Frenchmen and Filipinos

There are striking similarities but also differences between the two peoples. I try to elaborate based on a televised discussion round titled ‘Gilets Jaunes’ summoned by TV France 2 and broadcast by all four other television stations including TV 5 Monde (World). It lasted 2 hours and 13 minutes, consequently that evening of Dec. 2 the entire population was informed on the “revolt des Yellow Vests.”

I was impressed by the vivacity when the confronting opinions clashed, the competence, zeal and passion, but also the mutual respect and discipline with which the participants expounded their views. No arrogance, no indoctrination, only fairness!

The problems are quite similar: High tax on gasoline and consumer products, loss of buying power, poor public services and reduction or exemption of taxes on the big fortunes that necessitate a rise of the taxes of the hard working common people. But most irritating is the misrepresentation in parliament.

One advantage of the Philippines over France is transportation. A family in the faraway places can ride habalhabals and trisikads to the highway where buses frequently pass. In France each family must have their own car to reach the city where all the service rendering institutions have shifted over the past years. Schools, hospitals, markets, administrations are no more in the countryside.

French President Emmanuel Macron believed to appease the spirits by adding 100 Euro to the SMIG, but the population took it with scorn. The yellow vests got even more infuriated, increased their claims and vowed to continue their struggle.

One yellow vest invalidated all the justification attempts of the government representative by saying: The President has cheated us during the campaign promising to make a policy for the common people, but now he makes only the rich richer and the poor poorer. And he brought it to the point: The President must change or we change the President.

And the parliament: They claim that 45 percent of the French people voted in the first round for leftists and rightists. But due to a majority-creating voting system, almost half of the population are represented in the Assemblee Nationale by a measly 25 deputies.

In fact in order to free the way to new elections the President must dissolve the parliament. It was done several times before, de Gaulle did it even twice.

For me, it is astonishing that no one of the highly intelligent discussants proposed changing the system from presidential-central to parliamentary-federal.

Attempts at regionalization have been done since former president Charles de Gaulle’s abdication, but the 13 regions don’t have their own parliaments, no autonomy and are just subordinate institutions to execute the laws made in imperial Paris.

Here lies the root cause of all the discontent of the French and the dysfunction of their patrimony.

Since regionalization in France miscarried, Filipinos should learn a lesson and shift their political system to genuine parliamentary federalism based on proportional representation of parties in parliament. They must stop the oligarchs from pushing through the hitherto proposed hybrid models that will forcibly fail.