just as PNoy. The “masa” here are seen as a vaguely threatening mass that might vote for Binay. The lower middle class I do not think is represented her – Poe voters?
To answer your question – I think the Philippine nation was defined by the elite at first, then the Katipunan – who were not POOR they were people working for international firms near Manila port mostly, Bonifacio was I think warehouse manager for a German company. They were not rich like the ilustrados. Ilustrados – think the really rich today. Katipunan would be today’s call center workers plus the foot soldiers in Makati and Fort offices. Then you have the elite that worked with the Americans – Quezon etc. – and formed the modern Philippine state and nascent nation. I think there is a nation, but the identification is stronger with the region or town. TV and social media have created a stronger national consciousness than the elite interactions that shaped a nation only within the elite before. Just my two cents.
It was EMILIO AGUINALDO who styled himself as General that originally sold the Philippines and the crawling two-legged inhabitants that were named Filipinos after King Philippe to Spanish Conquistadores in Pact of Broken Stones (Pact of Biak-na-Bato).
The UP Historians thru nationalist congress of 1960s that moved Philipine INdependence Day from July 4th to Jun 12 tweaked Philippine History that EMILIO sold the Filipinos so he can buy arms to arm the Filipinos he sold to fight against the Spanish Conquistadores buyers. WEIRD AIN’T IT?
July 4th Independence was given by American freedomfighters to Filipinos that was sold by EMILIO.
The 1960 congress didn’t want of it. THERE HAS GOT TO BE A FIGHT LIKE ANY OTHER COUNTRIES else it wouldn’t be called Independence. So they came together. Knocked on U.P. history professors ordered them to rewrite, reconstitute evaporated philippine history that EMILIO sold the Filipinos to arm the Filipinos he sold against the buyer (I have to repeat it to rub it in) TO GIVE LEGITIMACY TO JUNE 12 INDEPENDENCE.
Philippine INdependence is like EDSA fake Revolution. Honasan-Ramos-Enrile the puppet of Marcos that propped his regime became senators and congressmen after their squabble over Swiss Loot to give legitimacy that EDSA was a REVOLUTION. Many Filipinos fell for it like they fell for EMILIO.
EMILIO WAS THE ORIGINAL SELLER OF THE FILIPINOS. Filipinos are now traded in POEA trading floor to the highest bidder as OFWs, polite word for slaves and labor trolls.
Let us give thanks to EMILIO and UP Historians.
Gotta repeat my stories until it marinates and permeates in every Filipinos.
you could link to the history articles in my blog… it is all there MRP.
Summarized in a very clear manner for everybody to read up… 🙂
First, it is difficult not to concede that there are persuasive reasons for the “crying” need for change; and that there are plausible prescriptions for a better future.
A starting from scratch sort of thing — forget Chess; let us play Go. Changing the board game is relatively easy. Reconstituting the Philippines is a complex and difficult undertaking. BUT GOOD to think about it, nevertheless.
And act while the Philippines is not overwhelmed yet by Climate Change of the Yolanda, Lando kind. Not to mention Earthquakes — remembering that the Philippines is in an earthquake belt.
So, Karl, mix up my reconstituted milk please. (Sorry, this last one is intended only to connect with Karl.)
There is a good reason why I am naming two foreign examples:
1. Turkey – Imperial. Atatürk formed a nation out of the core remnant of the Ottoman empire which was still basically a mixture of ethnic groups – into one nation. It helped that he was a member of the old Ottoman military elite, highly disciplined and military-supported. But committed to building a democratic nation. I actually suspect that this is the long-term vision that Sonny Trillanes may have or may develop – not a dictatorship.
2. Swiss – cantons are a little bit like a collection of villages with similar ethnic background. Their allegiance is first and foremost to their own, but the tradition of the Rütli oath binds them together. This is similar to some yet inchoate Federalist visions in the Philippines.
And my local examples are:
1. Quezon – evolution from the center, institution builder.
2. Mabini – evolution from the grassroots, Decalogue as the common values
3. Leni Robredo – pick up the people from where they are, lead them to progress
And Mar Roxas – evolution from the center – I did not mention yet. But center and grassroots have to converge at least a little in mindset and way of doing things so that the system functions. Because the mindsets now are still too divergent to form a full nation.
Finally it is about how to make the Filipino nation more cohesive – the perennial issue.
The Constitution normally embodies the foundation of a nation in terms of principles.
If these principles are not lived by most, the nation is sitting on the wrong foundation.
Before you go to bed later,I will email the glass of milk to you.
The Spanish ruling class also brought a codex of loyalty owed only to God, the ruler, and the self (also a Moorish socio-political framework), thus putting a low premium on any collective or civic responsibility. These Spanish legacies that Filipinos inherited combined with pre-existing Malay traits are factors that continue to hamper the country’s development up to this day.
Liberal critics will argue that the “failed” cultures of Africa and Asia were victims of colonialism. Yet no African and no Islamic countries were colonized for so long or so harshly by Europe as was Korea by Japan. Singapore and Hong Kong exist because they were colonies. And Iran, although its shahs were sometimes made or unmade by foreign powers, was never a colony. Colonialism was responsible for many ills, but it ultimately falls short as an explanation for chronic underdevelopment. China was as sullied by foreign interlopers as was Egypt, and Japan suffered a military defeat in living memory that inflicted more human and material damage in real terms than did any colonial regime since the Spanish conquest of southerly America. In contrast, the more enlightened colonial regimes left functioning infrastructures and educated elites to manage them.
The Philippines won its independence from the United States in 1946, but it did not actually win real “independence” from America. The Philippines may have rid itself of American rule but not of American ideas. Filipinos embraced democracy, the American form of government and our economy relied on capitalism. By all intents and purposes, the Philippines should have succeeded in its efforts at self-development.
The take in my blog is that the Philippines in its present form owes its existence to America.
Nationalist history will not admit this, but Bonifacio only thought of Katagalugan. Negros had its own revolution. Later Aguinaldo got the Visayans on board, but not the Moros.
American ideas are part of the Filipino mix today, only not yet blended in that well into the halo-halo that is Philippine culture. Spanish influences are blended in and natural today.
The Philippines had a liberalization period in the late 19th century – also in the history part of my blog. The Spanish introduced public schooling, civil laws that did not even exist in the Philippines before that and more. The Mexicans who basically ruled the Philippines until the early 19th century did not care that much, let things run their way, cared only about the galleon trade and the forced labor they could extract. Friars and the principalia run the villages, garrison cities like Manila, Cebu, Zamboanga had Spaniards, but that’s it.
Americans built on the beginnings of institutions the 19th century Spanish built – who were more progressive after losing their Latin American colonies. They tapped the educated elite formed during late Spanish rule – the ilustrados. In fact late Spanish rule brought an economic boom, also documented in the history part of my blog. Rizal and others would not have been possible before 1850. A lot of the nation-building and revolution was about Filipinos getting richer. Please read up on that, your view is only part of the entire picture.
Fiipinos should oust Roman Catholicism and Christianity. Philipines is progenetor of Asia Civiliation. Phlippines began when a lightning hit a bamboo breaking it open to free Malakas&Maganda. Before Lima Hong and a gaggle of Chinese discovered Philippines, Filipinos were already walking, gossiping, backstabbing, squabbling and stealing from each other.
Jesus Christ sent his messenger of Jesus Christ, Ferdinand Magellan, to rid the Philippines of Malakas&Maganda and replace it with Jesus Christ and his 5 Disciples.
Descendants of Malaks&Maganda led by Lapulapu, who are now called Filipinos, killed the messenger of Jesus Christ. Christian Roman Catholic Filipinos are proud of their feat. They built a monument of LapuLapu. They celebrate the killing of the messenger of Jesus Christ every year by re-enactment of the massacre.
From that day on, the Philipines is cursed by vindictive God. For the past 550 years, the Philippines and the Filipinos remained a sick people of Asia for killing the messenger of God.
Some Roman Catholic Filipinos are lucky to go to secular America that PROHIBITS AND MADE IT ILLEGAL TO PRAY IN AMERICAN CLASSROOMS uproot Ten Commandments from public places.
Today, in America, Religion is practice only in Alcatrz, Pelican Bay, L.A.’s Mens Central Jail, Colorado’s supermax and all the prisons in the country. They tatto jesus christ on their body, wear big giant gold and silver crucifixes around their necks. To advertise their religiousity when they come out of prison, they walk around in the Bronx half naked to show off their jesus christ tatoo and crucifix jewelries.
What is funny and mysterious is RELIGIOUS FILIPINOS DO NOT WANT TO SIT NEXT TO THESE WALKING RELIGIOSU ADVERTISEMENT IN THE BUS. religious Filipinos do not want to sit to biblical-verse talking ex-cons.
Religious Filipinos should not be afraid. These ex-cons are morereligious than Filipinos and like Filipinos they are also thieves. So, Filipoinos, when you see half-naked bible-verse talking ex-cons with Jesus Christ tattoed on their body, wearing humongous crucifixes please do not be afraid. They are your brothers.
Democracy will fail in countries where it does not coincide with preexisting cultural dispositions and economic circumstances. Democracy cannot function in a country where most of the population is in a daily struggle for survival. The votes of the poor and unemployed just become another commodity for sale.
Democracy also cannot work if voters think of themselves as Ilocanos, Pampanguenos, Batanguenos, Cavitenos, Bicolanos, Cebuanos, etc. instead of Filipinos and vote for their “kababayan” accordingly. Democracy works in the United States because they have the material resources to break apart domestic and immigrant “tribes” using an accreted system of rewards.
Democracy is a luxury whose maintenance requires the ready availability to the general population of surplus, or enhancement, resources: otherwise, the electorate votes not wisely, but hungrily. The less developed the economy, the greater the tendency to block vote along clan, tribal, ethnic, or religious lines.
“The take in my blog is that the Philippines in its present form owes its existence to America”
Is the root cause America and the implementation of their system the failure ?
Was there any self-development ?
I think if you read my article, you will see what I think the reason is. You are just commenting here without referring to the line of argumentation in my blog. In fact nobody here or in my blog has yet really commented on what I am trying to get at…
Sorry, i didn’t read your blog.
I refer, your personal blog.
By all intents and purposes, the Philippines should have succeeded in its efforts at self-development.
Democracy, partial democracy, and aspirant democracy each exist with numerous variations and, where they are viable and beneficial to the population as a whole, deserve support.
However, when Westerners insist that democracy is always the only answer, they risk harming those whom they seek to help. Democracy along ethnic lines brings you civil war-torn Yugoslavia. Democracy amid religious confrontations brings you Nigeria. Democracy in a collapsing economy brings you Algeria. Democracy under all three conditions brings you the clot of states that spilled from the former Soviet Union.
We expect impoverished Filipinos to perform and behave at the same level of political maturity as the British or United States systems, and when the poor, the uneducated and the hungry vote for the likes of Joseph Ejercito Estrada, ………… we are shocked and dismayed.
In the 1950s Philippines, democracy still somehow worked. But there were only 20 million Filipinos then. Now there are 5 times as many. 2 million went to Magsaysay’s funeral. Nearly everybody had some American-style education.
But as my Pedro and Joe example in the article states, it was only a superficial education. The mindset at the back of Pedro’s head was different from that of Thomasite Joe.
After America left, the Filipino mindset took over successively in practice.
In all of the failed or threatened countries around the world, there are two salient cultural deficiencies. There is little or no sense of responsibility for individual or collective actions, and there is no tradition of political compromise.
If you want a clear contrast between Western and Filipino culture, for instance, consider what happens when something goes terribly wrong. Contemporary Westerners blame themselves collectively and bawl over their deficiencies—we’re slackers on the job or we’ve allowed our school systems to play intellectual hooky, we’ve done a bad job of raising our kids or our culture is a domain of Dead White Males.
When things go wrong in Manila, Filipinos, from the top down, shrug their shoulders and point the blame at foreigners, the previous administrations, the political opposition, the will of God or simply his neighbor.
In cultures where all cause is external, “Inshallah” or as in the Philippine context, “Ang Diyos ang bahala”, the individual and his collective “believe” that there is nothing they can do, since any human effort to improve or fix things will be a waste of time. Everything that happens is by the will of God. It is a very comforting but at the same time, utterly debilitating way to view the world.
The Turks also had that Inshallah mentality under the Ottoman empire.
The Atatürk state managed to bring them together and work purposefully – top-down.
Leni Robredo has managed to do that in communities – her approach is bottom-up.
The Atatürk Phenomenon is somehow rather extraordinary to me. If you have time, will you comment on whether the situation there will unravel over time, or will it be a healthier stronger state along the lines Atatürk wanted or envisioned it?
The outcome I think is still open… but the institutions are very strong so my take is that they function INSPITE of Erdogan… much of his Islamism is just for show to get voters from the talyer shop areas of Istanbul… I was there just in August my project manager showed me the places where the common people are and vote Binay I mean Erdogan… but they are at an economically higher level than in the Philippines those areas look very much like Aurora Boulevard in the 1970s coming from Katipunan, so it does not get that extreme..
The next time I fly to Manila will be with Turkish airlines… they are improving the airport as a hub to Asia.. they already have the pilgrimage business to Mecca as a stopover point… Erdogan had the Marmaray rail tunnel built under the Bosporus… Istanbul is almost as bad as Manila in terms of traffic but it does work somehow… you just have to plan in time if you are going from Asya (Asian side) to European side, just two bridges, they are planning a third one to increase capacity… electronic payment systems for the bridges…
As for why Atatürk made it, I venture an explanation: he had the highly disciplined military on his side. Until now the military has a special role as “guardian of democracy”, meaning by their ideology they will take over if anyone tries to establish a really Islamic state, that is what they were inoculated with during Atatürk’s time, he was an Ottoman military officer and got rid of the “Young Turks” who were similar to RAM and wanted to take over power for themselves. The capital is not Istanbul, it is Ankara which is their version of D.C.
