Politics has remained feudal under the façade of electoral democracy
A group of lawyers led by Rico Domingo petitioned the Supreme Court to compel Congress to perform its duty under Article II, Section 26 of the 1987 Constitution which provides “the State shall guarantee equal access to opportunities for public service, and prohibit political dynasties as may be defined by law.”
Interesting.
After 37 years since its ratification by the people, our elected legislators have not only failed to comply with the Constitutional mandate, but feathered their nests till kingdom come through entrenched political dynasties.
After Semana Santa, we will in this space identify most of these dynasties that rule not only in the countryside, but even our urban warrens.
Politics has remained feudal under the façade of electoral democracy.
The ilustrados took over the Katipunan and prevailed, whether in Malolos or Kawit, and when the Americans hijacked the Revolution and made our islands its imperial colony, the Commonwealth government that it grudgingly allowed was a composite of the landed elite, the mestizoisie and the wealthy.
Yet it allowed brilliant “famulos” like a Manuel Luis Quezon of the remote northern Tayabas now named after him, and specifically Aurora named after his First Lady, Aurora Aragon, to be its president.
What we had then was a dominant Nacionalista Party led by Quezon, with a minimized opposition of Federalistas under Juan Sumulong, the maternal grandfather of Cory Aquino of the landed Cojuangcos of Tarlac.
The Pacific War ushered in a “puppet” government, the Second Republic led by Quezon’s surrogates to whom he entrusted the reins of leadership and minimize civilian casualties in the American-Japanese war: Laurel, Vargas, Recto and Aquino, among others.
After the wartime interlude, the Third Republic was born, after a rib of the Grand Old Party of Quezon and Cebu’s Osmena was taken by Roxas, Quirino and Avelino triumvirate into what became the Liberal Party.
Philippine politics from 1946 till 1972 was basically a continuing battle between the Nacionalistas and the Liberals, who, despite similitude in platforms and lack of defining ideology, managed nonetheless, through party conventions local and national, to winnow chaff from grain in the choice of candidates for public office.
And although the landed elite still prevailed, whether the tobacco monopolists in the far North, or the hacienderos in the rest of Luzon, the sugar barons of the Visayas and the logging concessionaires in Mindanao along with Moro royalty, we had functioning governments under a semi-feudal set-up of “educados,” the entitled political elite who were mostly “abogados.”
Sure, political control were like baronies: Marcos, Crisologo, Singson, Osias, Paredes, Primicias, Perez in the North. The Montanosa, now CAR, was a single province (since enlarged by Marcos I) called the Mountain Province, with Ramon Mitra Sr. its princeling.
In the rest of Luzon, with rice and sugar its main crops as distinguished from tobacco in the North, we had the ilustrados of revolutionary heredity: Cojuangco, Aquino, Tinio and Joson of revolutionary heredity: Buencamino, De Leon, Bautista, Yulo, de Gala, Almeda-Fule, Laurel, Recto, Apacible and Leviste.
In Bicolandia, the Imperial, Alsua, Nuyda, Duran and Espinosa clans dominated, while the undivided Samar was ruled by the Senate President, Jose Avelino of Bulakeno origins.
Neighboring Waray Leyte was a Romualdez fiefdom, with the Cebuano-speaking larger part the domain of the Velosos, Larrazabals and Yniguezes.
Cebu was divided into several fiefdoms, ruled by the Noel, Briones, Durano, Zosa clans allied with either Nacionalista Pres. Osmena or Liberal Senate Pres. Manuel Cuenco, while in Bohol, which considered itself a “republic,” the descendants of Dagohoy and the Chinoy negociantes chose a dark-skinned schoolteacher, Carlos P. Garcia, later president, as their leader.
The Ilonggo-speaking had the Aldeguers and Zuluetas, and of course the wealthy Lopezes, with the Lacsons, Locsins, Hilados under the tutelage of the landed Aranetas.
In Mindanao, with its undivided provinces, we had the mestizo Pelaez in Misamis, Sanchez and Calo in Agusan, Verano in Surigao, Veloso in Davao, the Pendatuns and Sinsuats in Cotabato, the Lucmans and Alontos in Lanao, the Rasuls and Amilbangsas in Sulu.
Only in what is now Metro-Manila, its undisputed center being Manila with the rest being Rizal province were descendants of the middle-class elected: Arsenio Lacson, Atienza, Tolentino and the Manila Times’ Roces; zacatero Rodriguez who rose to the Senate presidency under Magsaysay and Garcia, and the Liberals Salonga of Pasig, Cuneta of Pasay.
But the incessant rivalry of the two parties, Nacionalista and Liberal, groomed qualified but poor and middle-class leaders who rose by dint of hard work and scholarly pursuits to rise.
Thus the poor boy from Lubao in Hukbalahap-torn Pampanga, Diosdado Pangan Macapagal became congressman, vice-president and later president after a public school teacher from Bohol, Carlos Polistico Garcia, and a mechanic of upper middle-class origin Ramon Del Fierro Magsaysay of Zambales who married into the wealthy Banzons of Bataan, and even Ferdinand Edralin Marcos of hard-working mestizo-Chinese origins from Ilocos Norte, rose to the top.
Many of the provincial dynasties died with their progenitors, until they were given re-birth, in the most hideous form, by what we now have — a rent economy with a feudal, dynastic political leadership.
We await how the Supreme Court will act upon the Domingo, et al. petition for a mandamus upon our dynastic legislators, with little hope that Congress will comply, in letter and spirit.