Decorum
December 6th, 2006 at 9:05 pm (General, National Politics)
When we were in grade school and high school, we were taught good morals and right conduct (GMRC). In college, we were taught ethics. But why is it that our “distinguished” legislators in the House of Representatives does not seem to know the meaning of the word decorum?
Two nights ago, I watched the Lower House session regarding the proposed amendments to the Constitution. Not only were most of the congressmen illogical, they were crude, rude and arrogant. Some were not even paying attention. Aprrently, they prefer to sleep, talk on the phone or chit-chat among themselves rather than pay attention to the very important matter that is being discussed.
Are these the people that the Filipinos voted to represent their rights and interests? Are these the kind of people we want to represent us? Are these the best among us? One need not be a genius to realize that our representantives are not as “dinguished” and respectable as they ought to be.
Hopefully, we become more vigilant, more aware, more discerning when we pick our next representatives on May 2007.
Related Posts:- No related posts
JDEspaldon said,
December 17, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Quoted direct from the forwarded e-mail of this renowned columnist.
Great exposition on the so-called promised “heaven” of parliamentary form of government. Please read as the contents are factual and not some figment of imaginations of traditional politicians.
“Pragmatism vs Horse Manure
By Antonio C. Abaya
Written Dec. 12, 2006
For the Standard Today,
December 14 issue
President Arroyo did the right thing in telling Speaker de Venecia and his trapos to back off from Con-Ass. Presumably the same message will be sent to the Sigaw ng Langaw to desist from doing another People’s Initiative, which it is threatening to do, even after its first edition had been junked by the Supreme Court as a “gigantic fraud,” or words to that effect.
Con-Ass is dead, and so is the People’s Initiative. If anybody still wants to amend or revise the Constitution – and that includes me - let it be through a constitutional convention or Con-Con, whose members are elected by the general public, not chosen by the trapos themselves from among their own relatives.
Or let it be by referenda, issue by issue, in future elections, as the Americans do This is the least expensive way to make changes in the Basic Law, and it allows for ample discussion by the electorate, instead of phony signature campaigns where signatories sign up without knowing what they are signing for, and see only the P100 or P200 that are being dangled before them.
There is no valid reason to rush ChaCha through subterfuge, fueled as it is only by the personal agendas of individual trapos who are so eager to cling to power or to rise to the next rung in the power ladder that they are practically defecating in their pants in their mad rush to attain it before time runs out on their personal ambitions.
Perhaps because Philippine society, unique in this part of the world, is so dominated by lawyers, all of the discussion on ChaCha has been focused on the legality and constitutionality of almost every aspect of it. There have been endless discussions and debates on so many legal and constitutional questions that this non-lawyer has lost count as well as interest in all the learned and verbose hair-splitting.
If pragmatism and practicality had been the dominant thrust in the discussions, they would have all boiled down to a few central issues. Unfortunately, even the media has been so caught up in the legal and constitutional hair-splitting, it has not bothered to ask some pragmatic and practical questions, with the exception of this space.
Such as: which country or countries on Planet Earth has/have voluntarily and with due deliberation shifted from presidential to parliamentary – or from parliamentary to presidential – in the decades since the end of World War II in 1945, and, as a direct result of this shift, has/have raised its/their per capita income/s, reduced the percentage of their people living below the poverty line, wiped out or reduced government corruption significantly, and immunized their governments against the threats of coups d’etat and revolutions?
This question is central to the discussion because the chief advocates of ChaCha – from President Arroyo to Speaker de Venecia to the Sigaw ng Langaw to the Umaasang Laging naka-Angkla sa Poder or ULAP – all fatuously claim that this will happen kuno once the Philippines abandons the presidential system and goes parliamentary. What horse manure!
Even President Arroyo has made the preposterous claim that the Philippines can become a First World country by the year 2020 if we would only go parliamentary with her. As a trained economist, she knows that the Philippines would need a GDP growth rate of at least 15% per annum for the next 14 years to reach that economic level, which, she also knows, is physically impossible. Even China and Vietnam, the two fastest growing economies in the world, have been averaging between 8 and 10% per annum for the past ten years. (See my article First World by 2020? of Nov. 01.)
But if you were to press them on this point, they would not be able to name even ONE pragmatic and practical example, for the simple reason that no one country has ever undergone such economic-social-political transformation through the mere act of shifting from presidential to parliamentary, or from parliamentary to presidential.