And why were the military very disciplined: they were practically the only non-dynastic organization in the Ottoman empire. All over the Balkan and the Middle East, young boys around 10 years old – that is the age were you can see if he will be matipuno – well-built – were kidnapped, their parents killed if they resisted. They grew up as soldiers basically – but their sons were not allowed to become soldiers, had to find their place in the civil bureacracy. So that civil bureacracy also had natural self-discipline in their cultural DNA.
From that brutal formative legacy, the officer corps and the administration had good habits. Which could be the reason why Atatürk was able to get a strong state going. Something like an Oriental Lee Kuan Yew. Of course he switched to Latin alphabet and changed the Turkish language to have more French foreign words instead of Arabic. His ideas came from French republicanism – including laicism. Headscarfs are banned in schools and universities, I think also in government offices. It is a “tough democracy”.
Thanks a lot for obliging.
Welcome. It could also be that at the time the Turkish republic was founded, the military were THE organization that was truly patriotic. From the legacy of being formed from boys without parents whose sons could not serve, their mindset, their only home was Turkey. The civil service also recruited “high potentials” to use the modern word for it from all over the Ottoman Empire. Feridun Zaimoglu, a Turkish-German writer, once wrote about how his great-grandfather I think was recruited into civil service out of present-day Bosnia.
Maybe the origin of the original founders of Ottoman Turkey played a role – they were Central Asians who imposed their rule on that area, much like India’s Mogul Emperors. Anyway the country has strongly meritocratic cultural DNA on top of its traditional culture.
For the accountants in this blog: the Turkish have implemented the so-called e-Fatura system. Used to be that EVERY invoice had to go to the Tax Office BEFORE it was sent to the customer. It is the same in Greece, so maybe it is an Ottoman administrative tradition.
Probably the civil service knew that people would cheat so they made that requirement. Well now every invoice above a certain amount – the talyer shops are therefore not in it – has to pass electronically by the Tax Office central server. The customer accesses it – basically an XML file this is for the IT folks on this blog, and has to render it into a PDF using a state-supplied computer program. So same system as on paper, but electronic.
Tax assessment is very easy for the Tax Office because they have nearly all the data…
Your view as to the success of Atatürk is a demonstration once again of the concept of “time and circumstance” oft repeated by Joe. Missing that particular circumstance of DNA discipline and habit inoculated into the Turkish soldiers and civil workers, I gather — not to lessen Atatürk’s own personal force and vision — he may not have succeeded as he did. If the institutions built are strong enough, it will most probably survive Erdogan. You used the phrase “tough democracy.”
I hope to be able to see whether time and circumstance will work for the Philippines in a positive way by 2022. The circumstance is of course the situation and dynamics that is at play now and the immediate years after May 2016. Your ideas and those of others here, I hope will influence the path, the country will take.
Is it out of context to say — it is now or never?
Correct. Atatürk may not even have existed because he was also a product of the unique institutional DNA of the Turkish military. But even there they had the young Turks, their own RAM boys who wanted to do it in a stupid way, and establish a military dictatorship.
Atatürk punished the Young Turks very harshly to make sure that this kind of institutional DNA is removed from the military. They were not always nice, especially toward the Kurds who insisted on their own language and identity, but all in all they kept the Republic stable.
Now Mar Roxas has inoculated some self-disciplined cultural DNA into the PNP – maybe he injected it into General Espina first, which is why Espina is bald and Mar Roxas used to have hair standing up like a mad scientist hehe. But it seems to have taken root a little.
The danger of continuity interrupted in 2016 is clear and present. Because those who are now wanting to take over the helm want to reap the fruits of present progress and eat them without making sure that the orchard of the economy reaps sustainable fruits.
There is one who might turn the orchard into a piggery. Another will turn the orchard into a slave camp run by a crazy old woman. Another will turn the orchard into a film studio for Alice in Wonderland without taking care of the trees. Mar is the only true agribusinessman.
Seems like going bald is the price to pay for positive progress. The straight hair of Mar is not quite Albert Einstein’s; but the revered deep thinking physicist with the “electric” hair may not have his hair survive that way if he had gone instead to politics. A bald Albert Einsten. 🙂
Now if all PNP generals become like Espina, we will have Coneheads, aliens who will save us from disorder instead of eating us. Like the Turkish army and civil service saved the Turkish people from chaos after the Sultans became a completely useless dynasty.
So maybe Noynoy actually died at does not have a bullet in his neck. He was replaced by an alien who is highly intelligent, is somewhat strange, and has difficulty talking to us because we earthlings are dumbed down. But his China strategy is pure genius.
And Mar also died in the US and was replaced by a Martian, also one of the aliens who shall be the next to save us. But I prefer to go by the human version of the story, and being by seeing General Espina as an efficient leader, proven during the Pope’s visit.
Somewhat like his look-alike, the one who likes to engage…
this is the professional DNA we should all try to inject into ourselves.
Cultures that do not have a mature sense of responsibility cannot compete with those that do. The East Asian states such as Japan and South Korea that are so powerfully competitive with the historical West each stand on a culture that fixes responsibility. In the Philippines on the other hand, there are two enduring questions posed by men since the nineteenth century: “What needs to be done?” and “Who is responsible?” The first is answered with a fatalistic shrug of the shoulders, and the answer to the second question is never “I am” or “We are”.
Well, the article is about CONSTITUTING that sense of collective responsibility and ownership for the “common weal” – ye olde English term for it. English culture and its child, American culture, developed a sense of “common weal” out of history – Magna Carta etc.
Now since the Philippines did NOT develop that sense naturally, how can it be brought about in an evolutionary way – since the revolutionary approaches have all failed? The article is about how to evolve that commitment in from the bottom up – Robredo approach.
Irineo, the economy cannot create jobs as quickly as we are creating job seekers. Our cities will continue to see an increase in the unemployed and underemployed masses. This will result in an even further breakdown in traditional structures and values.
In the end, the eventual outlet for a lifetime of frustration and unemployment is rage and violence.
A typical Filipino who graduates from school expects to find a good job that would allow his family security and reasonably increasing prosperity. For many such unemployed or underemployed Filipinos, their world is collapsing, even as the media teases them with images of an ever-richer, brighter, fun world from which they are excluded.
These discarded citizens sense that the government is helpless to uplift them from their plight. Many will seek their own version of the Promised Land by migrating and working abroad, as five million other Filipinos have done before them. Of those that remain, the majority will accept their lot in life and seek solace with God and religion. Most will remain law-abiding, hard-working citizens. Some of them however, will not.
We see them everyday, but we are blind to the implications of demographic trends. To cite as an example, the railway tracks running parallel to the South Luzon expressway have long, parallel rows of multi-level squatter shanties, stretching much farther than the eye can see.
These squatter colonies are the postmodern equivalent of jungles—citadels of the dispossessed and irreconcilable. Metro Manila has become an archipelago of wealth enclaves, islands of upper and middle-income residential communities that are increasingly surrounded by a sea of squatter colonies. Slum dwellers greatly outnumber legitimate Metro Manila homeowners.
They represent a hybrid form of social organization and we are witnessing the birth of new tribes.
what is your suggestion on how to deal with it?
Maybe create new industrial centers north of Manila near Angeles, Olongapo with factories. Relocate these people to those areas but with manufacturing jobs ready.
make small to medium industrial centers… to distribute the people so the concentration is not so high as to create problems… TESDA training… make sure that squatters don’t come back to the areas they have been removed from… but relocate WITH jobs ready.
Where are all jobs ? Where are all investments that has been said ?
If they are not there, the state will have to get factories to be built by investors.
Then relocate using incentives – and some police persuasion for those who still stay.
What is the root cause they are there?
What is the root cause of not having enough jobs ?
What is the root cause that the economy cannot create jobs as quickly as we are creating job seekers.
What is the root cause of having so much job seekers ?
…………………………….
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We must go back to the same two enduring questions asked since the nineteenth century: “What needs to be done?” and “Who will accept responsibility for what needs to be done?”
WANTED IN 2016
Medium-sized republic with a population of 100 million is looking for a Chief Executive Officer to manage a bureaucracy with an annual budget of P2.006 trillion.
Prospective candidates must have a strong political, financial, operational, philosophical and psychological background. A track record in restructuring and reengineering oversized organizations will be an advantage.
Must have the ability to analyze problems and look beyond the obvious in the search for root causes. An innovative leader, he or she should always be looking for ways to motivate subordinates and to preempt potential problems before they can occur.
Must be a student of human nature, in order to understand why subordinates make mistakes—not in order to rebuke them, but to find ways to change the environment that has led to previous failures. Prospective candidates must be eccentric, fastidious about personal appearances, tireless in the search for and pursuit of excellence, and as demanding of himself/herself as he or she is of others.
Every candidate must be rated in terms of his or her moral and financial integrity.
Actors and actresses need not apply.
Let now all clowns come in.
He has to be able to build a strong Cabinet team as well. Mar Roxas is again the best choice, because LP has the best and longest-serving pros. Non-performers from the present admin should not be taken into the new cabinet.
It would be interesting to know when Mar introduces his planned cabinet – because these people are very important for the work they do in their respective department.
Abaya is a family friend he can still be useful he has brains, he has not filed any elective post. he is pisay,Annapolis,ateneo Juris Doctor if I am not mistaken. Maybe DOST where he won’t be prone to mistakes. Any low profile position. for others choose career officials,they know the ins and outs and they won’t be pushovers unlike appointed officials.
The young generations growing up in the slums and squatter colonies know nothing about acceptable norms of behavior.
They have no interest in government or society beyond what they can beg, solicit or steal from it. They reject values, forms of government, laws, modes of social interaction and are only interested in the means to acquire material goods. Violence will be their only collective outlet, the only validation of their existence. For some of them, violence will become a cause in itself.
Theirs will be the violence of the failure, by the failure and for the failure. For these barbarians, violence is the ultimate expression of existence, a scream of “I AM!” that is more powerful than any religious expression. It is anarchic to a degree that many of us have never imagined.
Anyone who wants a preview of what these barbarians are capable of need only recall the mob that attacked the gates of Malacanang and the other events that transpired during EDSA 3. The typical barbarian we will encounter is a male who comes from the underclass, who has no stake in peace, a loser with little or no education, no legal earning power and no future.
With gun or knife in hand, today’s barbarian will kill those who may have slighted him, seize the women who avoid him, and plunder that which he could never otherwise possess. As society’s preparatory structures such as schools, churches, communities and families increasingly become inadequate, young males who might otherwise have led productive lives will be drawn to crime.
Young people today know what they want and what they believe they deserve, but they are impatient with the legitimate means of acquiring it. The problem is simply that they disassociate the concept of “having” from that of “earning”. Every major religion warns its adherents of the danger of vanity, insisting that only humility can lead to enlightenment. The younger generation no longer bothers with these fundamental insights. Everyone, everywhere wants more, usually in the most vulgar material sense, because the display of possessions seems to verify the worth of self—”I have, therefore I am.”
Young teenagers willingly risk jail if not their lives just to acquire illicit drugs, an expensive cellular phone or even just the latest model of athletic shoes.
These young men are a fertile recruiting ground for neo-Marcos streetfighters similar to the Nazi SA which Hitler disbanded after using them to get into power – street toughs also.
All the more a reason to find a solution – factories and jobs in new industrial areas near Angeles and Olongapo, distributed so that the concentration is not too high.
They will only be able to do advanced sweatshop stuff, OK some might go TESDA if one applies incentives, and police persuasion for those who stay criminal. Any other choices?
We forget that the barangay is the government people knows,they are suki of barangay every time they quarrel with neighbors,any issue they settle it at the barangay.
Improve stuff barangay by barangay.
population is always blamed one getrealist named Gallego suggested castration mass sterilization and that was 13 years ago.
What to do with homeless pay them to clean streets,collect garbage,clean esters instead of making them scavenge, eat leftovers sell recyclable scrap just pay them.
Those in city jails can also do the same instead of living in a can of sardines
For those left behind in education.there is alternative learning system…..
For urban farming use restaurant food for compost use vacant lots,rooftops of tenements and maybe rooftop of malls.
Things can be done.
All starts with education. One of the pillars.
Yes sir
Karl, you need economic growth.
Yes that too.you don’t need an ironfist for that. the Military must win the hearts of people,not to help a dictator to bulldoze his policies and shove it to our throats.
https://joeam.com/2015/10/23/reconstitute-the-philippines/#comment-142771
read the third part of the above comment. Kung bakit ko naisip lahat ito.
Nerd na hindi marunong magbilliard, pero sa wakas pasok ang ocho.
CCTV in more areas,hire people to monitor always.
People leave get away cars somewhere,somewhere they will change their clothes outdoors,more chances of catching crooks if you have more cctvs
http://blog.marroxas.com/ – CCTV was one of Mar Roxas’ priorities in DILG.
Installing CCTV doesn’t remove the cause of the problem.
It helps manage it while it is still there. The possible solution I have outlined above.
More arrests can happen,then we will have them clean pasig river
I miss the Bishops and Cardinals in the equation. Catholic Church being the unifier for these 7000 islands (with a little “accident” of Muslim Mindanao)
So was the Church the unifying element in the creation of Belgium. The very prosperous 17 where split in the ones where the Spanish could defend the Church and the remaining protestant and united in an independent in Holland. United after Napoleon again but with a protestant king, so the Catholics sought independence, Belgium.
Rizal and many of the revolutionaries were free-masons, deists and atheist, unacceptable for the Church. I get the feeling that a lot of first row seats in heaven where sold to some, Aguinaldo (?) and threats of an eternity in hell made to the secular freedom fighters.
17 Provinces where split, in Spanish Belgium, those where….
The Seventeen Provinces was a term applied to the Imperial states of the Habsburg Netherlands in the 15th and 16th century. They roughly covered the Low Countries, i.e. the current Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, plus most of the modern French department of Nord including Artois, French Flanders, and French Hainaut. Also enclosed in this area were semi-independent fiefdoms, mainly ecclesiastical ones, such as Liège, Cambrai and Stavelot-Malmedy.
