Party line

THE primacy of party platform over the cult of personality is one warranty of the parliamentary system. As practiced everywhere else. Thus Israel’s Likud and Labor, Great Britain’s Tories and Labour too, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, Germany’s Christian Democrats, and for sometime, even Italy’s Communist Party.
The state of high development of the named countries makes the greatest argument for the parliamentary system. Conversely, the state of undevelopment of this country makes an irrefutable damnation of the personality-centered presidential system.
So we go parliamentary. So we irreversibly go full blast in economic development. So Chacha, hallelujah! Let’s party!
Something in the Filipino psyche had to be lobotomized though, for party politics to even set root hereabouts.
The master of politics himself, Ferdinand Edralin Marcos, knew this by heart. Thus his immortal take on Philippine politics as “personalist, populist and individualist” upon which he founded his fuehrership, and, with his beloved Imeldific, propagated their Malakas at Maganda apotheosis.
All Filipino politicians come from the Marcosian mold of “personal, popular, individual.” All pretensions to party advocacy are, well, pretensions.
So Quezon ranted: “My loyalty to my party ends where my loyalty to my country begins.” God bless him.
Party loyalty is a contradiction in terms; loyalty to the country is as true as Judas’ devotion to Christ. Where politicos are concerned.
The pre-eminence of the individual politician over his party is inherent in Philippine political story. Thus, Nacionalista Party-Roy Wing, Liberal Party-Kalaw Wing, Liberal Party-Salonga Wing in the not too distant past.
Thus, a Liberal Party sundered by anti-GMA and pro-GMA flanks winging to Atienza-Defensor on the right, Drilon-Pangilinan, et al on the left. Poor Jovy Salonga, tottering at the fulcrum.
On another plane, witness how political parties hereabouts are hitched on the tides of fortune of their founders: the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan was an invincible monolith at the height of the Marcos dictatorship, only to crumble to dust after EDSA Uno. The sainted Cory took Mitra’s Laban to the promised land, then pulled the rug from under and emerged with El Tabako’s LakTao, that’s Lakas-Tao for you, that evolved into Lakas-NUCD-UMDP. And where is Erap’s Partido ng Masang Pilipino now? Or the Reform Party of Maid Miriam?
The Philippine political experience has made a mockery of party politics. A change to the parliamentary system is bruited about as the harbinger of political maturity, and consequently, the supremacy of a party’s platform of governance as the dominant factor in the choice of national leaders.
It is not bad to dream. But, kung mangarap ka’t magising, na ikaw ay ikaw pa rin, para anupa’t ika’y patulugin? Baka ka lang bangungutin.
Charter change? Parliamentary over presidential? Yes, we need systems change. But what we need more is a change of men. And what we need most is a change in men.

(Pampanga News, May 4-10, 2006)