Since 1945, many countries have undergone involuntary shifts in forms of government, usually because of revolutions, invasions or military coups d’etat. .
In 1945-48, about a dozen countries in Central and Eastern Europe, having been overrun by the Soviet Army, were forced to shift from their pre-World War II (mostly) parliamentary systems to the communist mode. When their communist regimes collapsed in 1989, these countries merely shifted back to their old parliamentary systems, with some modifications, especially in economic policies.
Similarly, China under Mao Zedung adopted the communist system after the defeat of Chiang Kaishek’s strongman Kuomintang regime in 1949. So did Cuba under Fidel Castro in 1959, after his successful revolution against the Batista gangster regime, as did Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh and his successors after the defeat of the Americans and their South Vietnamese quislings in 1973-75.
China’s and Vietnam’s very palpable economic successes in the past 20-25 years were achieved, not because they adopted the parliamentary (or presidential) system of government, but because they re-embraced capitalism and the profit motive.
The 12 (15 less the three Baltic states) republics in the Soviet Union went their separate ways in 1991 after the collapse of Communism; most of them adopted strongman rule, not parliamentary or presidential systems in the Western sense. Russia, the most important entity in the USSR, went presidential and remains so to this day, with the apparent approval of most Russians, who have a history of strongman rule going back to the 15th century under the tsars.
Iran had a quasi-parliamentary system and an absolute monarch in place until both were overthrown by the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. Iran has been a theocracy ever since.
Pakistan adopted a Westminster-type parliament after the partition of British India in 1948. But since then, Pakistan’s government has been hijacked by the military three times, including by the present regime under Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Thailand has had a parliament since the 1930s, but it has also had 19 to 27 (depending on who’s counting) military coups d’etat since. No, Virginia, a parliament does not immunize a government against military coups d’etat.
So, to go back to the central pragmatic challenge that media and others should hurl at President Arroyo, Speaker De Venecia, the Sigaw ng Langaw, and ULAP: name one country since 1945 that doubled its GDP, drastically reduced government corruption,
raised most of its people above the poverty line, and achieved economic prosperity political stability and social mobility….by shifting from presidential to parliamentary, or from parliamentary to presidential.
The answer is Not One, Zero, Zilch. Pragmatism requires that every serious proposition, especially one that affects the lives of tens of millions of people, must be backed by empirical evidence, but the ChaCha advocates cannot present any such evidence. All they have is horse manure.
On the other hand, the empirical evidence is that countries tend to stay with the system that they started out with, unless and until it is disrupted by revolution, invasion or coup d’etat.
In the 1980s, there was a move in the Indian parliament to shift to the presidential system. That would have been a shining example of a voluntary and deliberate shift to another system of government that ends in a major plus, since India is a successful country. But that move did not prosper. And I am not aware of any other such shift anywhere else that could be a pragmatic role model for ChaCha advocates.
The empirical evidence also shows that economic prosperity, political stability and dynamic social mobility are achievable and have been achieved under different political systems.
In our part of the world, that can be said of South Korea and Taiwan (under presidential systems), Singapore and Malaysia (under parliamentary systems), and China and Vietnam (under nominally communist systems).
(In a recent TV interview with Ricky Carandang, JdV unloaded another bucket of horse manure when he claimed that China has a parliamentary system. In case JdV hasn’t heard, China has a communist system in which the (unelected) secretary-general of the ruling communist party is the most powerful political figure. Just because the sec-gen is sometimes also named president or premier does not make the system presidential or parliamentary.)
The argument that the presidential systems of Taiwan and South Korea succeeded only because their earlier governments under military generals were authoritarian, can also be said of China and Vietnam, whose governments remain authoritarian to this day, with the ruling communist parties enjoying total monopoly of power.
The same can also be said of Malaysia and Singapore, whose (parliamentary) governments also remain authoritarian to this day, with strict government control of media and the specific exclusion of communists from their political life, under pain of lengthy detention in jail without trial.
However, it must be added that authoritarianism, alone and by itself, does not bring about economic prosperity, political stability and social mobility. Myanmar (nee Burma) has been under a military dictatorship since 1962, and North Korea has been under a communist family dynasty since 1948. Yet both are much bigger failures – economically, politically, socially - than the Philippines.*****
Reactions to tony_abaya@yahoo.com. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org”
Karl Garcia said,
December 23, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Happy Holidays to you !
Karl Garcia
prince said,
January 13, 2007 at 7:51 pm
I am a student and I agree to that