The Seventeen Provinces arose from the Burgundian Netherlands, a number of fiefs held by the House of Valois-Burgundy and inherited by the Habsburg dynasty in 1482, from 1556 held by Habsburg Spain. Since 1512 the Provinces formed the major part of the Burgundian Circle. In 1581 the Seven United Provinces seceded to form the Dutch Republic.
University of the Philippines graduate Caropio Morales is on a roll. Dismissed 19 PMAyers !!!!
http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2015/10/23/1513960/ombudsman-orders-dismissal-19-pnp-execs-rubber-boat-scam
…. yet, cannot seem to gather evidences against U.P.-graduate Binays. I wonder what U.P.-Graduate Sereno has to say on this.
If barangay captain,mayor,etc can’t use squatters to stay in power,they will allow their relocation. Make voting only for high school graduates,for people not to cry foul make everyone a high school graduate and beyond.
There is an 80’s mixture of history book and comics called “History of the Burgis”…
Its final conclusion is: burgis is not a bad thing. Burgis is you and me. The solution is to make all Filipinos burgis… burgis are the folks MRP is always attacking…
In the USA and Europe, voting was originally restricted by income so only businessmen and professionals could vote – and only men. When workers and women got more education they were included as voters, so they did not have it for all at once either!
Jefferson told his half-black son by one of his house-slaves, yes she really was a house slave, that freedom is the prerogative of the responsible – after his son spent all the money his father gave him in Europe on vices. So the US also had its stages of development.
Mandatory schooling in Germany is the first 10 years – if you don’t go to school the police will pick you up and force you to go, and because everybody has a registered residence and national ID they know where. So democracy works and the workforce is skilled.
Once upon a time in USA, a lothario from Arkansas
Told the tonto Merkano politicos: It’s the ECONOMY stupidos.
And was he right ! ?
In this blog of/by concerned Waray Merkano
A blogger bagito muchachito hombrecito tigulang llamo Neo
Gi hambal man Hablando todo readers didto
IT IS THE ESTABLISHMENT, THE POWER ELITE, po.
Opo, the ESTABLISHMENT of the here and now, po.
National, regional, provincial, city, congressional districts
Cities and town. It is may be 15 % only of 100 million people.
How? Whaaat? Who, when, where, why?
Elementary dear social patriots. A cub reporter
Must answer those H and Ws to write boring news.
A microscope is of erroneous use if it’s not
Properly FOCUSED.
Correct… I have often asked the question – what Philippines are we talking about?
What Filipinos? And you have answered my question. Just 15% of the population.
Now my article is about getting the buy-in of the other 85%, even of 30% more…
Because the 1987 Constitution is constituted by the establishment, yes sir!
To make the rest participate, you have to reconstitute so they also belong.
So why is anybody wondering why these people don’t follow rules by themselves?
They never felt they are part of the State that has been constituted by the elite.
Make them part of it, against entrenched provincial elites – like Leni Robredo did.
Batang hamogs throw stones, I know someone who got killed because a pebble hit his windshield,to solve that make them sell the stones to cement companies .
If I may Karl, some people might think stones are not pebbles, and stones are not raw materials in the manufacture of cement. That someone you knew got killed by a
pebble should be warning to hamogs not to throw stones.
Yeah, Good thing you understood.
I mean it is good that you understood.
Karl I think Many people easily understand if they see a veiled threat and where it is coming from.
Neo,the one who died was not the stone thrower, the stone entered the windshield and hit the forehead of the victim, they were throwing stones at the overpass somewhere in north expressway.If I threatened anyone,that was not what I wanted.
Karl, When you write “it is good I understood,” I and other readers who had read our exchange here could have taken it you said good because I understood and should fear for my life because we know Filipinos unlike westerners don’t throw stones that KILL people in cars. Canada and particularly US construct very expensive overpasses over their highways and free ways but not as much as we do in our north expressway . I and others can really be paranoid cases we will know that if you can tell us which part of NLEX did that stone throwing happened?
Not th incident I was looking for
Here it is
http://tsikot.com/forums/goon-squad-hq-19/beware-stoning-along-nlex-65477/index2.html
Oligarchs oligopolies dynasties. For oligopolies,give them foreign competition,for dynasties don’t keep on electing them. Politicians are rich people telling you that the other rich person messed things up . Don’t make the poor as a means to win elections,that reason alone will make them forever poor, I know I question education being a priority in the national budget,but still many are left behind. improve education by improving network infrastructure for more access to the Internet, you can build drones,satellites.etc improve education,bring manufacturing back and do vertical integration add value to manufacturing by doing everything here.
We can recycle e waste safely without selling it to China because they get the gold,silver and palladium and sell it back to us to make new electronic products. Manufacture cars,military equipment,etc. we can do it.
Who will stand up to go in office in 2016 and will take the responsibility in doing it ?
Our lawmakers and politicians increasingly believe they know what is best for the people even though most of them have never worked on a farm or worked for wages nor have they served their country in uniform.
No to Marcos,No to Martial law.
Below you said ironfist, no please no.
Captain Picard: Engage, make it so…
Marcos: action agad, palpak ang resulta.
Karl re: the stone throwing exchanges that we just had, I’d say THERE YOU GO KARL. thanks I am grateful and may be others too for the clarification. I learned a little more/better on how to read and not misread written words by other people.
Ok glad everything is clear now.
We must attack the root causes of the government’s inefficiency:
Close down sick, nonperforming units so there will be enough trained people to make the better units healthy.
Kick the local government officials out of their air-conditioned offices, where they are now located under the centralized style of management, and place them out in the field, where they can truly be in charge.
We must ruthlessly root out and destroy procedures and processes designed to maintain control for its own sake. We must dictate goals and standards, then build visible and understandable scorecards that rate what really matters such as truckloads of rice delivered, violators apprehended and criminals caught and in jail.
As we slowly moved to decentralized leadership, we should raise the goals and standards ever higher, and each day the men and women who work in government will prove they can exceed our highest expectations.
From what I have as information about DILG under Mar Roxas, he has made the PNP into a performing organization that delivers: Oplan Lambat Sibat and disaster recovery. Now PNP is by its very nature nationwide, so Roxas might tap that experience, revamp the rest.
Senator Cayetano has proposed decentralizing government – he is forward-looking. What I definitely agree with is remove control for its own sake – a Spanish legacy carried over there are UP studies on that – more fieldwork, performance scorecards, raise standards…
A dictator could be good in such transition period as for now i doesn’t see anyone who will take this in his hand to go back to the base of the root cause(s).
The slogan could be: if you don’t bend you will be broken.
The Philippines does not have anyone who is strong and self-disciplined enough to be a “democratic dictator” like Mustafa Kemal Atatürk – who step by step reformed Turkey from a backward feudal, clannish, multi-ethnic country with an Imperial bureacracy – does it sound familiar somehow – into a modern state, while never giving in to the temptation of being a dictator with abuses that create demotivation and decrease the buy-in of people who are after all not machines. Like I wrote to NHerrera above, an Oriental Lee Kuan Yew.
An authoritarian democrat – Atatürk was the name given to him by his followers – father of all the Turks. Turkish families from the provincial areas that migrated to Germany are still very authoritarian inside even if the 3rd generation is different now. He fulfilled that need for a father figure without giving in to the temptation of abusing it. And also did not give in to the temptation of trying to change everything at once and disrupting Turkey totally – because human beings can only be slowly changed in their habits, one nudge at a time.
Dictatorships always fail – they cannibalize their resources – human, natural, financial after some initial successes. Level 4 leadership only. Level 5 leaders create sustainable progress. http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/unssc/unpan021788.pdf
“Dictatorships always fail” however in some period of time (and certain length) it could be beneficial.
Was democracy implemented on the right time in the Philippines ?
If Quezon had been more of a Level 5 leader – humbler – he might have had the Americans stay and be the supervisory, guiding power at the side of the Commonwealth. That would have been 1935-1985. After all, Germany was under military rule from 1945-1949, then limited sovereignty until 1955 – its military only rearmed then and was inoculated with the doctrine of “inner leadership” to make sure the old dictatorial streak did not return, then as part of the NATO was under partial sovereignty with Allied powers at the side of its fledgling democracy until reunification within NATO in 1990. So 45 years of growing up as a democratic country. In my alternate history, Ninoy Aquino takes over full Philippine sovereignty in 1985 and Marcos already died in jail for killing Nalundasan. I will take a break, have to work on my flux capacitor, get some plutonium for my De Lorean and take Karl with me back to the 1930s and tell Quezon not to go for a Philippines run like Hell by Filipinos. Quezon was mostly Level 5, but in that respect he was Level 4…
“The young generations growing up in the slums and squatter colonies know nothing about acceptable norms of behavior.
They have no interest in government or society beyond what they can beg, solicit or steal from it. They reject values, forms of government, laws, modes of social interaction and are only interested in the means to acquire material goods. Violence will be their only collective outlet, the only validation of their existence. For some of them, violence will become a cause in itself.”—Paul
Paul, you called those people barbarians and other elitist terminologies you don’t know what you’re talking about. Try going down your ivory tower from time to time and have a closer look at those poor people you detest for their unfortunate predicament and you will find you’re wrong, very wrong. That is if you can stand the smell of perspiration so being used to the aroma of expensive cologne.
I don’t detest them, like Irineo said they “are a fertile recruiting ground”
Are you pretending that one day they all will get out of there ? Have a job and live their dreams.
Any time frame from Aquino on this ?
If not, they could become barbarians.
Revolutions, pogroms, genocide, and civil wars are not made by majorities, but by minorities with the acquiescence of the majority. The majority may gloat and loot, but it is the killing minority that drives history.
Let me recall:
These squatter colonies are the postmodern equivalent of jungles—citadels of the dispossessed and irreconcilable. Metro Manila has become an archipelago of wealth enclaves, islands of upper and middle-income residential communities that are increasingly surrounded by a sea of squatter colonies. Slum dwellers greatly outnumber legitimate Metro Manila homeowners. They represent a hybrid form of social organization and we are witnessing the birth of new tribes.
But violence has an undeniable appeal. For the poor and disenfranchised, it is the only response they have left.
Perhaps the psychologists are right when they say that much violence is a cry for help. But what both of those arguments really say is that violence, however motivated, is gratifying and empowering.
In the end, the eventual outlet for a lifetime of frustration and unemployment is rage and violence.
“Perhaps the psychologists are right when they say that much violence is a cry for help. But what both of those arguments really say is that violence, however motivated, is gratifying and empowering.” Oh yes… we were not poor as KM militants in our days.
But in the days of Marcos UP people were constantly under threat of being arrested, marginalized as potential communists. So becoming one gave a sense of strength to overcome the constant fear and feel strong as a reaction to the military and PC that we found threatening – and it was fun to be on the streets in lightning rallies, running from Metrocom, occasionally fighting them with fists against truncheons… we were teens.
Dictatorships breed violence. I am not talking about firmness from state authority, I am talking about the national goons that many military and police were during martial law. Private weapons were practically outlawed, warlordism was extinguished, but Marcos with his troops became a national warlord, making his great enemy in Ilocos, Floro Crisologo, a dwarf in comparison. Owners of too nice cars got riddled with bullets for overtaking PC sometimes, everybody knew it is better not to overtake them or military you never knew.
That kind of intimidation and impunity breeds fear. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering said Master Yoda. I have been in that cycle myself, our KM leader from then is a wanted NPA commander until now. I left the country, it was better.
Even now I feel the helplessness that led to me going on the streets and fighting it out. Who knows if I had gone underground in Manila, I might have joined the Alex Boncayao urban guerilla group – one of the reasons SAF was created if I remember it correctly.
Bert, those people shouldn’t be there.
Better would be to look at the root cause of it, Why are they there ?
Why couldn’t be implemented a system like example Shanghai had in the past, no job, no way to stay.
We need people that work and will add value to the city.
Russia had that system too… Imperial Germany before WW1 as well. Chinese probably copied the Russian system which the Russians copied from Imperial Germany. Mass migration of rural poor to the cities after WW1 – the Weimar Republic was an ill-conceived democracy as well – created the base for the Sturmabteilung and Communist streetfighters. Insufficient democratic cultural DNA led to a conflicted democracy similar to the Philippines now – many political parties, divisive tabloids, reactionary forces that hated democracy but used its freedom to undermine it and more strange parallels. Hitler made a coup attempt but was let out of jail after one year. Now Trillanes will not become Hitler… 🙂
That is why my suggestion of industrial zones up near Clark and Subic with manufacturing jobs for these people and move them there with a carrot and stick approach – incentives including paid moves and simple housing for those who take a job there, persuasion by police not police brutality for those who are still there after say two years. But these are Filipinos if you give them stuff for free it will motivate them. Once they are there allow no new settlers, concentrate on getting those that still are there out. Repeal the Lina law. Catch the criminals that stay there and make them earn extra money in jail as well. This is done in developed and democratic countries. Jail complexes with manufacturing jobs.
So where are all manufacturing jobs ? Why are they not coming ?
China will get rid of them (labor intensive jobs), as it’s not a good long term investment.
As they move where labor is the cheapest.
Then by all means, the Philippines should seize the opportunity because Vietnam already is doing it right before our very eyes – which are closed because most of us are sleeping in the pancitan.
There is nothing wrong to copy if this suits your system and you adapt and improve it for your needs.
Didn’t we all not learn (and copy) something from someone else and improved it ?
Perhaps wrong priorities have been made in the Philippines.
Or to much empty talks.
