Poppa Guv

The main cause of all our societal angst is the clash between idealism and cold, hard reality. If you read our constitution and the laws on the books, you'll find that it's all very Utopian in its outlook. I believe that the Philippines is a frustrated socialist country that dreams it could be like one of those fancy European welfare states. 

Every country gets the government it deserves. It's a bit too easy to blame the government for all our ills but we are a democracy, are we not? It's not like these politicians came down from a U.F.O. and into office. A missing piece of the jumbled puzzle that is our popular discourse is the role of the citizenry and its relationship to the government.

It all begins with the relationship. To cite as an example, and I'm not sure if this still applies today, the Americans have a view towards government that is different from ours. To the American, rights are God-given or, if you're not a believer, rights are "natural". The rights of a human being are inherent. Therefore, the role of the government is to safeguard those rights. The rights of a person do not depend on the grace of some governing body. As you would expect, this leads to a "people first" view on government. The government serves the people and is ultimately beholden to them. Hence, the stereotype of the gun-toting cowboy/redneck yelling about freedom and giving "the man" the middle finger.

How does the Filipino view the government? Whether through a quirk of history (colonialism), or whether through some kind of innate tendency, the Filipino sees the government as something above him. Government is separate from him. Though the Spaniards are gone, we still act as if our rulers have crowns. It's a very strange thing, it's almost monarchical or feudal the way this country operates. We view our leaders as either good kings or bad kings and the country prospers or suffers accordingly. We are democratic but we clearly believe in a very vertical hierarchy. We believe nothing can get done without the say so from on high. We have a "government first" view.

The attitude of the citizenry toward the government is like a child toward a parent. People, especially the poor, see the government as provider, i.e. "loving mother" or protector, i.e. "stern father". This is why I foresee the trajectory of Philippine society as inevitably ending in authoritarianism. Filipinos want to be taken care of. Personal freedom is not so highly prized and Filipinos tend to hesitate in acting independently. This is why socialism (we'll provide all) and authoritarianism (we kill the baddies) are very appealing. It's due to our doormat nature.

I hope I'm wrong but perhaps this theory will help explain why we ended up with someone like Duterte. Duterte is stern father. He's there to make the bad people go away so we can all have good beddy-byes at night. He'll solve all our problems. See? All we needed was the right leader, a good king. It seems that given enough time, voters will get it right.