Why we need progressives in government

Once upon a time, people who saw themselves as "left" had a very clear goal: to overthrow the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Marcos. The times were simple and one's moral conviction was affirmed by the tortures, killings, and disappearances perpetrated by the late strongman and his mafia. So it was not surprising that the best and the brightest Pinoy youths were attracted to the one group that was willing to fight Marcos's fire with their own proletarian fire: the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). My Ateneo students still get shocked when I tell them that, shortly before the declaration of martial law, the president of the Ateneo de Manila student council was a member of the CPP-affiliated Kabataang Makabayan.

 

For the Pinoy baby boomer, communism was as much a part of your universe as jeje speak is for gen Y (an absurd comparison, but you get the point). Scan hubs of intellectual activity - from the media, the academe, the government, to even the business sector - and you will find former members of the CPP or their affiliate organizations.

 

Marcos brutally crushed dissent, and only the CPP and Misuari's Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) offered any viable resistance. Even Ninoy Aquino knew this, having no qualms about arming the CPP's New People's Army.

 

I am not a communist. I do not believe in a revolutionary endgame, and I am averse to overarching explanations for historical change. My political allergy to communism notwithstanding, I am still a historian with a professional duty to give credit where credit is due. And my assessment of the dictatorship era is clear: the most brutal government in the history of the Philippines would not have fallen had it not been for the many communists who risked and gave their lives. The People Power revolution was predicated on a longer struggle that opened people’s eyes and prepared them for the so-called "miracle" of February 1986. 

 

The zenith of Philippine communism represented a time when one almost needed to be radical in order to be political. But the period of moral certainty is long gone. We still live in a democracy controlled by elites, but legal avenues are now open for dissenters and reformists. You cannot get arrested without a warrant for reading “subversive material,” and military torturers are no longer immune (right, Jovito Palaparan?). Moreover, with US bases in Clark and Subic gone and imperial strategy pointing towards the Middle East, Uncle Sam no longer cares as much about pulling the strings of its Southeast Asian “neocolony.” You may think about empire, but empire is thinking less and less about you. If anything, the new imperialist is “revolutionary” China, which continues to flex its muscles in the Spratlys.

 

The facts of post-authoritarian Philippines reveal a hitherto unacknowledged truth about political life: it is complex, contradiction-ridden, and driven by uncertainty. This can be scary for those who need the comfort of political scripts. But certainty is overrated, and you don't have to be an indecisive Libran like me to know that grappling with shades of gray is fun. Those who actively negotiate the dicey antinomies of politics, to paraphrase Nietzsche, set themselves apart from the sheep. Any discussion of post-EDSA politics is magulo, sobrang gulo.

 

Recent debates over an act of political theater now know as "Noynoying" have opened up a discussion on the internecine squabbles within the Philippine Left - a topic I enjoy for its drama but one surely lost on the average citizen. I will not bore the reader with the details of this debate. However, if there is anything productive about the argument, it is the light it has cast on the issue of progressives in government. When you’ve cut your teeth protesting against the government, what should you do once you’re in it? Should you be there to begin with? At the core of this debate is the frightening absence of martial law-era moral certainty.

 

As public officials, interlocutors on the left have subjected my colleagues in Akbayan Party to biting criticisms (see, for example, the essay of my friend Katrina Stuart Santiago). This is expected; they are now public officials.  But I don’t think the critics are being completely fair.

 

The first question that needs to be asked is simple: have my partymates compromised their activist principles? Compromised on policy matters, for sure, but on principles, not really.

 

Democratic politics is the art of the possible. In this art, one’s virtuosity is measured by how well one promotes his/her ideals while dealing with difference. The key is compromise amid uncertainty. The critical mind is a work-in-progress, and so is the coalitional democratic party. For example, Akbayan representative Walden Bello changed his mind when he endorsed President Aquino’s Conditional Cash Transfers. His critics are free to disagree with him, but they cannot call him a hypocrite. Being persuaded by research reveals intellectual openness, not hypocrisy.

 

It is also true that Akbayan members in government have not been able to stop oil price hikes, significantly increase the budget for state universities and colleges, secure the immediate distribution of Hacienda Luisita, etc. They also haven’t stopped global warming. Which means they can’t do everything.

 

But RH advocates know how much secretaries Ronald Llamas and Joel Rocomora have pushed for the RH Bill in the cabinet. They also know that Undersecretary Barry Gutierrez of the Office of Political Affairs is an unsung hero of the RH movement, serving as the link between grassroots women’s groups and Malacañang. These people are helping save women’s lives.

 

Similarly, the Aquino government’s acceding to the distribution of Luisita is largely a result of lobbying from progressives in government. My partymates, though they err, are by no means enemies of the masses. All it takes is a modicum of civility and comradely solidarity to acknowledge that they are not devils incarnate.

 

It is still better to have people who have experienced life outside the government to be in it. It is better to have Etta Rosales, a victim of military abuse, lead the Commission on Human Rights. Chair Etta, despite being severely maligned by groups allied with the Morong 43, publicly advocated for their release. Enemies are not always enemies and allies are not always allies.

 

Which brings back to my point about uncertainty. What I appreciate about Akbayan is its sense of doubt, the humility that accompanies it, and the provisional quality of its “correctness.”  We were once a protest party, and now we are trying governance. This is new territory for us, and we never pretended to have all the answers.

 

But we continue to ask questions from our constituents: workers, students, farmers, poor women, the LGBT community, and other marginalized groups. Many of them are uncertain as well. But it is through our joint uncertainty that we hope to find the answers we seek. - GMA News