I would need to conclude that their is no real driven force.
their = “there” some type mistake
Correct. But you have to adapt what you copy in an intelligent way. The cultural parameters are different for every country. German democracy after WW2 is NOT exactly like American democracy for example. Radical parties outside of the “free democratic basic order” which is the ideology of the Federal Republic are banned by recommendation of Parliament by the Federal Constitutional Court for example. Anti-democratic radicals, even teachers were and still can be removed from any public institution – to prevent rotten tomatoes from making the other tomatoes rotten as well. Germany is a “defensive democracy” because allowing free-for-all US style would have brought Nazis or Commies back. An adaptation of this PRINCIPLE for the Philippines would for example be like this:
1) any politician or public official who has stolen money must return it, otherwise jail. Even if he returns it, lifetime ban on running for public office or holding any government office.
2) amnesty for all rebels. But the same ban as on corrupt politicians. Any rebel that returns and continues after the amnesty is chased without mercy by the military.
3) an anti-corruption tribunal composed ONLY of incorruptible people decides on 1) – something like the Nuremberg tribunal the USA put up to deal with Nazis after the war. Some US Supreme Court Justices complained but they were ignored by the Allies.
The problem with the Philippines is that it unthinkingly adopted US institutions without adapting them to the local culture. Like a computer where the operating system is not compatible with the BIOS underneath. And those who are part of the local culture were not enabled in such a way that they fit into the institutions and run them the way they should be run. It is a process of top-down and bottom-up adaptation that is very difficult to do.
Turkey also adapted many French ideas – but they did not copy the French system just like that. They adapted it to their context, their cultural and institutional DNA – and at the same time formed the cultural DNA by teaching the 6 Arrows, the principles of the Turkish Republic formulated by Mustafa Kemal, in school. The 1987 Constitution is a good idea, but its principles are not taught in schools in the Philippines I would think. Most Filipinos treat it like the Bible – something most Catholic Filipinos don’t understand, just parroting it like the Spanish friars taught their ancestors to and like they parrot everything else. Born agains and INCs at least have trained their mind by being taught the meaning of their doctrines and I know that born agains have to do intensive Bible study before they are “born again” by being baptized with their head in water, so at least their capability to analyze and think is better formed. They at least KNOW what they choose to believe… and if one is to get buy-in for democracy, at least have people learn the Constitution…
“I would need to conclude that their is no real driven force.” Possible.
I think the lack of analytical and strategic thinking – the reason I think is the one I have written above, it is about the ignorant parrot attitude the Spanish friars inculcated. Rote learning without true understanding is still the norm in the Philippine education system.
Those that do good things do them instinctively, from the gut, without being able to explain the principle behind it – because they do not have the mental equipment to do so. Like I wrote born agains and INCs are different I have observed because learning their doctrines is an exercise of mental capacities that forms the mind for other tasks. Just repeating stuff without true understanding like medieval peasants under friars does NOT form the mind.
You hit the nail “The problem with the Philippines is that it unthinkingly adopted US institutions without adapting them to the local culture”
In fact the US institutions have been hurting the Philippines. They did not give the opportunity to the Philippines to develop their own needs.
Some tagpi-tagpi (makeshift adjustments) were made to the US system. Three examples:
1) The Sandiganbayan anti-corruption court created by Marcos. Didn’t prevent plunder…
2) The Ombudsman created by Cory. But Supreme Court can still do TROs against them. The possibility should have been removed. In Germany prosecutors offices CANNOT be stopped by TROs. They operate on the assumption in dubio pro duriore meaning guilty until proven innocent. The courts then operate on the assumption in dubio pro reo meaning innocent until proven guilt. So this is not something outside the rule of law. The US way is not the only valid way to do it. Amanda Knox portrayed the Italian court system as medieval – no it isn’t. It is in fact more efficient and a lot fairer than the American system the Filipinos admire. And codified law is much more stringent and consistent than bill and case law like in England and the USA.
3) Cory moved the PC out from the military where Marcos had put it, made it civilian again and renamed it PNP. The PC was the anti-insurgent gendarmerie the USA installed to combat bandits, its core were Guardia Civil veterans. Rafael CRAME was a Spaniard. Additionally, PNP has been getting heavy assistance in human rights training from the Hanns-Seidel Foundation of Munich, Germany. I can assure you I live in Munich and have talked to the old folks. Munich police had their learning curve becoming a democratic but still efficient police force – out of a Nazi tradition. So maybe PNP is benefitting from that learning curve. Sometimes someone who learned something can teach others better.
That is why my idea of forgiving corrupt politicians but forbidding them an entire lifetime from public office and public service could have one exception. Those who have learned from their mistakes could join an anti-corruption agency. After all, the FBI used the forger played by Leonardo de Caprio in “Catch me if you can” as one of its experts to catch other forgers. Someone who knows the “deskarte” (tricks) of corruption already is better in catching those doing it than someone who is “inosente” (naive) about it. Practical stuff…
The problem with Filipinos is that they know only extremes. Dictatorship or free-for-all democracy. Aspects of controlled democracy like in Singapore, tough democracy like in Turkey and defensive democracy like in Germany would be perfect for the Philippines…
Correction to 3) Marcos created the PC-INP out of PC plus municipal police, removing control of police chiefs from mayors which was good thing considering the connivance that often existed between the two. But the culture of violence and impunity both had continued and was even strengthened by the power the PC-INP had because of that. Probinsyanos often either fled to the slums of Manila or went abroad as foreign workers. Marcos also made the Filipino mistake of not considering all parameters when fixing… Finally the PC-INP became the PNP. The human rights stuff was started by Hanns-Seidel Foundation during the late Arroyo administration and continued during the Aquino administration. Mar Roxas added Lambat-Sibat to that. Disaster recovery role was strengthened from the foundations laid during the Arroyo period. Continuity…
Because overhauling stuff takes time and you have to keep the country running without too much disruptions. Dictatorial systems tend to make big changes with huge and unpredictable effects like the PC-INP thing. Or disarming civilians and warlords – which is a good thing they never really returned to Luzon and Visayas, they were a plague of the old Republic – but not considering the impunity and violence of one’s own armed forces including the PC, later PC-INP. The cultural DNA of both institutions was not examined.
Human rights training for PNP since around 2008 or 2009 was a long-term project to inject another, fairer DNA into the institution without compromising its effectivity. Results are there already the PNP is seen as a friend when they come to help villagers during floods.
I think you would have to forget democracy in the beginning, this is not a medicine.
Give tomorrow this medicine to China and it’s broken.
I am sure you know at what cost – millions of lives – the measures that China took were implemented? And many who were not killed were subjected to heavy brainwashing. Chinese methods of brainwashing or “re-education” are effective – but long-term costs?
The weird mindset of aggressivity that China now displays may be the long-term effect of the zombiefication caused by re-education – like Borg implants – and the brutalization induced by fear of repression. This mindset is seeking an outlet – warlike expansion.
If they do not project this aggressivity and numbness outward, it will cause China to implode in a civil war. The Warring States Period of China will be nothing compared to it. That is why organic, humane, evolutionary methods succeed better in the long term. Because psychological damage is also passed on to children, that is definitely proven. The brutalization of Russia by Stalin created the homo sovieticus – numb and violent.
For LCPL_X: Maoist re-education, especially the form used on dissidents, is similar to the brainwashing methods used by Scientology. “Auditing”, especially against SPs (“suppressive persons”) to use the Scientology jargon. It is like Borg implants.
As for China: Aquino’s delaying tactics, involving Vietnam and USA as close and far allies, are damn smart. Aspies are smart even if they look retarded – just in case he is really one. Because if China is not able to attack outward, it will implode and be a threat no more.
And if you would take all in account, perhaps China is far more democratic than the US now.
Yes, chinese dont have freedom but they trade those privileges for improving living standards and economic development.
Yes, there is rampant corruption, but they tolerate it to such exent that officials get things done.
Let me put it this way that if you could not afford basic necessities, what is the use of having the right to vote, which can be bought with a sack of flour.
Forget the Chinese model. Forget the US model. Look at the Philippine situation.
The present institutions. Their institutional DNA. The present culture. Its culture DNA.
Look at possible role models. Aspects of Kemalism like the six arrows of Kemal Atatürk.
To promote buy-in, a mixture of Mabini’s Decalogue + Six Arrows + the Rütli Oath.
The synthesis is to be seen in my article: the Freedom Constitution with five articles.
But it is not revolutionary. It contains the provision that present laws and institutions stay.
It contains the commitment to improve them constantly to make life better for everybody.
Therefore it contains the cultural DNA of Filipinos in the form of panata – a holy oath.
When a Filipino makes a panata he sticks to it because it is banal – holy and unbreakable.
It contains the freedom aspect of the Rütli Oath plus the precepts of the Six Arrows.
With that commitment, but one coming from the people because they have discussed it and therefore KNOW what they choose to BELIEVE like INCs and born agains, the country could be reconstituted and would have enormous energy in moving forward step-by-step.
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I would add Article 6 though: We shall uphold all articles of the 1987 Constitution. We may, however anytime change or remove Articles of this Constitution as needed. This can only be done upon recommendation of a simple majority of the Congress and the Senate, followed by a plebiscite with 2/3 majority of the Filipino people. Any change to the 1987 Constitution shall be communicated to the barangays and discussed with the people beforehand. Any such plebiscite on the Constitution shall be conducted by the COMELEC.
And Article 7: This Freedom Constitution shall expire on the day that the Filipino people decide on their Final Constitution by plebiscite. The same rules shall apply as in Article 6, except that a recommenation by 2/3 majority of Congress and Senate is needed. Articles 1-5 of the Freedom Constitution must be the beginning of any Final Constitution.
This makes clear what I consider the Freedom Constitution to be – a common oath – nag-iisang panata, with commitment – pangangatawanan – to the constant improvement of the Free Filipino nation by all citizens. This is the only way I see – anyone else is free to add his own opinion to this – to break the lack of commitment to the nation in the Philippines. We do not have the cultural DNA of the Rütli Oath like the Swiss. We do not have the cultural DNA of a strong military and civil service to guide a feudal, clannish and multi-ethnic society into modernity like the Turks did with Kemalism and Six Arrows. This is my proposal to inject Swiss and Turkish cultural DNA into Philippine culture and institutions while keeping them running, not wasting the good institutional and cultural DNA that is already there. It is a form of genetic therapy to the cultural and institutional DNA…
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I am a recognized expert in overhauling totally broken computer systems – large-scale systems running within SAP. You can’t just shut down and replace a system with hundreds of thousands of transactions a year. You have to use the good DNA – ABAP coding – and replace the bad DNA in running subroutines step by step to get a better system in the end. I have experienced changing the whole system while running. Cost me sleepless nights in 2006. The system worked worse than it did before I did the overhaul. That is the difference between evolutionary and revolutionary changes. Countries are systems.
I am an expert in modernizing the working methods of accounting departments that have hidebound ways of working – ex-Communist people even, to work on modern systems. I adapted the systems to them a little bit, and their work a little bit. I also,in younger years, tried to teach old horses new tricks. Worked in house with accountants middle of the noughties as well. They had me as an embedded programmer so to speak. They told me no we can’t work that way. I asked them why and adapted the modern program to their old way of working somewhat while teaching them some modern ways. Convergence. This is the top-down, bottom-up approach I am talking about here. Institutions are systems too.
Giancarloangulo, I must thank you here. You said that SAP thinking is the complex thinking needed for dealing with countries and institutions, and pushed me like a “takong” billiard stick hits a billard ball, I have bounced around the “banda” several times, you did not know what you were doing, unlike me you are probably not a billard player, but I have finally landed in the right pocket with this very posting. And I am the Number 8 ball. 🙂
Exactly. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/nazi-germany/the-sturmabteilung-or-sa/
This was the Sturmabteilung – the storm division mainly made up of “ruffians” and “bullies” according to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Most of them were criminals – and they were disbanded by Hitler after he had used them as his security people and to take his political agenda to the streets and scare ordinary citizens. The only ones who confronted them were Communist street fighters who were just as bad. Their first uniforms were old customs uniforms that were not brown. Later they got own uniforms, became Brownshirts.
I have another idea of reconstituting the country which I wrote to JoeAm last 25 January 2015 but found it hard to write a blog about it. I’d like to share parts of it for those who have in mind the best interests of everyone who will understand my idea.
“I commented in one of your blogs then that I do not want the term Filipino as it is a connotation that we are still under the rule of Spain. It remains true to this day after Aguinaldo declared that sham of an independence and those hacienderos retained ownership of the lands they grabbed from the natives whose descendants are today mostly landless because the government they established enacted laws that made it a luxurious item to own even a piece of residential land whose title could not be granted even if such property was occupied by several generations of a clan and the taxes paid religiously.”
“So this is the first item I wanted addressed for us to truly claim that we are an independent nation. I envision it in this manner. A president from the lower classes who could garner 65 to 70 % of the votes must call for a referendum to change the name of the country to a more fitting one (Kalayaan or Freedom Islands, for example) and abolish the laws of ownership of all lands which would be taken back by the government and distributed to those who had been longing to have their own property to live and make their livelihood on.”
“This is a peaceful method of taking back those lands from those elite families and politicians who had been lording it over the majority who could not find a voice toward unity for a common goal that spells total freedom from that yoke of foreign domination due to the machinations of some people who were reincarnations of some corrupt politicians in our midst today. They should at least be grateful that we understand a much better way of settling old scores than the violent ways they employed to subjugate gentle people whom they found living in total peace with their surroundings.”
“Except for Benguet province where the Americans easily conquered the indigenous tribes with their superior arms, the other tribes in other provinces continued on with their lives even with the establishment of a central government in Manila and the Cordillera mountains were included
on the map of the Republic of the Philippines. It remains that way until now where there are no greedy landowners who possess more than enough for anyone and are still unaware of the western concept of land ownership.”
This idea borders on the impossible but nothing could bring us to a grand reconstitution of a long oppressed people than dreaming such an impossible dream.
Please let me keep on dreaming.
https://joeam.com/2015/10/15/dog-love-and-how-it-impacts-on-love-of-country/#comment-141762 – if we do not watch out, the Kalayaan republic will only be founded in 2052. Read the future Philippines sage which is a nightmare in the beginning. Just so that we start thinking of the consequences of wrong decisions. I do not want to go back to 2015 with Karl in 2025 to… to do what… we might have to go to 2035 to save him from hanging.
