Revisiting our political party system

THE

advent of the campaign season for the mid-term elections provides a timely opportunity to assess our political parties 32 years after the 1987 Constitution introduced a multiparty or open-party system in our body politic.

There are many who view the multi-party system as a failure. Instead of institutionalizing parties united by shared principles and beliefs, we have parties of convenience created around personalities. Instead of promoting party discipline and loyalty, we have politicians who change political parties every six years, shifting their loyalties to the party of the newly elected president. We have a plethora of political parties but a dearth of serious political thought. Instead of mature parties, we have what some observers openly deride as political cults. We have hundreds of party-list organizations recognized by the Commission on Elections, but barely a handful can be considered as truly representing the basic sectors or grounded on concrete advocacies. The rest are vehicles to provide backdoor entries for termed-out politicians or their relatives, or both.

Interestingly, such a radical overhaul of our political system – from a two-party to a multi-party one – is coached in tersely written language. As provided for in Article IX-C, Section 6, of the Constitution: “A free and open party system shall be allowed to evolve according to the free choice of the people, subject to the provisions of this Article.”

According to Fr. Joaquin Bernas, a member of the 1987 Constitutional Commission, the 1935 Constitution and election laws until 1971 were seen as giving preferred position to the two major political parties. “The clear impression, which had emerged from the constitutional scheme prior to the 1987 Constitution was that the electoral system planned and plotted to insure the perpetuation of the party in power,” he noted. The introduction of the open-party system was intended to address this political hegemony. On the other hand, the party-list system, also introduced in the 1987 Constitution, “is meant to be an instrument for fostering the multi-party system,” he adds.

But aside from this provision, nothing else in the Constitution addresses concerns of and for the political parties, including mechanisms to govern their operations.

But why did the framers of our Charter introduce a multi-party system? Because the original intent was to transform our legislature into a unicameral one, where multiple parties are widely seen as the perfect fit. The story is that upon a revote among the commission members, the proposal for a parliamentary form of government lost by one vote. Other political provisions such as the one providing for the multi-party system were not amended in the rush to beat a self-imposed deadline. As a result, we have this curious situation of a multi-party system in a bicameral setting under a presidential form of government.

Bills intended to “strengthen” political parties and “reform” the party system have been introduced several times in the past. What stands out in these proposed legislations are provisions to ensure party discipline and loyalty, including penalties for political turncoatism. This was a response to the massive defections that follow every presidential election.

The short-lived Consultative Committee on revising the Constitution chaired by former Chief Justice Reynato Puno also included provisions intended to reform the party system. Among the reforms is an explicit prohibition against switching political parties within a period of two years before and two years after an election.

The unkindest description of political parties is that they are parties of the elite. The street term for politicians, “trapo” (a contraction of the words traditional politician), has become part of the popular culture and has been used to generalize all elected officials.

Yet during martial law and the monolithic party onslaught, the socalled traditional parties formed the early ranks of opposition to the regime. Names associated with the political elite became vanguards and fighters for democracy: Diokno, Tanada, Aquino, to name a few. While workers and students re-grouped and re-organized, the political parties were already engaging the dictatorship in electoral struggles despite the clear odds.

These parties faced off against a regime that ignored the rule of law and the Constitution, misused the powers of government, and resorted to naked force in order to maintain its grip on power.

The 1986 EDSA Revolution, while it unseated a deeply-resented dictatorship, did not result in the blossoming of political parties anchored on programs and ideology.

The traditional parties came back to life, attracting to their ranks traditional politicians who were nowhere during the struggle. The multi-party system introduced in the 1987 Constitution blew the gates open for the proliferation of parties of convenience. Which leads us to where we are today: multiple parties with the barest of vision or ideological grounding, all connected to whoever is the incumbent national leadership. Such multi-party coalitions, including party-list groups, behave in the same manner as a monolith. The only difference is that the political hegemony hides behind different political acronyms.

A refocusing of the role of political parties therefore is long overdue. Strong political parties and party-list organizations grounded on vision and platforms are necessary if we are to advance to a more mature practice of politics.