Power mediates between rich, poor Filipinos

Half a year before the event, election violence has begun—horrifically, in Maguindanao province, and more mildly in eight other provinces so far.

In reaction, the President has charged a six-man Commission that includes a bishop, a Muslim religious and an anti-crime militant with dismantling our country’s notorious “private armies”—which political bosses use to keep down their rivals, intimidate voters and maintain themselves in office.

Nobody even knows how many of these militias there are. Given that 800,000 unlicensed firearms are estimated to be in civilian hands, they must easily outnumber our uniformed military. Hence no citizen’s likely to be holding his breath, waiting for President Gloria Arroyo’s order to be carried out.

No throne of bayonets

There is always an element of coercion in dealings between the strong and the weak. Force or its threat has historically been predominant in Philippine social relations. Even before the Spanish conquest, our chiefdoms had been local oligarchies led by a few “big people,” with the bulk of their inhabitants being debt-serfs and household slaves.

But since no man can sit on a throne of bayonets, political stability came customarily to rest on a mutual recognition of rights and responsibilities. In the peasant community, this “social contract” morally obliged the rich to protect the poor’s right to subsistence.

This unwritten law, however, has weakened progressively with the spread of the cash economy. Coercion more than shared values has become the primary mediator between rich and poor. And the “boss” with his political “machine” has replaced the traditional patron with his clientelistic network—particularly in towns, cities and provinces undergoing rapid modernization.

The ‘boss’ and the machine

Bossism is “a system of political control centering on a single powerful figure [the ‘boss’] and a complex organization of lesser figures [the ‘machine’] bound together by reciprocity in promoting their financial and social self-interest.”

An artifact of representative democracy in its earliest stages, bossism feeds on the spoils of the electoral system, which it distributes proportionately throughout the machine. In the United States, it thrived during the age of mass migrations from Europe in the late 19th century.

In New York City, Boston and Chicago, political machines became the vehicles for enfranchising and assimilating particularly Irish migrants—easing their introduction to the big-city slum and the exploitative industrial world of the period.

Public office as economic base

The difference between a “patron” and a “boss” is largely one of degree. Unlike the patron in the more settled pre-industrial society, the political boss seldom has an independent base in land or other proprietary wealth.

Operating in a harsh environment without a social contract, the boss is also more prone to violence—which he deploys readily to gain (and keep) control of a public office that he then uses as his economic base.

Not so much the surrounding economy as the local state apparatus the boss makes his primary source of strategic resources. During the early American period, powerful lawmakers customarily used the pliable Bureau of Lands to legitimize their land grabbing and the Philippine National Bank (PNB) for the “softest” of loans. (Operated by political cronies in violation of every banking principle, the PNB went bankrupt in 1921.)

Some of the political machines and economic empires that bosses built are so sturdy they have withstood not just the occasional defeat, but even the death, of the dynasty’s founder.

Ramon Durano (1905 to 1988), the larger-than-life boss of Danao City (Cebu), ran its congressional district for almost 40 years. He still lives in his political heirs and in the industries he founded.

The longer a dynasty lasts, the more acceptable it is to people. Of the 214 members of the Twelfth House of Representatives (2001 to 2004), half belonged to established political clans, in the opinion of the Philippine Institute of Investigative Journalism.

Localized despotism

John Sidel of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and author of a book on Philippine bossism (1999), notes “the curiously underrated role of violence and coercion” in academic studies of local strongman rule. We still tend to regard localized despotisms as patronage networks when they may in practice be closer to mafia gangs.

One reason, perhaps, is that until now “little people” actively seek the protection of local “big people.” In the absence of strong central authority, many rural Filipino families prefer the security inherent in being the follower of a powerful local leader to the insecurity of possessions they could not anyway defend on their own.

For rural migrants, patronage politics fosters their social mobility—easing their introduction to urban discipline and the world of paid work. Certainly the Filipino poor remain the strongest supporters of the social system.

Despite the exertions of generations of collectivist ideologues, our country has no pronounced class antagonisms. In many political conflicts, the poorer classes identify with their rich patrons. “The poorer socio-economic groups, the less educated, and rural people tend simply to voice approval for the system and for authority-figures in it,” notes the Jesuit sociologist John Carroll.

From womb to tomb

Like American politicians, Filipino politicians rely on offering material benefits to specific individuals and groups rather than on programs that advance the common good. In the age of populist politics, patronage focuses on social services—free medicine, free hospitalization, even free coffins; school-buildings, school desks, scholarships; handouts for the needy. “In whatever way, nobody who approaches me goes away empty-handed,” said Gov. Tomas Joson 3rd of Nueva Ecija of a durable Central Luzon dynasty. “He or she goes home happy.” –JUAN T. GATBONTON EDITORIAL CONSULTANT, Manila Times