Only an iron fist could reconstruct the country.
If you generate too much fear you get violence as a counter-reaction.
Marcos’ dictatorship fanned the NPA rebellion in the countryside. Massive growth of slums in Metro Manila was the result – I saw that happening myself I grew up in that era. Now if Marcos had at least built true industries – he hardly did. POEA was founded in 1975 to manage OFWs. And OFWs were milked – they had to send a certain part of their earnings home officially, via the fixed exchange rate which did not reflect the real value of the peso. One could get a lot more pesos for dollar on the black market. This was reality then, also something I experienced, because we changed DM to dollar, then dollar illegally to pesos. But we never converted pesos to pounds, and pounds to kilos. That was not possible then.
Not to much fear but just enough to achieve my goals.
Yes, in the beginning i would have to clean it the hard way as the current status became to messy.
Once the discipline and some examples have been set (a bullet in the head). I’m sure i could move on more peacefully.
Everyone need to understand clearly what is expected from them to achieve our common goal.
The well being of the country.
Yes the first year i would need a lot of security guys around me. But it would be worth.
Well, Mar Roxas has reformed the PNP and made it effective. Human rights training for more than 7 years has already changed the cultural DNA without compromising effectivity.
With good guard dogs who are not rabid, Mar Roxas can ensure peace and order, and people are helped during calamities like just recently. Yes he had his learning curve during Yolanda. But Lando has been managed very well – these are the basics.
The next thing I would do is to implement the Penal Code draft finished in 2004 – helped also by the Munich Hanns-Seidel foundation. Policing and dispensation of justice for all is a very important aspect of ensuring that people FEEL the law is there for everybody – once they FEEL that – they are not so good at THINKING yet – they will start obeying it a lot more. Their cultural DNA will change, step by step. This is the evolutionary way to go.
Yes we need discipline, but we also need to learn shame
And guilt, we are just afraid to commit bloopers and mistakes,but we are kapalmuks when it comes to shame and guilt. That recent incident of drunk driving were the driver just wrote an apology, he deserves to go to jail,but he did not.Our Singaporesn friend Here Chempo suggested caning for some crimes to make us know what shame means. Discipline would only make people ride their bisikleta
https://joeam.com/2015/10/23/reconstitute-the-philippines/#comment-142771 – yan nagja-jamming na tayo sa wakas… may I propose Article 8 of the Freedom Constitution:
We shall learn from mistakes instead of ignoring them or punishing them severely. We shall adjust all of our laws, institutions and procedures to learn from mistakes, and commit those who have learned to teach those still making mistakes. We shall punish those that make exactly the same mistake twice with at least three years of jail, environmental clean-up or social upliftment projects in difficult areas. Those who make the same mistake three times, even if it is in different variations, shall be punished with at least five years civil or defense duty on one of the Kalayaan islands including the BRP Sierra Madre
Punishing people for mistakes is only the symptom. The cultural DNA that led to the mistake must be removed and injected into others who are making the same mistake!
If you do mistakes like a robot, your brain and muscles will memorize that mistake and is bound to repeat it.So conscientiousness must be added.
That is something that should not be in a Constitution. I think that the new proposal for Article 8 will make people think about what they are doing and avoid making exactly the same mistake twice. The same mistake with variations can be repeated twice.
Those who are really stupid and repeat the same mistake three times go to Kalayaan islands or BRP Sierra Madre for five years. MRP indirectly led me to that idea. After five years there you change yourself and try to be a better person…
I added Article 8 Section 1) so that people to not act typically Filipino because mistakes even small ones when found out about are punished severely. The results are:
1) Mistakes are covered up so that nobody learns from them. Everything is consigned to the dirty kitchen. The clean kitchen is always clean but true character does not change.
2) If you make mistakes, better with real impunity so people are afraid to go after you.
You have to look at the causes, not the symptoms, Then apply the right medicine.
If I missed something, please let me know. Thanks for inspiring me to make Article 8&9!
Modified version of Article 8:
1) We shall learn from mistakes instead of ignoring them or punishing them severely. People who confess their mistakes shall not be punished if they rectify the results and teach others how to avoid the same kind of mistake.
2) We shall adjust all of our laws, institutions and procedures to learn from mistakes, and commit those who have learned to teach those still making mistakes.
3) We shall punish those that make exactly the same mistake twice with at least three years of civil or defense duty.
4) Those who make the same mistake three times, even if it is in different variations, shall be punished with at least five years civil or defense duty on one of the Kalayaan islands including the BRP Sierra Madre
5) The details of what constitutes civil or defense duty shall be defined by a law.
Article 9:
1) Details that can be regulated in a law and do not constitute general principles shall not be made part of any Constitution.
2) Changes to the 1987 Constitution shall respect Article 9 Section 1) at all times.
My first impression when I looked at the 1987 Constitution – in 1987 – was that it is too detailed. Stuff that belongs in laws is in the constitution, makes it inflexible. Good constitutions are simple. How many amendments does the US Constitution have? Kitam…
Thanks to everybody so far for contributing to the discussion and being catalyst for me to formulate my thoughts. Being very Filipino in my mind, much of my thought processes are non-verbal, subliminal, unconscious. Discussing helps make them conscious and communicate.
Special mention goes to Paul for being a good sparring partner and not being Floyd Mayweather.
josephivo, thanks for bringing in the Church aspect. Hope somebody has ideas on this.
NHerrera, thanks for discussing the Atatürk matter with me and making salient points clearer.
Neo canjeca, thanks for stating the obvious – that 15% of the population ARE the country now.
gerverg1885, thank you for converging with my Freedom Constitution and future Philippines.
Bert, thank you for barking very loud at Paul, it made him go for me and made me fight more.
Mary Grace, thank you for the comments on the 1987 Constitution and rule of law in my blog.
Karl, thank you for being yourself, coming with your common sense and good questions
giancarloangulo, thank you for being the takong that made me rebound and finally pocket.
LCPL_X, thanks for the civil service idea even if it was developed in another thread.
Joe, thank you for peering this article, and letting the discussion go its way – it was fruitful.
Thanks to MRP for being the grain of sand that is necessary for a pearl to grow.
And finally thanks to all who have somehow gotten the discussion to this good status.
May the discussion and thinking continue – here, in my blog, and among Free Filipinos. This time I am have hit the white ball, may some balls pocket. The 8 is the last… sa inyo muna ang takong.
I called giancarlo a nerd in one comment. He is actually a GEEK… which is good. 🙂
Now where are you folks? Especially those who live in the Philippines? You are the stakeholders – Karl is a steakholder, kain ng kain! Punta ako sa bilyaran… maglaro.
On my own behalf and in behalf of all the others who would not object, YOU ARE WELCOME I R I N E O.
“LCPL_X, thanks for the civil service idea even if it was developed in another thread.”
No problem, man.
Just keep in mind that the military draft and mandatory national service are extrinsic motivators, and that intrinsic motivation (from within, because of a sense of duty or love of country) must also be pushed.
The bases in Subic and Clark were perfect examples of what happens when you have a military draft. The US military was in the process of getting cleaned up in the mid to late 80s, but the Philippines got the brunt of what happens when there’s a military draft.
I think the idea of prison chain gangs is great, ie. to clean the Pasig and other filthy water source over there. But prisoners can also be pushed to do voluntary, yet difficult tasks, where they’ll shine– and take that accomplishment after they leave prison.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/08/19/prisoners-who-fight-wildfires-in-california-an-insider-s-look
A lot of combat vets from Af-Pak and Iraq are also fighting forest fires.
Aside from national service, private enterprise can also take up the slack, like this organization (a bunch of them are now in Mexico to help out with Hurricane Patricia, which wasnt so bad after all),
http://www.teamrubiconusa.org/
(started by two former U.S. Marines, http://www.teamrubiconusa.org/story-of-team-rubicon/staff-board/ )
“But prisoners can also be pushed to do voluntary, yet difficult tasks, where they’ll shine– and take that accomplishment after they leave prison. ” Exactly. Which is why I proposed exile to Kalayaan and even to the BRP Sierra Madre as a way of teaching people stuff.
Something like “Seven Years in Tibet” – or my 33 years abroad, including nearly a decade were my own folks here in Germany, not my family, but Filipinos, shut me out and I decided not to give them time of day either – this is my hardheadedness. Learned a lot from being out in the cold so to speak, having to deal with “mga puti” – white guys – without having the cozy community of my own to retreat to. Built depth of character I did not have before that.
Voluntary national service is an idea I also proposed here as an alternative for corrupt politicians or civil servants instead of going to jail – provided they give back the money. Because being out there could build the depth of character they don’t have at that time.
I did NOT have depth of character as a young man in the Philippines – I was on the way to either becoming a trapo or a leftist version of trapo. Things were too easy for me there.
You wrote something about depth of character once… this is why I am telling my folks back home some of the things I experienced – not to complain but to show what real life can be. No offense intended to them, but those who live behind subdivision walls… I don’t know..
Interestingly, it came out in the news the other day that the Mayor who was abducted and murdered was killed by the NPA. And yet, I haven’t heard KARAPATAN say anything about it. Isn’t this a gross human rights violation, on par with the lumad killings?
https://joeam.com/2015/10/24/binay-at-marcos-ginagago-ang-pilipinas/#comment-142963 – could be that the main point of my article was not clear enough – that we were all talking on different wavelengths. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of comments from Society of Honor mainstays.
The article is NOT about changing the Constitution. The Freedom Constitution is an exercise in thinking about how democracy should be LIVED. Otherwise any constitution is just a dead piece of paper, it is like the Bible for many Filipino Catholics who quote it inflexibly without living by it.
Consider this article my going Martin Luther. It is simply my point of view I have nailed to the door of this Society. Luther’s intention was not to leave, it was to question whether principles stated were being truly given life. Now I ask: how can civic democracy be given more life back home?
Because thinking of the masa only when the elections are there will not be enough in the long run if the Philippines wants to avoid massive social unrest. Will told me the middle class is resurrected in the Philippines – that is great. But a stable democracy with that great number of poor people – 4 million slum dwellers in Metro Manila out of 11 million population please correct me if I am wrong – will always have a destabilizing factor. Besides it is my impression – correct me too if I am wrong – that the cultural and educational gap is wider. Not even translating your articles into Tagalog will help. Because these people have not trained their mental equipment even if they have it. They are perfect for demagogues.
Yes I know Joe told me the middle class is growing. With Will I have a second source which is a good thing. And hopefully a true commitment to democracy develops at some point in the Philippines – and I do not mean the commitment George H.W. Bush mentioned in a speech to Ferdinand Marcos in 1981 when he did his window-dressing lifting of Martial Law. CCT is BTW a good sign – it means that the government is serious about educating the youth, laying the foundation for a truly stable democracy. TESDA also is – making workers skilled and similar to the German vocational system. Good, the Filipinos have learned not to copy everything from the USA like before. DOJ Penal Code reform, PNP human rights training also with German help. But also models from many other countries.
Subscribing now, so I see if there are any responses. I really hope so. See you, thanks. 🙂
Sorry for not representing, Ireneo.
I was too focused on translating Joe’s article that I read your article but did not leave a comment.
Tagalog or Pilipino is not a language I am very proficient with so it takes a lot of time and effort for me to translate Joe’s articles but I do it because I want them to reach a wider audience in PH and the exercise also elevates my Tagalog proficiency.
“… how can civic democracy be given more life back home?”
I think the new frontier in reaching our countrymen is the internet and its social media sites. A lot of Filipinos are reading more and more credible articles and researches about the facets of PH through the assistance of technology. I think you are doing a great job in writing articles and engaging homebound and overseas Filipinos on Facebook.
Just my opinion below, Ireneo. I do not mean to offend you, I want to give you a honest feedback about your article:
I think the simplistic: Thesis Statement – Introduction – Body – Conclusion type article is still the most concise and coherent writing style.
You are very thorough in your writings but you include too much information resulting in information overload for the readers. Their train of thought is disrupted by processing all the information you keep on coming up in very paragraph so by the time they get to the end of your article, they are mentally fatigued from taking in all the data you presented.
You are probably used to reading tomes of research and poring over academic papers and technical manuals but most people reading blogs really want a condensed (not reconstituted 🙂 ; referencing karl’s milk joke) version of your thesis. Kinda like Reader’s Digest instead of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
You are a very brilliant person and you can process vast amounts of information in very short time. Remember that you are unique and not a lot of people can do that. You are also more educated and enlightened than the target audience we are trying to reach these days. Maari ka bang magsulat ng artikulo na mata-translate ko at maiintindihan ng mga taong maralita? Ang style mo ngayon ay parang college textbook at palagay ko hindi natin pwedeng ipagbili yan sa masa. Sana kung pwedeng isa lang pahina para maaring gawing polyeto na maipamimigay ng mga katuwang natin sa Pilipinas.
Sana hindi ka galit dahil sa feedback ko. If I offended you in any way, please accept my apology and I would like to hear about it.
*every paragraph
No, not offended, not at all. Thanks in fact – it is very valuable feedback. My goal was to write more like Malcolm Gladwell – the one who wrote David and Goliath – or Nassim Taleb – the one who wrote Antifragility. OK these are today’s “pocketbook intellectuals”.
But thanks, I am at least organized Tolstoy now, and not the confused Dostoevsky I was before Joe banned me and basically forced me to organize my thought in my own blog…
Mar Roxas reads Dostoevsky… my issue is a bit like his I guess, reaching more people.
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In some ways I am unique, but also a product of my training. When I came to Germany – and I am a Pisay graduate – I went to Grade 11. My training in memorizing was perfect, but what I learned there was to analyze independently. Something that not even Pisay truly taught. Free discussions. The German Constitution. Enormous amounts of text – and not just memorizing, analyzing. University was worse for me. I still had a Filipino attention span.
