WE adopted a scheme of government that rigidly separates three coordinate branches. Separation of powers and the correspondent principle, checks, and balances are foundational for our government. This is the reason for the State of the Nation Address. The legislature — and through it, the sovereign people — listens to the president’s report on the state of the nation as he has executed the laws and implemented policy, and the president proposes to Congress measures he believes should be enacted. So, do we expect the president to boast of the gains of his administration in the past year? Indeed, we do. After all, Congress must hear what the president — and the entire executive machinery of government with him — has accomplished.
Being in possession of data and information to which not even the legislature, much less the general population, has direct access, there may be accomplishments of government we have yet to suss.
But we also expect the president to be truthful — and we must be told where the government has fallen short of its goals, avoiding the hauteur that will not admit mistakes and failings. We want to be enlightened. And so, if the government has taken the first steps to involve the country in the Pax Silica initiative, which sounds promising to some and ominous to others, then we must be told what the administration’s plans are, what we stand to gain and the price — socially, ecologically and politically foremost — we must pay to be part of the scheme!
It is this forthrightness that allows for national discourse that goes into collective will-formation that is the ultimate source of legitimacy. When the Constitution solemnly proclaims that “sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them,” what it first requires, as well as guarantees, is that rational exchange among citizens as consociates by which claims are made, rationally defended, challenged, contested and vindicated. This discourse should, under ideal circumstances, lead to the discursive constitution of the legislature, as well as the choice of a chief executive in whom the delegated task of running government is reposed.
All this presupposes an incorrigible belief in rationality and an unhesitating reliance on it. For, in truth, what alternative do we have? If that kind of communicative action that leads to a rational consensus on the definition of a situation is eschewed, what do we have left, except strategic action that simply means that stealth, scheme, strategy and, indeed, superior force prevail! Where the force of reason fails, there is created that awful vacuum into which the force of arms rushes in!
This is where we are in the doldrums, or worse, battling the adverse winds of sheer irrationality. It is incomprehensible to me how the vice president, impeached by the House of Representatives, on trial before the Senate, and clearly having achieved nothing of national moment, continues to receive considerable approval and satisfaction ratings! I am utterly confounded by the fact that many Filipinos still rally to Rodrigo Duterte despite the trail of blood, bullet-riddled bodies and servile compromise toward a clearly aggressive and rapacious China he left behind! While he ruled, cursed and bullied, there could be seen on the faces of thousands a completely disgusting rictus of awe and admiration! That same posse of trolls and cheerleaders frustrates all attempts at meaningful exchange!
How is a nation saved from irrationality? Some will be dismissive and believe that I grossly exaggerate a claim. But history has ample stories of a nation captivated by the picaresque, bewitched by a bewitching ideology, lured into the wrong side of history by its siren song! It definitely is for the thoughtful and reflective members of the community to keep speaking and writing, no matter how pointless the apostolate may seem and how mean and humiliating the unthinking can be. It definitely is for the Church to persist in the discourse of morality, the demand of the right and inflexible fidelity to the Godly, even at the risk of being taken to be captious. It is for the youth to be young — to infuse the nation and the national conversation with that frisson of bold ideas and lofty visions, to awaken the languid to the prospects of what can be worthy of us as a people, and to upset in their complacence those who have taken the ridiculous and the absurd as inevitable fact!
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph