Illiberal democracy
I HAVE been wanting to make sense of what is happening today under President Rodrigo Duterte until I stumbled into concepts and terms expressed as early as two decades ago that seems to explain our current situation. I am referring for example to the phrase “illiberal democracy” and “majoritarianism” mentioned in an essay written by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in 1997 titled, “The Rise of Illiberal Dem ocr acy.”
What has become obvious to me since Duterte took over the presidency in June 2016 was the easy breaking of rules and norms and the assault on the rights we cherished after the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos was ousted in February 1986. This one didn’t come via the declaration of military rule, the abolition of Congress and the crippling of the judiciary’s authority but by the practice of our democr acy.
Wrote Zakaria: “The American diplomat Richard Holbrooke pondered a problem on the eve of the September 1996 elections in Bosnia, which were meant to restore civic life to that ravaged country. ‘Suppose the election was declared free and fair,’he said, ‘and those elected are racists, fascists, separatists, who are publicly opposed to (peace and reintegration). That is the dilemma.’
“Indeed it is, not just in the former Yugoslavia, but increasingly around the world. Democratically elected regimes, often ones that have been reelected or reaffirmed through referenda, are routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving their citizens of basic rights and freedoms.
“From Peru to the Palestinian Authority, from Sierra Leone to Slovakia, from Pakistan to the Philippines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon in international life— illiberal d em ocr acy.”
Zakaria makes a distinction between the words “democracy” and “liberalism.” The first is marked by free and fair elections and the second one refers to the “rule of law, separation of powers and the protection of basic liberties of speech, assembly, religion and property.” In his observation then, democracy was flourishing but constitutional liberalism was not.
Meanwhile, Britannica.com defines “majoritarianism” as the “idea that the numerical majority of the population should have the final say in determining the outcome of a decision.” But some thinkers believe that the majority, “if given the power and opportunity to do so, would tyrannize over any and all minorities.”This had French thinker Alexis de Tocqueville writing about “tyranny of the majority.”
Our kind of illiberal democracy stands on the shoulder of “majoritarianism,” which manifests itself in the high approval ratings of the president despite his assault on the checks and balances in government by the executive, legislative and judicial branches enshrined in our constitution and his attacks on the concept and his violations of human rights. The belief that they are propped up by the majority has made government officials think they can do everything, even curse openly all day. But finally making sense of what is happening right now is for me just a part of the process in dealing with present realities and hopefully helping correct whatever needs to be corrected.