Two hours straight listening to a professor writing formulas on huge blackboards. Two hours straight review courses with an assistant professor some days after. Can you imagine how often I drifted off. Oral exams, face to face with the professor – two hours.
Do you know what a German professor does to you if you try to bullshit him? He takes you apart methodically. If you admit you don’t know something he might even tell you, what counts in the oral exam is that you have UNDERSTOOD what the subject is about.
Master’s thesis. I had an intuition and wrote it on the whiteboard. The professor told me – prove it that’s your thesis. And make sure it works. Algorithms, but proven by math, then tested on a Sun workstation. First draft of my thesis was really bad. I had to extend my submission period because program was buggy. My professor gave me some hints. Back to the drawing board. Finished it. He told me with my first draft, he would have failed me.
Why am I detailing this. Because no master ever fell from the clouds they say over here. Training ones mind is like physical training. I want to help people learn, now if the 100kg weights are two much lets try the 20kg first, three sets, then 25kg… Good you told me.
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DIGEST OF ARTICLE with some addtional insights added…
A. Present state
A.1. The Philippines is a Spanish colonial product.
A.1.a. The principalia were the coopted ex-datus.
A.1.b. The friars also ran the villages with them
A.2. The Americans came and tried to teach us. (Pedro and Joe)
A.2.a. The Thomasites did what they could. (Joe)
A.2.b. Filipinos acted the way they did with friars (Pedro)
meaning they told the Americans what they wanted to hear. Spanish Catholicism in the Philippines was medieval, one only needs to read the Noli to know that. Meaning no real thinking was expected, only yes Padre, this became yes Sir – and rote learning
A.3. The Americans established a democracy
A.3.a. The institutions were American on paper
A.3.b. The ex-principalia mentality prevailed in practice
the Philippine mixture of Catholic hypocrisy – clean and dirty kitchen – and cacique impunity. And medieval-style application of letter of laws, spirit not understood
B. Possible solutions
B.1. Revolution from below (Wilhelm Tell)
B.2. Revolution from above (Atatürk)
B.3. Evolution from above (Quezon)
B.4. Revolution from the middle (Mabini)
B.5. Evolution from the middle (Leni)
all these forms of change, however, entail certain values and tenets that are understood and lived by. Not just a “Constitution” that is recited like a Bible by many but understood in its spirit just as little by most. Refer to the Pedro and Joe story
C. Reconstitute the Philippines
C.1. Freedom Constitution. I probably provoked the constitutional fundamentalists here so they stopped reading. I meant the five basic tenets of how a democracy COULD be lived in the Philippines as a SUGGESTION for discussion – not as a real constitution. But ideally a constitution embodies how a democracy is lived. Philippine democracy is about as democratic as most Catholic Filipinos are true Christians in their real behavior.
I took aspects of the Rütli Oath, the Six Arrows of Atatürk and Mabini’s Decalogue and mixed them into five articles as a possibility for discussion.
C.2. Continuity, Consistency, Commitment. How much commitment did we really feel when reciting Panatang Makabayan in school? Rote. Pasok sa isang tenga, labas sa kabila. Opo sir, thank you sir. Pag wala na ang Thomasite sugal tayo ha. Pagbalik SIR dis is our Constitution, we ADHERE to eat, it pala, tinago ko ba iyong suman? Rütli Oath is a commitment from below – a rebel oath. Atatürk’s Six Arrows are commitment forced from above. Mabini’s ideas are like a kuya giving payo. So the Freedom Constitution
C.2.a. uses the WE form of the Rütli Oath to strengthen personal commitment.
C.2.b. has honor, humility and kindness as its first commitment para maalala
C.2.c. aspects of Six Arrows and the Decalogue are included in the mix.
is this digested enough for a continued discussion? 🙂
Sure, pero tagpi-tagpiin mo na parang isang istorya. You have systems background so you know how to make storyboards when designing programs/applications so mare- relate yung mga technical aspects from the receptionist to the CEO. Hindi iyon “dumbing down,” para iyon sa clarity at brevity at nilalagay natin iyon sa layman’s language dahil kung gagamitin natin and mga technical jargons ng propesyon, hindi tayo maiintindihan ng mga tao outside the profession. Kaya napaka-importante ng requirements gathering at domain research sa systems lifecycle dahil duon natin napupulsuhan ang mga stakeholders ng ating kliyente at natutunan natin kung paano nila gustong gamitin yung product natin at kung ano ang mga jargons ng domain nila dahil iyon ang “language” na gagamitin natin pagtuturuan natin sila kung paano gagamitin yung end product, di ba?
antayin ko muna iyong mga komentaryo ng mga ibang miyembro, gusto ko munang marinig iyong kanilang opinyon lalo na si Edgar. Sayang lang ang pagod ko kung wala na namang reaksiyon kapag ipinublish, kaya gusto ko munang makuha ang mga ideya ng grupo rito saka ko bubuuin. Kasi kung iyong ideas ko, too spaced-out or far-out even for Edgar Lores, walang kuwentang pag-usapan. Ilagay ko na lang sa time capsule para mabasa ng Pilipino in 50 years. So feedback muna – technical test kayo ang tester. Saka ko lagyan ng magandang user interface para sa user test. At itatagalog ko kaagad.
We talk behind the scenes,but what Juana said is spot on.Let us forget our ages Lahat tayo big Bruder big sister dito
You don’t have to wait for Edgar’s enumeration and Joe’s feedback. just be thankful you have an avenue to express your thoughts…communication can be an issue It took me a while to explain what I meant to Neo and I have to understand that he was stateside for a long time and he has no way of telling if I am bullshitting. I can get emotional and I think aloud too, i type without editing..which is wrong.
Edgar is an IT guy too but I think Juana said it….
Ok Parekoy said it Kung IT ka bat ang gulo mo mag I sip….remember that?
I can’t tell that to you because I am way way worse.
Exactly, Karl!
We’re reading it, Ireneo.
But for me, it’s way above my pay grade, so I chose to contribute only what I know and read others’ comments. If others aren’t commenting, they may feel the same as I do, either it’s above their pay grade or simply let it germinate.
So the fact that it’s available, is IMHO, enough– agree with Karl.
“Brewing” is actually a better metaphor.
You’ll see results of your thoughts take sprout, I still remember your argument for why Duterte should be taken seriously based on ethno-linguistic roots (too bad he decided not to run), and the fact that everyone having servants growing up could be the reason why there’s a lack of depth in character.
Keep it coming, man. Jack London didn’t wait for Mark Twain’s (and the others) take on things, the guy just kept on writing.
Thanks.. but it did help a lot that Edgar broke it down with his IBM logic. The synergy brought even better results and clarity plus josephivos fundamental audit that led me to remember the idea of public will by Rousseau – the one who conceived the noble savage.
Add to that the ideas of statecraft from Montesquieu and John Locke – forget Hobbes that doesn’t fit and you have more or less my model – I would like to inspire interested Society members to read up on these thinkers – they are the basis for many ideas that make modern countries what they are. America is a mixture of Locke and Hobbes plus Max Weber. France is a mixture of Rousseau and Montesquieu. Germany pure Max Weber plus the John Locke stuff. Modern Senators like Aquino IV and Cayetano – homework!
Trillanes might find inspiration in some ideas of Atatürk. The Federalists from the Swiss. Cantons would be great for the Philippines – abolish municipalities, cantons are the right size if you make them so that everything is a reasonable jeepney or bus ride away.
Metro Manila could be broken down into 15 cantons. Break up Quezon City it is too large, sorry Manuel Quezon. Cantons should be so that all barangay captains together make up a typical barangay for themselves and elect their cantonal representative – won’t call him or her rajah or rani and won’t call the barangay captain datu, but it is back to basics in a more modern way – working with the grain of Filipino culture – democratic headmen.
Combine that with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delegative_democracy, using modern platforms such as Liquid Feedback which is used by Pirate Parties all over Europe.
National databases, security forces, lawmaking, tax administration, foreign affairs, natural resources, DOST, industrial development and education policy centrally.
Education implementation, justice, penal, business promotion, tourism promotion and medium-sized industry development regionally.
Civic service (environmental protection, housing projects, disaster rehab) and agricultural promotion (seedling, wholesale and machines collectives) at the provincial level.
SME promotion (one-stop shops for business owners to deal with all matters, tapping national databases) plus old LGU roles including some disaster recovery and tax collection (BIR cantonal offices linked to BIR database) at cantonal level.
Citizen services tapping national databases (one-stop shops), mediation and citizen education at the barangay level.
Checks and balances:
National:
President – elected directly. Foreign trips representative, final signatory on bills – may veto
Prime Minister- Elected by the cantonal assemblies of all provinces.
Cabinet – appointed by the Prime Minister
Senate – all the Regional Senators
Congress – composed of delegates from the regional assemblies
Regional
Regional Senator – elected by the provincial assemblies of the region.
Regional assembly – elected directly. Checks governors.
Provincial
Governor – elected directly. Checks on work of cantonal heads.
Provincial assembly – composed of delegates from the cantonal assemblies.
Cantonal
Cantonal head – elected from among the cantonal barangay captains.
Cantonal assembly – elected directly. Checks cantonal head and barangay captains.
Barangay
Barangay captain – elected directly
Barangay tanod – Karl Garcia
The result – the President can be the most popular person, but the real work is done by the prime minister. The cantonal assemblies have a lot of influence. Provincial governors have more responsibility and less power than now. Cantonal heads are close to the grassroots, being barangay captains themselves. Regions are mini-states, while cantons are micro-states and collections of barangays. A flexible system for a multi-island country.
Finally the overhead is reduced. Few useless positions. Delegate system can be on a rotation basis, so assembly people get to see different levels of responsibility. Interlocking levels and division of labor promote cooperation and make secession very unlikely.
The intellectual Barangay Society of Honor operates within the Canton Blogging of the Province Journalism of the Region Communication of the Nation Philippines.
Terms:
National:
President – 6 years.
Prime Minister- 12 years (for maximum continuity)
Cabinet – 12 years
Senate – see Regional Senators
Congress – 2 years (rotation system)
Regional
Regional Senator – 6 years (continuity)
Regional assembly – 6 years (continuity)
Provincial
Governor – 6 years
Provincial assembly – rotates every 3 years
Cantonal
Cantonal head – 2 years (rotation system)
Cantonal assembly – 12 years (continuity)
Barangay
Barangay captain – 3 years
Barangay tanod – ?
Biliran could be 1-2 cantons – no more municipalities. No self-important mayors. Barangay captains have an office which is a one-stop shop for citizen services and citizen education.
Rotation system would prevent delegates / cantonal heads from having too much power.
Probably three cantons on Biliran, one merging Naval and Biliran, another merging Kawayan and Almeria, and a third on the east side of the island centered in Caibiran. Upgrading the barangay professionalism would bring the island to life, like a flower moving in time-lapse photos.
Cool, man. I’m wit you.
Citizen services could at barangay level could be:
– one-stop shops for nearly all government stuff people need (except national IDs and BIR), there is no reason to have to go to NBI for clearance, here the equivalent you apply for at city hall, it comes from Berlin by mail, send it to the barangay service center there)
– one-stop shops for close-range social services (health, disaster, vaccinations, debtor’s advisory which is something they have in Germany: lot of the poor folks here don’t know how to handle money, they advise them on how to climb out of debt and teach them money management skills, assistance for women and children in distress, emergency food rationing during disasters, basically one command center very important to fix slums)
– citizen education. free or low-cost courses on money management, government system, reproductive health, small business basics – enabling people to be able to do more
– mediation and local peacekeeping is already there
– government information center – free broschures and an information desk to inform the people and answer questions regarding government stuff
Cantonal services could be – remember canton means all easily reachable by jeepney:
– BIR interface. It can be a BIR office in the cantonal building for example.
– one-stop shop for all matters pertaining to business registration
– one-stop shop for all matters pertaining to land titles (extension office)
– disaster recovery and rehabilitation office
– national ID issuance and extension – and CITIZEN REGISTRATION. This is something that the US and UK don’t have, but all of continental Europe has it. Every person has to be registered with one residence and has a national ID. So no need to register voters anymore it is already handled. Yes, the cantonal office could also be the place where people go to vote in my model. So the canton would be the common tao’s micro-state.
In Switzerland cantons follow the lay of the land – usually a big valley or a set of valleys.
In the Philippines you will mostly have a coastline, a bit of plains, mountains or hills behind.
Then rivers or so that form the boundaries of the common mans usual world -> the canton.
In Switzerland cantons usually are quite close-knit, same dialect variation, same families.
You will not find a canton going from a mountain pass into the next valley with other folks.
The older ones are like that, I just checked… the newer cantons in the plains are bigger.
But I am adapting it to the Philippines “Heritage of Smallness” to handle stuff better.
Of course, the prerequisite for all of this is a really fast Internet to all the islands.
Paul was doing an Irineo or pinoy in Europe how can others butt in.
Haha, yes, but Irineo offers content in the volume.
http://filipinogerman.blogsport.eu/ang-saligan-ng-batas/ – not a translation – a second and much better version in Tagalog… Joe if you want you can peer it when you want… I think it is better than the English version and brings the point across in a much stronger way.
I can’t peer them so frequently. It’s like with guest authors, I have to spread out the articles so no one becomes too dominant.
no problem.. may I then request that you put a link to the Tagalog alternative article in your above peering article – double-peering so to speak? 🙂 If it is possible…
Happy to. And I’ll definitely peer the China article. I’ve been watching for it.
