Elitism and dadag-bawas U.S. style

I would like to log here too my reply to Geo who has posted an answer to my comment on the Florida election and elitism in mlq3’s blog.

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Geo,

Criticizing media elites in general and reacting to a commenter, I once blogged on or about the Florida electoral fiasco:

Media organizations ... operate for the most part rather insidiously when they attempt to set agendas that could have national implications. They pass on their undertaking, in reality in pursuit of self interest, as a noble quest for truth. This is a truism nowhere truer in any other place than in America—the newly found pride of our kababayan Anastacio.

Apparently,our apostate poster whose nasty piece about the political and social follies of Filipinos has amused the Pinoy web community—seemed to believe many things that have been communicated to him by the mass media operating in his lofty and immaculate USA and, on the basis of which, he formed certain values by which he would put down Filipinos. If only Anastacio were a little more perceptive and circumspect, it would have not been that challenging for him to realize that while both the Gore and the Bush campaigns have invoked the concept of rule of law to capture the power of the US presidency, pre- and post-election news, commentaries, and even judicial rulings in the US have carried insidious slants and spins as well as legal maneuverings and manipulations in a manner that had all the trimmings of a constitutional hypocrisy befitting only a banana republic in disguise. On the other hand, other relevant stories that would have the effect of impugning the exalted foundation of American society, like the reports of intimidation and voter-lists purging of minority voters in Florida, have not been given sufficient attention.

Well, like the “little brown brothers” that some Filipinos have unfortunately become, our media has willingly emulated America’s sinister model of thought manipulation. And so also, as in the US, Filipinos would compensate more generously spin doctors and political media practitioners than the old-fashioned, adventurous, and romantic newsman whose “basic responsibility,” Prof. Teodoro underscored in a speech, “is to get the information out, and, to the extent possible, to disseminate information that is accurate, fair and complete.”

On the day the US Supreme Court handed down Bush v. Gore, Jesse Jackson, Jr. issued a statement, a portion of which reads:

In third world countries when democratically cast votes are not counted, or the person who most likely lost wins in a highly questionable manner, we usually refer to that as a coup d’etat -- the overthrow of a government, usually by a small group of persons. All legal votes in Florida were not counted. If they had been counted, there is at least a strong possibility that Vice President Gore would have received the most votes in Florida as he did in the country -- which is why the Bush people did not want the votes counted. Even more important than partisan politics, the votes should have been counted in the name of democracy in order to give the maximum amount of credibility and legitimacy to the eventual winner.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, many of its satellites fell. In the case of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Havel became the new President on the basis of a legitimate people uprising and a democratic “Velvet Revolution.” In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court orchestrated a questionable ‘velvet legal coup.’

Of course before the Velvet Revolution of Yeltsin or Vaclav Havel, and the fall of the other Soviet satellites, the Sandinistas defeat by Violeta Chammoro’s coalition, or the uprising in Tiananmen Square, there was the “Lady in Yellow” who inspired the original People Power at EDSA. But today the EDSA uprising as the paradigmatic representation of People Power is continually being attenuated - for obvious reason: of the above enumerated, it was the only revolution of such dimension that successfully has removed a US-backed dictator.

Justice Stevens’ dissent in Bush v. Gore has been shamefully scornful of things yet to come:

One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.

And here’s what Greg Palast (so it was not only Michael Moore, Geo) has written:

Five months before the November 2000 election, Governor Jeb Bush moved to purge 57, 700 people from the voter rolls, supposed criminals not allowed to vote. Most were innocent of crimes, but the majority were guilty of being black.

92.02 per cent, Palast insisted, of those in the “srub” list are innocent and overwhelmingly democrats; and relying on BBC researchers, he further maintained Gore lost about 22,000 votes as a result. 22,000 are more than 537.

Since this particular blog of Manolo is on the subject of “collusion” of the political elites in the Philippines, Filipinos might well find it relevant to draw from it certain parallelism with the manner the high-handed activism of the US Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore has resulted in what could be considered as an exercise of one of the highest forms of American elitism. If Bush was confident about democracy in Florida, why did his conservative allies in the Supreme Court voting strictly along ideological lines stop the recount in Florida and in effect elected him the next U.S. president?

The Philippine Supreme Court has shown the same extreme tendencies in recent holdings and foremost that comes to mind is the ruling in Francisco, Jr. v. House of Representative as well as the Court’s vacillation in the Mining Law cases, both decisions (not to speak of Estrada v. Desierto) being, for all intents and purposes, amendatory of the provisions of the Constitution sans the benefit of a Charter change process. What else is more elitist than that?

Now the proposition: America’s “elite” keeps changing; there is much socio-economic migration (both up and down) between the upper and various middle-class entities. Meanwhile, errant members of “today’s elite” are jailed tomorrow. So…how again is the elite using the law to essentially defraud the general public of the truth?

First of all, Madison, the father of the American constitution, was categorical in classic elite terms “that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more in consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.” Madison believed that if unchecked, the majority, that is, the uneducated and the unpropertied Americans, would tyrannize the minority—the privileged, the wellborn and the wealthy, like him. And if it hasn’t been noticed, when Americans go to the polls during the presidential elections, they vote for Electors not the presidential candidates; or when you have federal judges appointed for life, how else could migration be allowed during the judges’ lifetime?

Second of all, I have yet to see the Americans follow the Philippine example of jailing an erring president for corruption, defrauding or misleading the nation or other high crimes.

I agree that the nature of elite system allows upward mobility of non-elites yet this process, in a pyramidal and hierarchical system, is definitely a creeping one. But even those non-elites who have been welcomed to the club must agree to the elite consensus, i.e., they are stakeholders in the system in which their privileges depend. At least in the Philippines, the party-list system has somehow remedied this anomaly.

Leave the Americans out of the analysis when one is contemplating the best solution for the Philippines? Well, tell that to AGILE, the Venable wheeler-dealers, and the agents responsible for the “leaked” Aragoncillo dossiers.