By Joy Aceron

The Political Science Department POS 100 Plenaries 2008-2009

ELECTIONS may be insufficient, but they are a necessary and essential element of democracy. By allowing certain government posts to be filled through the choices made by the electorate, elections function as a mechanism for determining the legitimacy of the political leadership, while at the same time guaranteeing the representational requirements of a modern democratic state. It is because of these characteristics that elections create opportunities, as minimum as they maybe, for altering the status quo and serve as a vehicle for political change.

Philippine elections, however, are largely a disappointment.

The electoral process is often described as a space for ordinary citizens to select their leaders. Yet, Filipino voters always end up choosing those whom they perceive as the “least evil,” or worse, those who are simply “winnable.”

It is also supposedly a time wherein prospective leaders would engage the citizenry on issues that matter to them. Yet, presidentiables hardly attend any fora for debates and discussions, unless they are the only center of attention and there are at least a thousand participants.

Ideally, elections are meant to allow us to envision a common future and to craft the strategies to carry this out, armed of course with lessons from the past. This, however, hardly happens, since most candidates spend a large portion of their time thinking of the image that they will project to the public.

Most importantly, elections are supposed to be empowering; yet, it is often seen as a tool for patronage. It is a means to secure particularistic ends and hardly to discover, protect and advance the common good.

The list can go on, but the bottom-line is: we are miserably missing the point of elections.

With the sorry state of Philippine elections, much re-imagining is necessary. There is a need for re-imagination not only because we want to remember the ideal by understanding the current state, but also because we want to go beyond the limits and bounds of practicalities, to think out of the box and reclaim the power not only to make a difference but to be the difference. We want to re-imagine elections because we want not only to reclaim its real purpose, but to redefine its meaning given our own identity and destiny as a people. We want to re-imagine elections because we want to strengthen our democratic institutions “in order to extend democratic principles to more and more social relations.”

As a contribution to this process of re-imagination, the Ateneo Political Science Department is hosting a series of POS 100 Plenaries on Re-Imagining Philippine Elections. This school year, there will be six plenaries which will discuss the building blocks of a re-imagined Philippine elections and democracy.

It is our way of awakening the student’s capacity to dream and re-imagine democracy. For awareness is the first step to knowledge, knowledge enables imagination, and imagination inspires action.

The series of POS Plenaries this school year shall delve on the following topics:

1. Political Leadership — This discussion aims to re-imagine the kind of leaders that the country will have after the 2010 elections. This endeavor, moreover, is a seen as a contribution to the task of creating a new batch of leaders who are committed to new politics and are active proponents of citizens’ participation and good governance.

2. Electoral Administration — Given the sordid perception on our electoral overseers, the topic aims to initiate a process of rethinking whose ultimate aim is the creation of a fair and independent elections commission, capable of withstanding undue pressure and influence from the political elites.

3. Political Parties — The country’s political parties have been described as “temporary and unstable coalitions of upper class fractions pieced together for elections and post-election battles for patronage.” With this in mind, the challenge therefore is to re-imagine our Philippine parties as repositories of the country’s reform agenda and as vehicles for social transformation.

4. Citizenship — Since elections play an important role in the political life of most Filipinos, a number of watchdog organizations have emerged, especially after the 1986 such as NAMFREL, PPCRV V-Force and Halalang Marangal. Seen as a citizens’ movement for fair, transparent and peaceful elections, they also perceive themselves as a reformers wanting to change how elections are conducted in the Philippines. But a re-imagined concept of citizenship does not only entail monitoring and non-partisanship but of actively engaging the elections, not as watchdogs, but as partisan political actors cooperating and converging to challenge the status quo and contest state power.

5. Campaigning — While campaigners and image-handlers have mastered the art of selling candidates, we have yet to transform their craft into a science promoting much-needed political reforms. This discussion intends to re-imagine electoral campaigning, not only as a means of sending a message, but of altering the exercise of power.

6. Vision for the Philippine State — the Philippine state has been described in many ways, none of which are actually flattering. “Weak state,” “cacique democracy,” “patrimonial-oligarchic state” and a host of other epithets all point out to the same phenomenon — elite capture of the state’s resources and institutions. What does a re-imagined Philippine state mean? How can we achieve stable and sturdy institutions that can discipline the country’s elites and ensure the fair implementation of rules and laws?

Joy Aceron is a faculty member of the Ateneo de Manila Department of Political Science and coordinator of the Ateneo School of Government’s Political Democracy Program. She is a graduate of the University of the Philippines, holding a Master’s Degree in Public Administration and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science.