Thanks… The Tagalog article is very different. Thanks Juana for giving me the storyboard idea.. I made it into a mixture of Tagalog comedy… and Tagalog movie. 🙂
And I did NOT propose anything… gave the folks a bit of a fun challenge in all directions. China article I will finish by Halloween to fit the scariness of the topic… 🙂
Sige Karl, I will not wait for the comments – in fact the idea for the Tagalog version is now brewing in my mind – “Ang Saligan ng Batas”. Strangely, my father made an article of the same title about the early 1970s Con-Con, but I never read it. Engot talaga ako…
*******
1. Hokay. I see what Irineo is attempting to do here, and it is an ambitious concept.
2. Let me assemble the reconstituted articles, which are referred to as the Freedom Constitution (FC):
PREAMBLE. We, the people of the Islands called the Philippines, of all racial and cultural mixtures, of all religions, income groups and educational attainments, strive to make our lives better after centuries of oppressing each other. This is the Constitution by which we shall live every aspect of our lives from this point onward, and make sure each and every one of us, from now on to be called Free Filipinos, lives by from this day.
Article 1: We shall be honorable, humble and kind in all our dealings towards other human beings.
Article 2: We shall adhere to the laws we have pretended to live by from now on, and adjust these laws in order to make our society as free, humane and just as possible. We shall make sure that these laws are followed by each and every one of us as legal equals.
Article 3: We shall work to make our country, the Free Philippines, free of hunger, fear and unrest. We shall strive to give opportunities to all willing to work for them.
Article 4: We shall make sure that we think about what we are doing, and promote thinking instead of unreflected belief. Religion and conviction is each person’s private matter.
Article 5: We shall build a state that reflects the principles of this Constitution. In the meantime, we shall support the state that we already have, and rebuild it step by step.
Article 6: We shall uphold all articles of the 1987 Constitution. We may, however anytime change or remove Articles of this Constitution as needed. This can only be done upon recommendation of a simple majority of the Congress and the Senate, followed by a plebiscite with 2/3 majority of the Filipino people. Any change to the 1987 Constitution shall be communicated to the barangays and discussed with the people beforehand. Any such plebiscite on the Constitution shall be conducted by the COMELEC.
Article 7: This Freedom Constitution shall expire on the day that the Filipino people decide on their Final Constitution by plebiscite. The same rules shall apply as in Article 6, except that a recommenation by 2/3 majority of Congress and Senate is needed. Articles 1-5 of the Freedom Constitution must be the beginning of any Final Constitution.
Article 8:
1) We shall learn from mistakes instead of ignoring them or punishing them severely. People who confess their mistakes shall not be punished if they rectify the results and teach others how to avoid the same kind of mistake.
2) We shall adjust all of our laws, institutions and procedures to learn from mistakes, and commit those who have learned to teach those still making mistakes.
3) We shall punish those that make exactly the same mistake twice with at least three years of civil or defense duty.
4) Those who make the same mistake three times, even if it is in different variations, shall be punished with at least five years civil or defense duty on one of the Kalayaan islands including the BRP Sierra Madre.
5) The details of what constitutes civil or defense duty shall be defined by a law.
Article 9:
1) Details that can be regulated in a law and do not constitute general principles shall not be made part of any Constitution.
2) Changes to the 1987 Constitution shall respect Article 9 Section 1) at all times.
This Constitution may be extended by the will of 2/3 majority of the Free Filipino people. The first five articles are valid for all time and shall never be amended.
May the aspirations embodied in this Constitution give us the strength to fulfil it.
3. A critique of the FC can be made from two viewpoints: form and substance.
4. Form. As Irineo has emphasized, the FC is not meant to replace the 1987 Constitution but “how democracy should be lived.”
4.1. However a Constitution is the basic law… and nothing can be more basic than that.
4.2. In form, therefore, the FC is an unknown animal. Formally, it may take the guise of four forms:
4.2.1. As part of the “Declaration of Principles and Sate Policies” of a Constitution
4.2.2. As an independent Declaration of Principles similar to the US Declaration of Independence
4.2.3. As an interim (r)evolutionary Constitution
4.2.4. As the guiding principles of a government platform, adopted and pushed by a political party
4.3. Option 4.2.1 is unlikely… and contradicts Articles 6 and 9.
4.4. Article 7 seems to connote that the FC should be taken as an interim (r)evolutionary Constitution (option 4.2.3). This can only be done under a revolutionary regime.
4.5. While an independent Declaration is desirable in that it should garner multi-partisan support, option 4.2.2 is unlikely to be feasible in practice and unlikely to gain such support.
4.6. The most likely scenario, therefore, would be option 4.2.4.
5. Substance. I will largely focus my remarks on the first five articles.
5.1. The Preamble is clear and self-explanatory.
5.2. Articles 6 and 7 are transitory provisions.
5.3. Article 8, in its detail of penalties, violates Article 9.
5.4. Article 9 is more an unwritten rule of constitutional construction.
5.5. The first five articles are aspirational goals. In gist they may be summarized as follows, with Ataturk’s arrows in parentheses:
o Article 1 – Ethical consideration of others
o Article 2 – Rule of law, freedom, justice and equality
o Article 3 – Social justice and equal opportunity (Populism)
o Article 4 – Education and freedom of belief (Laicism)
o Article 5 – Continuity and commitment (Nationalism, Statism and Reformism)
5.6. As I look at each article, my concern is pragmatic: Is the goal doable?
5.7. Article 1 is a worthy goal. However, the difficulty is that it is an ethical rule and cannot be implemented in law. (It may be imprinted through education.)
5.8. Article 2. I like this one. This defines the main base of government, the four pillars of democracy — justice, equality, freedom, and representation(?) — as well as the primacy of the rule of law. The emphasis on equality is significant considering the oligarchic nature of our society and the neglect of social (the poor) and indigenous minorities (Muslims and lumads).
5.9. Article 3. Another positive. This defines the main goal of government which is social justice and the guarantee of equal opportunity. Equality, in terms of justice, is about equal outcomes. But equality, in terms of economics, is not about equal outcomes but more of equal opportunities. However, social justice attempts to re-balance the disparity in outcomes.
5.10. Article 4. The first part of the first sentence, like Article 1, is more of an ethical rule and can hardly be implemented in law. The second part of the first sentence is the goal of education. I wish the second sentence could be realized, but it will take a strong leader to rid the country of religious sectarianism. PNoy was partly successful with the passage of the RH Law.
5.11. Article 5. This article merges three of Ataturk’s arrows, which is quite an accomplishment.
6. What may be missing from the 5 articles is Leni’s arrow – direct participatory democracy. The advances in technology have increasingly made direct democracy a possibility. We are not quite there yet, but Robredo’s regular consultations with his constituency should be given importance and be institutionalized. (Article 6 does mention consultation with the barangay and the people.)
7. Great effort.
*****
Miss the underlying “philosophy”. The West, Plato, or the East, Confucius? The individual citizens as ultimate rulers and representative leaders or the family concept and the mutual respect of father and children, leaders and citizens.
Don’t know if an American type of democracy is better for the Philippines than a Singaporean or Chinese benevolent autocracy. The strong family bonds seem to match better with the second.
(A painful statement for me as a staunch believer in the Age of Enlightment)
Very good question, Messr. or Menheer josephivo! I don’t think the Filipinos have a conscious view of their underlying philosophy yet. Mabini’s decalogue in the Tagalog version could be a basis. But I think the discussion – which the Tagalog article similar in intent but totally different in structure – would like to get going wherever it gets going – about values would make it clear what Filipinos really believe in or choose to go for.
This discussion should be led at barangay level, upwards and downward to the national level is my proposal here. So that a true consensus is formed – and not just the masses somehow doing what an elite imposed on them, a new colonizer each time nothing new.
https://joeam.com/2015/10/23/reconstitute-the-philippines/#comment-143102 – it is a question of finding the volonté générale of the Free Filipino people by a national discussion. As a part of this future people, may we find our own version of it. Hablamos!
*******
Josephivo,
I share your pain.
The thought of Singapore passed my mind before I put pen to paper (or keyboard to screen) but I have lost the context. An article on our collective mentality — say, about the centrality of family values and the barangay — may not be remiss.
Personally, I think the collective (herd) mentality is a weakness — as evidenced in the excesses of fiesta celebrations; the Mamasapano incident; the AlDub, Black Nazarene and the Easter mortification phenomena; the bloc voting of the INC; the propensity to prematurely forgive, etcetera — but it could be a strength. As in the Gawad Kalinga movement, the coming together of the community after a natural calamity, and… what else?
*****
Edgar, my cantonal model – to replace LGUs mentioned below, is the best way to work WITH the herd mentality. Biliran island – one or two cantons composed of a manageable number of barangays… Claveria/Sanchez Mira/Pamplona in Cagayan as a canton also.
The balance of powers I suggested prevents the return of local mayor or governor warlords completely while harnessing collective willpower for the common good.
You need to work with the grain of the mentality, not against it… canton = “rajahnates”.
*******
Hey, Irineo, do you ever sleep?
*****
too little at the moment… big adrenaline push…
The family or local tribes are where the emotionalism gets blown out in fiesta fashion so that the disenfranchised can feel alive and re-energized and go back to slogging and subsisting to the next blowout. It is an essential psychological structure as long as opportunity does not exist. When opportunity exists, energy will shift to getting ahead, and the fiestas will tame down and become more like Thanksgiving.
BEGIN.
********************************
* begin of Edgar Lores modified code, Version 1.2
********************************
* V1.0 by Irineo Salazar
* V1.1 by Edgar Lores
* V1.2 by Irineo Salazar
********************************
1. Hokay. I see what Irineo is attempting to do here, and it is an ambitious concept.
Yes! It is an attempt to inject the memes of a certain cultural DNA into the Philippine memosphere. The memes of Lutheran obstinacy – as opposed to Philippine hardheadedness. The meme of PRINCIPLE. The 1987 Constitution has principle in it – Jesuit Father Bernas of Ateneo injected a lot of his very principled DNA into it, and that is why it is a good Constitution – not guided by “U.P. crooks” like the 1973 Constitution.
But its principles are lost in translation. Were not communicated to the entire nation. That is why the constitution of the body politic – in another sense – is not robust. The mental and physical constitution of nation is more akin to that of Senator Miriam Santiago as of now.
Those who interpret the Constitution – even the Supreme Court itself in parts – do not know the spirit of Father Bernas S.J., the Espiritu Santo in it. Manuelbuencamino does, Respekt!
********************************
2. Let me assemble the reconstituted articles, which are referred to as the Freedom Constitution (FC):
PREAMBLE. We, the people of the Islands called the Philippines, of all racial and cultural mixtures, of all religions, income groups and educational attainments, strive to make our lives better after centuries of oppressing each other. This is the Constitution by which we shall live every aspect of our lives from this point onward, and make sure each and every one of us, from now on to be called Free Filipinos, lives by from this day.
Article 1: We shall be honorable, humble and kind in all our dealings towards other human beings.
Article 2: We shall adhere to the laws we have pretended to live by from now on, and adjust these laws in order to make our society as free, humane and just as possible. We shall make sure that these laws are followed by each and every one of us as legal equals.
Article 3: We shall work to make our country, the Free Philippines, free of hunger, fear and unrest. We shall strive to give opportunities to all willing to work for them.
Article 4: We shall make sure that we think about what we are doing, and promote thinking instead of unreflected belief. Religion and conviction is each person’s private matter.
Article 5: We shall build a state that reflects the principles of this Constitution. In the meantime, we shall support the state that we already have, and rebuild it step by step.
Article 6: We shall uphold all articles of the 1987 Constitution. We may, however anytime change or remove Articles of this Constitution as needed. This can only be done upon recommendation of a simple majority of the Congress and the Senate, followed by a plebiscite with 2/3 majority of the Filipino people. Any change to the 1987 Constitution shall be communicated to the barangays and discussed with the people beforehand. Any such plebiscite on the Constitution shall be conducted by the COMELEC.
Article 7: This Freedom Constitution shall expire on the day that the Filipino people decide on their Final Constitution by plebiscite. The same rules shall apply as in Article 6, except that a recommenation by 2/3 majority of Congress and Senate is needed. Articles 1-5 of the Freedom Constitution must be the beginning of any Final Constitution.
Article 8:
1) We shall learn from mistakes instead of ignoring them or punishing them severely. People who confess their mistakes shall not be punished if they rectify the results and teach others how to avoid the same kind of mistake.
2) We shall adjust all of our laws, institutions and procedures to learn from mistakes, and commit those who have learned to teach those still making mistakes.
3) We shall punish those that make exactly the same mistake twice with at least three years of civil or defense duty.
4) Those who make the same mistake three times, even if it is in different variations, shall be punished with at least five years civil or defense duty on one of the Kalayaan islands including the BRP Sierra Madre.
5) The details of what constitutes civil or defense duty shall be defined by a law.
Article 9:
1) Details that can be regulated in a law and do not constitute general principles shall not be made part of any Constitution.
2) Changes to the 1987 Constitution shall respect Article 9 Section 1) at all times.
This Constitution may be extended by the will of 2/3 majority of the Free Filipino people. The first five articles are valid for all time and shall never be amended.
May the aspirations embodied in this Constitution give us the strength to fulfil it.
Thanks Edgar for putting it together… 🙂
********************************
3. A critique of the FC can be made from two viewpoints: form and substance.
4. Form. As Irineo has emphasized, the FC is not meant to replace the 1987 Constitution but “how democracy should be lived.”
4.1. However a Constitution is the basic law… and nothing can be more basic than that.
The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany – constituted on May 23, 1949 has Articles which state that certain Articles of the Weimar Constitution are part of it. This kind of construction is therefore possible. They could have copy-pasted but no PCs yet I guess?
********************************
4.2. In form, therefore, the FC is an unknown animal. Formally, it may take the guise of four forms:
4.2.1. As part of the “Declaration of Principles and Sate Policies” of a Constitution
4.2.2. As an independent Declaration of Principles similar to the US Declaration of Independence
4.2.3. As an interim (r)evolutionary Constitution
4.2.4. As the guiding principles of a government platform, adopted and pushed by a political party
4.3. Option 4.2.1 is unlikely… and contradicts Articles 6 and 9.
Yes.
