Around noon on June 30, a new government headed by Ferdinand Marcos Jr will be inaugurated.
At about the same time, a new movement that took shape in the final leg of Vice-President Leni Robredo’s 2022 presidential campaign will formally launch its manifold presence in the post-election landscape.
The intertwining of these two modern forms of social organisation will determine the future of democracy in the country.
How they will relate to one another will test the strength of the nation’s formal institutions and the maturity of civil society.
Marcos Jr will have at his disposal the enormous powers of the presidency - not the least of which is the power to appoint key officials to the crucial national agencies, including the police and the military - plus the nation’s collective resources and the power to borrow more.
He will also have the support of a friendly legislature and a Supreme Court packed by appointees of his de facto ally, outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte.
But he must satisfy the high public expectations that have accompanied his family’s bid to reclaim Malacanang.
His first problem will be how to bring down the cost of rice and other basic food items - as he promised - in the face of a global fuel shortage and other supply disruptions resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
He will find his efforts constrained by the gigantic public debt he inherits from the Duterte administration, even as he must find ways to speed up economic recovery amid a lingering pandemic. On top of these, his every move will be monitored by a vigilant middle class that has overcome its timidity.
In contrast, Robredo’s political capital is much greater now than when she was the country’s vice-president. She only needs to make a call to harness the energy that her campaign unleashed.
The movement that has grown around her is described as organic because it is self-initiated rather than artificially induced.
Volunteer-driven movements of this sort typically become stable constituencies for change.
These strengths, however, also tend to be the sources of a movement’s weaknesses.
Brimming with energy and drawing its force from a diversity of personal backgrounds and experiences, a movement usually does not have the kind of discipline that a political opposition needs in order to win elections.
Consistency in messaging, objectivity in processing information, diligence in observing priorities, and ability to make quick shifts in strategy were, for this reason, not the strongest features of the Robredo campaign.
Robredo has shown that she is capable of stirring the emotions of her supporters while keeping herself grounded in cold reason. It is a rare quality.
Until new leaders emerge from this experience, Robredo has the best credentials among all opposition figures at this point.
But, for the moment, she does not have a ready political platform from which to air her views on government.
Apart from the nationwide network of volunteers Robredo plans to gather under the “Angat Buhay” (Uplift Lives) NGO, the Pink Movement may spin off two other distinct organisational forms - a new opposition party, and a protest movement that is independent of any electoral or ideological project.
There’s much work to be done. Robredo put it aptly in her thanksgiving speech last Friday: “This day is not an ending, but the start of a new chapter.”
- ANN
Created by Tan KW | Mar 29, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Mar 29, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Mar 29, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Mar 29, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Mar 29, 2024
Created by Tan KW | Mar 29, 2024