DeMOCKracy: Off the people, fool the people and buy the people

Duterte’s way of power is one that is abusive of democracy, and is clearly one that makes a complete mockery of its principles. His unorthodox leadership taints what we know best of democracy and turns it into well-coiled weaponry for the administration. He liberates and orders death as if he wields the hands of God himself and has even come to the point where civilians are imbued the freedom to kill suspected drug users, all the while brushing extrajudicial killings under th e rug. Roughly 20,000 have already been put down in his unending drug war. Some 19 mayors and vice mayors have also tied themselves to such fate for being in his “narcolist.” Despite such, he speaks with no restraint, but with the ability to wash his tainted name like laundry, with Harry Roque and Salvador Panelo as his laundrymen.

It is indeed true that no country has practiced absolute democracy, but the Philippines had devised its own armed and weaponized democracy. Soon enough, we shall see democracy with a bullet to the head, and Lady Justice, with a placard covering her lifeless body and her scales held by someone else.

We are no longer the ones who emanate the power, but rather we become the fools who lend it to those who seek dominance in the political arena. It is as if we are stripping ourselves of our own stance in society, leaving ourselves powerless in the hands of those who step in power. Modern-day democracy is no longer a system for the people. It is a manipulation game of fools who know better and fools who know less.

The reason why margins of poverty never decrease between the rich and the poor is lengthened by our constant patronization of politicians, who swear oath to the privilege and not to the people. 22 million Filipinos remain under the poverty line and yet their voting logic remains

- litical stepping stones by candidates into power. It is impossible to solve poverty in a nation whose poor take their lead from the pursuits of the affluent: putting the wealthy into greater power and themselves at end of the numbing needle.

“The Philippines is a democratic and republican State. Sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them.” Our

to the question of what he made of our nation and the democracy that supposedly resided within it.

As Plato once said in TheRepublic: “And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?”

There is a fine line between understanding the true principles of democracy and indulging in the quaint luxuries of freedom. And by each passing day, with our constant refusal for political involvement and participation, our silence has led to democracy in the Philippines being a mere form of freedom where we are liberated to do as we please. Yet the power we have the right to wield is beyond our reach. bystudentsoftheSchoolofSaint Anthony.