Buffet republic

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. Which is why the true story of the recently concluded barangay elections is that they were about cash, political infrastructure, or, put another way, providing for the future of the President and her people. By now we are reasonably certain that the congressmen and governors plied with cash in the Palace a few weeks ago were lining up for doles they could give out, in turn, to their barangay machinery. The supposedly nonpartisan nature of barangay governance be damned. It was payback time. The President owed the congressmen, who owed the barangay officials, in turn. All would pay their debts, since after all, payment would come in the form of public funds. To repeat: The barangay elections were a partisan exercise, with partisan goals in mind. Instead of giving adequate time for the reform of the obviously flawed and highly corrupt barangay system -- including, as we pointed out, the essentially useless, except for dynasty-building, Sangguniang Kabataan (Youth Council) -- the President solidly supported the insistence of the House of Representatives to go through with the elections, despite the Senate's initial reservations. Nothing would be allowed to delay the payback. The first dividends were immediately encashed by the President when she showed that more congressmen supported her than her erstwhile ally, Speaker Jose de Venecia. Then we saw it in the way governors tried to gang up on Pampanga province's Gov. Ed Panlilio, who exposed the cash distribution in the Palace. We will see in the coming months, the additional dividends the President expects to earn from her cash buffets, whether in terms of blocking a new impeachment effort or in simulating grassroots support for Charter change. Everything -- the lavish spending on posters, marching bands, motorcades, the violence and intimidation, the bribing of voters -- that has characterized the barangay polls is as nothing compared to what they represent. They are part of a continuing and increasingly brazen process of governing, not in the exercise of the will of the people, but according to the Golden Rule that whoever has the gold, makes the rules. With a new generation of young dynasts in the Sangguniang Kabataan, with their fathers, mothers, uncles and in-laws in more senior barangay positions, with the congressmen having paid off their local leaders' debts and by so doing, incurring new debts of gratitude and themselves grateful, in turn, to the President, everything is in place. Ritual calls for barangay reform will be made, and even if they have become an exercise in futility, we support those calls. However, we should all be aware that the entire political class benefited from this exercise, and this is what sets apart their interests from the broader public.