Last week I talked about the federal idea as an alternative system of government in lieu of our current unitary republic. Today we’ll look at the parliamentary form of government in lieu of the current (strong) presidential set-up.
From a helpful history of parliamentarism published in the Inquirer last Sunday, we learn that this form of government was attempted twice in our country: from 1935-1941, when “a strong presidency and bicameralism [House and Senate] were abandoned for unicameralism”; and from 1973-1987, during the Batasang Pambansa under President Marcos.
Obviously the Marcos-era Batasang Pambansa isn’t our model of choice. But it certainly bears out the flexibility of the parliamentary form, which can—and perhaps must—be integral to the proposed opposite of dictatorship: a highly decentralized, federal system.
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What distinguishes the parliamentary form is that both executive and legislative powers are lodged in the legislative body, which is (generally) unicameral. In the Philippine context it’s a concession to reality, where the much-vaunted separation of powers is mocked after every presidential election when all the congressmen and senators switch their loyalties to the new president’s party, no matter how small that party used to be.
Lifting from the Inquirer this quotation from Apolinario Mabini:
“[Authority] needs an intellect to guide and direct it: the legislative power. It also needs a will that is active and will make it work: the Executive. It needs, too, a conscience that judges and punishes those who are bad: the judicial power…
“These powers should be independent of one another, in the sense that one should not encroach on the functions of the other. But the last two should be subordinated to the first, in the same manner that both will and conscience are subordinate to the intellect.”
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Now I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that the country’s best intellects are to be found among the congressmen. What Mabini’s saying, with all his profound democratic instincts, is that the guidance and direction of our affairs ought to come from the many legislators who represent our people in all their quarrelsome diversity, rather than a single president elected by all whose job is really to reconcile and translate that diversity into action.
Put differently, the parliamentary form brings us closer to subsidiarity: the principle of bringing down the level of decision-making as close as possible to the constituencies affected. It’s a principle that’s invoked in the federal system, which would transfer the majority of governmental powers and resources one step down to the state level.
It is also invoked under a parliamentary form, where the prime minister as head of government—together with the rest of his cabinet wielding Executive authority—are drawn from, and selected by, the legislators whose first loyalties are to their respective grassroots electorates.
No more passing the buck or finger-pointing between Congress and the Palace. You make the laws, you enforce them too, you take the blame if they fail. That ought to bring back some overdue honesty into government.
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The other reason why the parliamentary form ought to accompany the federal system, is that this seems to be the only institutional setting under which we can put teeth into our political parties. In turn, it is only strong political parties that have a chance of breaking the feudal stranglehold of dynasties on our politics.
As an institutional proposition, strengthening the party system is actually quite straightforward. There are several mechanisms available: campaign finance reform, grassroots political education and activism, requirements for majority/minority party distribution and proportionate [party-list] representation, encouragement of coalition-building, provisions for recall and by-elections.
There is no shortage of lessons in other countries to learn from. But what many of us here fear is the possible shortage of political will among our countrymen, beaten down by centuries of dependence on patronage, to reclaim their democratic franchise.
The shift to federalism will make many issues local that are now national. Most public services, as well as the bulk of the budget, will reside at the state and sub-state levels. This gives voters the power to much more closely measure the performance of their leaders, who ought to be drawn from their communities, who should campaign on locally relevant platforms, and who may be recalled as soon as whenever they fail to deliver.
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Political parties can provide the mechanism to institutionalize this new-found voter power. But will this guarantee that voters will in fact respond positively to the opportunity?
Of course not. As the old adage from the American West puts it: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t force it to drink. A lot more work would have to be done, especially in terms of winning hearts and minds. But for starters, putting that water in front of the horse is no small achievement.
Over the long run, my own view is that the only way to unlearn the habits of patronage is to get rid of patronage itself. And that can only happen as and when more and more people are empowered by rising prosperity to think for themselves.
But that’s another story for a future column.
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