Eroding democracy without trying

If the April pre-election survey by Pulse Asia Research, Inc. is a good predictor of the May 12 election for senators, and the likelihood is quite high, we shall have a Philippine Senate very few of us could be proud of. Most of the potential winners are film idols and talk show hosts, while others performed poorly in their earlier tenure in the Senate. Others may not serve their full term because they are impleaded at The Hague for committing crimes against humanity. With such a composition, we might have a shortage of laws that champion good governance, a strong economy, justice and rule of law, and some sense of decency in the land.

This is a sure-fire formula for increasing further our democratic deficit.

Thus, we might have to deal with the same legislative mill that allowed the violation of the Constitution and various laws that mandated the centrality of people through adequate funding of both public education and public health. It is the same institution that refused to clear the blue ribbon committee report that recommended filing plunder, graft and other criminal and administrative charges against key officials of the previous administration and Pharmally executives. Enormous public money was squandered during the 2020 pandemic by acquiring overpriced, used or soiled medical supplies based solely on a presidential directive that dispensed with public bidding. Many of them were also instrumental in allowing financial stability to be compromised when the Maharlika Investment Fund was established with funds sequestered from state banks and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

True, when we examine other surveys on a more modest scale, the results are completely different. We are not at all surprised that in the recent mock elections at the UP College of Law, two former opposition senators came out first. That fiery former audit commissioner, several labor and mass leaders and former cause-oriented party-list representatives completed the magic 12. There was no space for traditional, dynastic and comical politicians. This result mirrors those in other academic institutions.

Beyond the perverse influence of paid trolls and other false news purveyors, it is not difficult to explain why Filipinos are voting circus characters in Congress and the Executive agencies. Just the other day, both print and broadcast media reported on the hearing conducted by the Senate education committee. The Philippine Statistics Authority shared some data, shocking at the least, showing that in 2024 there were almost 19 million Filipino students who graduated from senior and junior high school who “cannot read and understand a simple story.” This means some 19 million Filipinos are not functionally literate. In fact, at the same Senate hearing, the PSA claimed there were in fact 24.8 million Filipinos, or one out of every four Filipinos, “who have problems understanding a simple story.”

We believe that this situation pre-dated 2024 or even earlier, and in a few years, we don’t think this would be mitigated in a big way. Therefore, these 19 million Filipino students who “cannot read and understand a simple story” will be among our millions of voters a few years from now.

How do we expect these young voters to wrap around the idea that bad budget practices in Congress deny them books and additional classrooms, and that many of them get sick because they lack nutrition? Money is a problem because some of their parents are jobless, while some are looking for more work or additional hours of work. Some of them are not equipped with the skills in demand by industry. The economy is not operating at its peak. The budget for infrastructure as well as digital innovation has been severely trimmed. The narrative gets longer; it’s no longer plain vanilla. Those millions of young voters will be lost.

It would even be a more complex story for our young voters to understand that traditional politicians have been mainly behind the continued inability of the Philippine economy to break through many of our structural problems that impede a more accelerated, more inclusive economic growth in the Philippines. And there is bad political governance, there is bad economic governance, and there is bad social governance. In many previous studies of these governance factors, corruption counts among the political factors, economic freedom among the economic factors and education and health among the social factors. Some of them are caused by these politicians, on others, voters don’t have any idea.

One can always argue that it is to many politicians’ advantage to maintain the status quo. An informed, thinking electorate will tolerate neither corruption nor incompetence in public service. Such an electorate will demand track record, or experience in crafting laws, or executing them, not in staging shows, doing stunts no matter how awesome, or collecting commissions from pork barrel projects. A history of vote-buying or being part of vicious political dynasties would be anathema.

But then, there could be no other more difficult, more daunting challenge than producing an informed, thinking electorate in this country.

How does one teach creative thinking among our current Filipino students who scored among the weakest in creative thinking in the latest PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) ranking of students worldwide? They ranked in the same score range as three other bottom dwellers — Albania, Uzbekistan and Morocco. The Philippines’ mean score stood at 14 out of 60 possible points, remotely lower than the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) average of 33. Based on comparative analysis, only around 3% of Filipino students can match the creative thinking abilities of an average student in Singapore!

It is one thing to read and write and do some math, but it is a completely different challenge to think correctly, and think well. Again, Filipino students failed to distinguish themselves in this thought process.

Why is this alarming?

PISA defines creative thinking as “the competence to engage productively in the generation, evaluation and improvement of ideas that can result in original and effective solutions, advances in knowledge and expressions of imagination.” This is all about nation-building, transforming the economy and strengthening the social fabric.

Four aspects were covered, all indicative of future capabilities: written expression, as in crafting public policy; visual expression, as in perceiving key problems of the Philippines; social problem solving, as in how corruption and plunder should be dealt with; and scientific problem solving, as in addressing floods and traffic in Metro Manila.

In 10, 20 or 30 years, these young students will not only grow into our electorate, but they will also constitute the ranks from where political and economic leadership will be recruited through election or appointment. From the givens, it looks like we would need signs and wonders to squeeze blood from stone.

Francis Fukuyama in Identity (2019) argued that the most unexpected big electoral surprises of 2016 were Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump. In both cases, Fukuyama wrote, “voters were concerned with economic issues, particularly those in the working class who had been exposed to job loss and deindustrialization. But just as important was opposition to continued large-scale immigration.” What is at work, to Fukuyama, is the politics of resentment.

Could it be that many of our people who would choose to elect misfits in public office feel that they have no stake in our political and economic mainstream and therefore any candidate who is not their kind should merit no support?

Accepting ayuda or election bribe money is just a bonus in voting traditional, dynastic and incompetent candidates. They couldn’t care less if the P2,000 that they would receive on the eve of the election is the cost of infrastructure that would never materialize, or public hospital or additional hospital beds that would never be delivered, or better training for teachers that would never happen. “Pera naman natin ’yan” (It’s our money anyway) is not entirely true; whatever we get reduces the nation’s public goods.

Undermining the capacity of the citizenry to choose and choose correctly weakens our ability to achieve prosperity and more inclusive growth. If nothing is done with this state of affairs, either by Congress by a long shot rationalizing our election laws and restoring the primacy of public health and education, or the Supreme Court paving the way for an anti-political dynasty, or declaring as unconstitutional and illegal any attempt by the National Government to defund PhilHealth and reduce the budget for education — then we erode democracy even without trying.