By Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines–Diosdado Macapagal spent his vice presidency campaigning non-stop, because President Carlos P. Garcia wouldn’t give him a job. Back then, the basic unit of our government was the barrio, and Macapagal never hesitated to boast that he had visited nearly every barrio to shake hands with nearly every voter. To be sure, obsessive attention to voters, in retail and wholesale terms, is the mark of any successful politician. But Macapagal’s personal touch proved incapable of overcoming the challenge mounted by Ferdinand E. Marcos, who believed above all else in the ability of political machinery to overcome all odds.

Marcos renamed the barrio the “barangay,” and this latter-day rajah ensured that the barrio captain of old would become the barangay chairman of today, the petty “datu” on whom money is periodically showered by Malacañang. Marcos distrusted the traditional party machines and wanted to build personal ties between his supreme chieftainship, and the village chiefs he created and made dependent on his good graces.

It is no coincidence, then, that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo governs with a combination of her father’s retail obsession and Marcos’ wholesale penchant for bribing all opposition into submission. She roams the country with her father’s zeal and holds cash buffets in Malacañang in a truly Marcosian manner. At the apex of the patronage pyramid, she knows as well as her legionaries in the House of Representatives do, that the bedrock of their shared political machinery are barangay officials.

[Read the rest of this entry »]