********************************
4.4. Article 7 seems to connote that the FC should be taken as an interim (r)evolutionary Constitution (option 4.2.3). This can only be done under a revolutionary regime.
This construction is still part in a similar form of the German Basic Law. It was made as a provision for reunification. Article 146. Not removed during reunification because the crafters of the 2+4 treaty did not want to have a plebiscite with unpredictable results.
However, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany has ruled that Article 146 has been rendered irrelevant by the 2+4 Treaty and some other stuff. Some Neonazi loons still see it as a loophole but are not able to gain support, because the Basic Law is well-accepted.
It is taught in schools, free pamphlets with explanations are available at the Federal Center for Political Education – an institution from the times of Germany’s thorough re-education. Germanic thoroughness has always applied – to Luther, to the Holocaust, to Democracy.
Even the way the refugee stuff was dealt with was dealt with thoroughly, with buses waiting at the sealed-off Starnberg Wing of the Munich Central Station. I have post at Raissa’s about that. Well, I guess here there is a lot of experience in people logistics, evil and good.
But what is in German cultural DNA stays stable for centuries. Somehow the gene therapists of re-education managed to keep the discipline, organization and thoroughness, removed the warrior gene a bit too much like LCPL_X has noted, but injected much democratic DNA.
********************************
4.5. While an independent Declaration is desirable in that it should garner multi-partisan support, option 4.2.2 is unlikely to be feasible in practice and unlikely to gain such support.
4.6. The most likely scenario, therefore, would be option 4.2.4.
Yes – either a Federalist Party that might spring up out of the Federalism Forum, but without Duterte please. Or a Liberation Party, in case Mar Roxas and Leni Robredo part ways. Or the Liberal Party – if the Robredo political DNA goes viral (watch Bourne Legacy which play in Manila for that) in the Liberal Party and pushes away the trapo political DNA of the Balay faction, making it recessive. Or Cayetano might pick it up for a National Liberal Party.
********************************
* this constitutional program is under GNU public license
* and may be copied as long as the original is referred to
* in the header of the code. This Constitution is from CPU:
* Constitutional Programming Unit c/o Chief of IT of the
* Society of Honor of Joe America, Cyberspace
********************************
5. Substance. I will largely focus my remarks on the first five articles.
5.1. The Preamble is clear and self-explanatory.
5.2. Articles 6 and 7 are transitory provisions.
5.3. Article 8, in its detail of penalties, violates Article 9.
********************************
my counter-proposal – I admit I created Article 8 on the fly, tagpi-tagpi, then changed it when I thought of Article 8 while talking to Karl. But he inspired it with his comments:
Article 8:
1) We shall learn from mistakes instead of ignoring them or punishing them severely. People who confess their mistakes shall not be punished the first time if they rectify the results and teach others how to avoid the same kind of mistake.
2) We shall adjust all of our laws, institutions and procedures to learn from mistakes, and commit those who have learned to teach those still making mistakes.
3) We shall punish those that make exactly the same mistake twice civil or defense duty, the length of which shall be defined by law.
4) Those who make the same mistake three times, even if it is in different variations, shall be punished with civil or defense duty in outlying areas, the length of which shall be defined by law.
5) The details of what constitutes civil or defense duty as well as outlying areas shall be defined by a law.
********************************
5.4. Article 9 is more an unwritten rule of constitutional construction.
True, but Father Bernas’ original pure and structured Jesuit concepts were mangled badly by the politicians who took over the further drafting process. They did not get this. Filipino lack of strategic, top-down thinking Joe often criticized. Spent a long time arguing about whether the national language should be Filipino or Pilipino and missed out on basics. This is what I heard from people – I only flew over the 1987 Constitution and it IS over-detailed.
********************************
5.5. The first five articles are aspirational goals. In gist they may be summarized as follows, with Ataturk’s arrows in parentheses:
o Article 1 – Ethical consideration of others
o Article 2 – Rule of law, freedom, justice and equality
o Article 3 – Social justice and equal opportunity (Populism)
o Article 4 – Education and freedom of belief (Laicism)
o Article 5 – Continuity and commitment (Nationalism, Statism and Reformism)
5.6. As I look at each article, my concern is pragmatic: Is the goal doable?
Good question. And – are the majority commited to it. I would have it discussed in all barangays and THEN have a national plebiscite by PCOS and COMELEC. The Marcos ratification by barangay in 1973 was nonsense and IMHO rigged.
********************************
5.7. Article 1 is a worthy goal. However, the difficulty is that it is an ethical rule and cannot be implemented in law. (It may be imprinted through education.)
Correct, then make it part of the Preamble. But the 1987 Constitution has many high-sounding motherhood statements in its Articles. Good you noticed that does not belong. Programmers sometimes leave bugs to test the technical testers hehehe 🙂
********************************
5.8. Article 2. I like this one. This defines the main base of government, the four pillars of democracy — justice, equality, freedom, and representation(?) — as well as the primacy of the rule of law. The emphasis on equality is significant considering the oligarchic nature of our society and the neglect of social (the poor) and indigenous minorities (Muslims and lumads).
Yes. A Constitution should, in its Constitutional DNA, always consider the Cultural DNA on top of which it rests. The BIOS on top of which you have the operating system.
******************************** # .include filipinoculture.exe -impunity -corruption
5.9. Article 3. Another positive. This defines the main goal of government which is social justice and the guarantee of equal opportunity. Equality, in terms of justice, is about equal outcomes. But equality, in terms of economics, is not about equal outcomes but more of equal opportunities. However, social justice attempts to re-balance the disparity in outcomes.
Correct. It also considers the Cultural DNA of favoritism among Filipinos and is an antidote.
********************************
5.10. Article 4. The first part of the first sentence, like Article 1, is more of an ethical rule and can hardly be implemented in law. The second part of the first sentence is the goal of education. I wish the second sentence could be realized, but it will take a strong leader to rid the country of religious sectarianism. PNoy was partly successful with the passage of the RH Law.
Atatürk put in Laicism because of his French influences. France was succesful after the Revolution because it reduced the power of the Catholic Church. And therefore became the most succesful and progressive among the Latin Countries. Atatürk saw the same problem in his country – Islamic tradition – and made laicism a strong precept of his state. Erdogan is trying to undermine it, but the Institutional DNA of the Turkish Army as Protector of the State – a role they have inoculated in them see my exchange with NHerrera, could be what is keeping him from doing it. He could risk a controlled coup with new elections afterwards.
******************************** # .include Catholicism -Mitsubishops
******************************** # .include INC ++Giancarloangulo -blockvote
******************************** # .include bornagain +++Mary Grace P. Gonzales
5.11. Article 5. This article merges three of Ataturk’s arrows, which is quite an accomplishment.
Thanks. 🙂
********************************
6. What may be missing from the 5 articles is Leni’s arrow – direct participatory democracy. The advances in technology have increasingly made direct democracy a possibility. We are not quite there yet, but Robredo’s regular consultations with his constituency should be given importance and be institutionalized. (Article 6 does mention consultation with the barangay and the people.)
Since I made old Article 1 part of the Preamble, make a new Article 1:
The Free Philippines is a democratic federal state. Barangays are the immediate front-end to the people. Direct democracy and consultations with barangays shall be used whenever appropriate and as much as possible. Cantons shall be composed of a manageable number of contiguous and ethnically similar barangays. Further details shall be handled in the Federal Government Code which shall replace the Local Government Code.
The federal and cantonal stuff is my proposal. An example for a canton could be TiMaCo, composed of Tiwi, Malinao and Tabaco. Another would be Berton, composed of Malilipot, Santo Domingo and Cagraray where Bert lives. Whether cantons compose provinces or cantons go straight into regions and how the rest of the structure is, I leave for the drafters of the FGC – to replace the LGC – to decide on this. Nice thing about cantons is that they are handy – like in Switzerland. The world of my folks, reachable by jeepney easily, was TiMaCo. Bert’s world will be Berton = Bert’s Canton. Barangay captains could be a cantonal council.
******************************** #include Cordillerans ++forthrightness
******************************** #include Moros ++obstinacy –fanaticism
******************************** #include Aetas ++survival skills +magic
7. Great effort.
Many thanks Edgar. Thanks too for breaking my partly intuitive (Filipino), partly logical (German) piece of work down into its composite parts.
******************************** #include +++KarlGarcia for good impulses always
*****
* end of Edgar Lores modified code, V1.2.
SUBMIT ZALAZAR_COPYPASTE ‘reassembled Freedom Constitution’. “work to do!
* This means that I will reassamble the modifications in the next posting
******************************** Constitutional Assembler, Version 1.2.
************* Irineo Salazar, Edgar Lores, NHerrera, Wilhelm Tell, Atatürk, Robredo
********************************
END.
Did some bugfixing after copy-paste. Article 7) is the Citizenship part, JoeAm and Grace Poe are considered look for which sections. Article 9) handles all Amendments. One can keep cut-pasting the 1987 Constitution until only a vestigial legacy is left. Something like the DOS bootstrap routines which are still part of every Windows release. Put some of Joe’s ethical statements into the preamble, considering Philippine cultural DNA.
PREAMBLE. We, the people of the Islands called the Philippines, of all racial and cultural mixtures, of all religions, income groups and educational attainments, strive to make our lives better after centuries of oppressing each other. This is the Constitution by which we shall live every aspect of our lives from this point onward, and make sure each and every one of us, from now on to be called Free Filipinos, lives by from this day. We shall be honorable, humble and kind in all our dealings towards other human beings, and live by the moral precepts of whichever God or Universal Principle we adhere to, and make sure that we think about what we are doing, and be open and trusting in our discussions and processes.
Article 1:
The Free Philippines is a democratic federal state. Barangays are the immediate front-end to the people. Direct democracy and consultations with barangays shall be used whenever appropriate and as much as possible. Cantons shall be composed of a manageable number of contiguous and ethnically similar barangays. Further details shall be handled in the Federal Government Code which shall replace the Local Government Code.
****************************************
Article 2: We shall adhere to the laws we have pretended to live by from now on, and adjust these laws in order to make our society as free, humane and just as possible. We shall make sure that these laws are followed by each and every one of us as legal equals.
****************************************
Article 3: We shall work to make our country, the Free Philippines, free of hunger, fear and unrest. We shall strive to give opportunities to all willing to work for them.
****************************************
Article 4: We shall promote thinking instead of unreflected belief. Religion and conviction is each person’s private matter.
****************************************
Article 5: We shall build a state that reflects the principles of this Constitution. In the meantime, we shall support the state that we already have, and rebuild it step by step.
****************************************
Article 6: We shall uphold all articles of the 1987 Constitution. We may, however anytime change or remove Articles of this Constitution as needed. This can only be done upon recommendation of a simple majority of the Congress and the Senate, followed by a plebiscite with 2/3 majority of the Filipino people. Any change to the 1987 Constitution shall be communicated to the barangays and discussed with the people beforehand. Any such plebiscite on the Constitution shall be conducted by the COMELEC.
****************************************
Article 7:
Free Filipino Citizens are defined as:
1) all who have lived on the Islands called the Philippines for at least 10 years on the date this Constitution is promulgated and have adapted to local culture, have shown commitment to the country or other criteria.
2) all who have been Filipino citizens on the date this Constitution is promulgated.
3) all who have at least one Filipino parent, or are foundlings on Filipino soil.
4) all who have been naturalized by legal process.
3) The details of Article 7 1)-4) shall be defined by the Free Filipino Citizenship Law.
****************************************
Article 8:
1) We shall learn from mistakes instead of ignoring them or punishing them severely. People who confess their mistakes shall not be punished the first time if they rectify the results and teach others how to avoid the same kind of mistake.
2) We shall adjust all of our laws, institutions and procedures to learn from mistakes, and commit those who have learned to teach those still making mistakes.
3) We shall punish those that make exactly the same mistake twice civil or defense duty, the length of which shall be defined by law.
4) Those who make the same mistake three times, even if it is in different variations, shall be punished with civil or defense duty in outlying areas, the length of which shall be defined by law.
5) The details of what constitutes civil or defense duty as well as outlying areas shall be defined by a law.
****************************************
Article 9:
1) Details that can be regulated in a law and do not constitute general principles shall not be made part of any Constitution.
2) Changes to the 1987 Constitution shall respect Article 9 Section 1) at all times.
3) This Constitution may be extended by the will of 2/3 majority of the Free Filipino people. The first five articles are valid for all time and shall never be amended.
****************************************
May the aspirations embodied in this Constitution give us the strength to fulfill it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_will COULD be Will combining Heneral Luna with Aldub Love. But it is THE basic tenet of democracy according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The law is the expression of the general will. All citizens have the right to contribute personally, or through their representatives, to its formation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, positions, and employments, according to their capacities, and without any other distinction than that of their virtues and their talents.
The general will of the Filipino people is what is lacking because of post-colonialism. This general will must still be found by discussion: top-down and bottom-up, merging into the Free Filipino Will (Villanueva et. al.). Let us discuss our version of the General Will! 🙂
Hahahaha, General Will of the Philippines. Coffee out the nose on that one, the two meanings forever bound in one statement.
Thank you for 7.1. I hope there is minimal paperwork to accomplish said recognition.
I originally didn’t understand the barangay structure, but I think it is a peculiar strength for communication and action (storms, defense, disease), if incorporated as a professionally managed unit.
I like the determination set forth in Sectionn 8. Getting there from today’s totally undisciplined style will take a large police force and probably an administrative kind of judicial system that keeps routine violation outside the courts.
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I woke up this morning with a term in mind — proto-constitution.
This Freedom Constitution may be considered to be a proto-constitution.
Here’s a quote from “Mapping Constitutional Success: A New Study on Process”:
“Honoring deadlines and time commitments (the hope of the CDA) was the second most likely indicator of success, rendering the codified writing process a kind of proto-constitution: how the drafters reverence this process acted as a kind of prelude to how citizens might reverence the permanent constitution.”
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