Political will and abuse of power
Candid Thoughts by Bong O. Wenceslao
Friday, July 8, 2011
ONE of my recollections of my growing up years involves excesses committed by persons in authority. A drunk barangay tanod mauls a civilian and gets away with it. A president orders the arrests of thousands of people even as he padlocks Congress and emasculates the courts.
In most instances, the perpetrators deem themselves righteous. The barangay tanod does it in the guise of keeping the peace. The president does it supposedly to quell anarchy and build a new order. In the end, the barangay tanod becomes a murderer and the president becomes a dictator, destroying the fabric of Philippine society and emptying public coffers.
That’s why I can never find myself praising Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte for mauling a court sheriff no matter what her motivation was or what infraction the victim committed. If one condemns a government official for stomping on barbecued meat sold by a vendor who obstructed the sidewalk, why not chide Duterte, too, for mauling a sheriff?
But public opinion is fickle and it seems like it is swinging back to the right. Almost four decades after then president Ferdinand Marcos declared military rule and brought the country to the dark ages, the memories of the abuses of those in power have receded.
Four decades means that the “martial law babies†and the youths who fought the dictatorship have gotten older. Four decades means that generations that never experienced what it is like to see somebody seized and tortured are now the dominant force. (Incidentally, Amnesty International listed torture, including making a pregnant woman sit on a block of ice, as among other methods of extracting information.)
As memories of the atrocities receded from public consciousness, the “excesses†of democracy have become the focus. Corruption in the bureaucracy was no longer an act of a single faction of the ruling class. Many officials from top to bottom are into it.
Criminality is widespread, the failure to curb it partly an offshoot of the pervading culture of corruption.
The situation led former Singapore strongman Lee Kuan Yew to quip that too much democracy is bad for the Philippines. That prompted a comparison between the Philippines and the city-state Lee shaped to become an Asian economic power. Then president Fidel V. Ramos defended well our democratic tradition but the Lee Kuan Yew line is being embraced by a growing number of people.
As a result, officials who fight corruption and criminality using strong-arm tactics easily get noticed and even praised. Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago made a political career out of insulting officials she perceives as corrupt. The popularity of Davao City’s Rodrigo Duterte, Sara’s father, grew in proportion to the number of people executed by that city’s “death squads.â€
A very fine line separates “political will†from abuse of power, but that distinction is often lost on people critical of the “anarchy†that seems to characterize our practice of democracy. Sara Duterte putting herself in the middle of the police and informal settlers to stop a riot, that was political will. Her asking a court sheriff to approach her and then pummeling him, that was abuse of power. It’s good if people will be able to spot the difference. (
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Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on July 09, 2011.
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