Viewpoint: Resurgent hope

By Juan Mercado
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 03:40:00 10/20/2009

Filed Under: Inquirer Politics, Eleksyon 2010, Benigno Aquino III, Governance


CAGAYAN DE ORO—The “euphoria” didn’t go pfffft, as Secretaries Eduardo Ermita and Ronald Puno cockily assumed. Instead, Sen. Benigno Aquino III further widened an already commanding lead in his unplanned campaign for the presidency, Social Weather Stations’ latest survey reveals.

Other presidential hopefuls also thought Aquino’s lead stemmed from a “bubble” resulting from the outpouring of people’s grief and affection after former President Corazon Aquino’s death. But the second SWS survey reveals that Aquino’s rating is “hard stuff,” Amando Doronila noted.

It is also nationwide. Why? Because this clout is not just about “yellow ribbons,” says social anthropologist Melba Padilla Maggay. Here is a “resurgence of hope,” asserts the Institute for Studies in Asian Church and Culture chair. An abridged version of Maggay’s new paper, “A Politics for Persons” follows:

I felt that the signature campaign for Noynoy Aquino was a throwback to (trapo) diseases like personalism. But seeing the announcement of Noynoy’s candidacy on TV, I was unaccountably moved to tears.

It (wasn’t) resurfacing of memories from Edsa’s barricades. Rather, it was the sense that, once again, high and low are closing ranks in the face of this nation’s degradation to lowest levels of moral and institutional (decay), under the Arroyo regime. There is in our citizenry a deep wellspring of decency, honor and love of country that may yet bring us to a new phase in our quest for a governance that truly serves the people.

One reason is the growing language of “sacrifice.” [The second] is the almost quixotic persistence of hope.

Sen. Mar Roxas led and withdrew in favor of Aquino. Pampanga Gov. Ed Panlilio, then Sen. Francis Pangilinan followed. [These] promise not only a resurrection of party discipline, but the rise of a new breed of politicians able to set aside personal ambition.

The elite hijacked “People Power.” But its origins are an authentic expression of what our people are. Warmly emotional, we are moved, not so much by ideology or platforms, but by people, particularly by those who evoke solidarity and a shared sense of injustice.

Shared identity surfaces when we feel a collective injury, whether it be for Flor Contemplacion or Ninoy Aquino. The massive outpouring of grief on Cory’s passing (expressed) hopes for a forlorn democracy she helped establish and symbolized.

“Cory Magic” is what sociologists call a “habitus” of a people’s longings for decent government. She was foil to a corrupt regime. In showing up for her funeral, the people made a statement on what this current administration is not.

* * *

Almost a decade ago, Maggay wrote, “[Ferdinand] Marcos tested the limits of political oppression and our capacity to endure. Estrada tests the limits of moral corruption and our capacity to get roused to indignation.”

The economic fallout from the rot “illustrates the time-honored truth that no society can survive without a minimum of moral sense.”

In 2005, Maggay noted the people’s refusal to heed “murky plots” of the ruling elite. In her paper “Ambiguities and the Search for a Moral Center in Governance,” she asserted: “Our leaders have alienated themselves from the people by their utter lack of integrity.”

President Arroyo went on to squander the gift of the presidency by serial abuses. Maggay saw that betrayal in Ms Arroyo’s hurried pardon of Joseph Estrada from a plunder conviction: “Cheap grace,” she wrote. The German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer crafted that phrase shortly before his execution by the Gestapo.

“The President’s free-and-easy pardon ... is cheap grace. [It] signals that the powerful can commit a heinous crime and run free because they threaten mayhem on those who uneasily sit in power unsure of legitimacy… Without justice, compassion becomes capitulation and sinks this nation ever deeper into moral rot.”

“Filipinos locate their hopes in a person they trust,” Maggay adds. “We have structures in place, from checks and balances to prohibition of political dynasties. [But] without values, structures merely advance interests of those in power.”

We are witnessing today, not the politics of personalism but the power of the personal. People are not drawn to Noynoy because of personal charisma. He is not experienced or even visually appealing.

But he has a legacy that people trust. “Kahit paano, ’yang mga Aquino, di ’yan nagnanakaw,” as a vendor puts it.

The man has simplicity, not the usual gravitas that catapults leaders to power. For this reason, he may yet connect with those whose major concern is not pizzazz but that the country will not be robbed blind again.

Social trust is an intangible that oils the machinery of governance. Davos businessmen do not invest in a country where unofficial saliva substitutes for straightforward contracts. Societies fail when the trust is so low that people cannot take their leaders’ word seriously.

Thus, sociologists talk of “plausibility structures” for governance. Impersonal rationalities of governance make it implausible for people to put a premium on the personal. That is governance in the West.

“But it is not necessarily superior, or even what we need,” Maggay says. “Our systems dysfunction precisely because there is no culture-fit with how things actually work around here.

“The instincts of our people are right: power lends itself to most constructive use when it is in the hands of those who are most disinterested in its use. There is nothing wrong with our culture or with the expectations of our people. What is wrong is that our leaders continually betray them and their hopes.”

(E-mail: juanlmercado@gmail.com)



Source: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091020-231081/Resurgent-hope