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military. And I think for the most part we were able to do this with… while
the military remains very professional.
A second insight is the constitution is a crucial document, but it is not enough
to determine the success of democracy. When we had our 1987 constitution,
we realized that there were weaknesses there. We should have corrected those, but
we did not. And some of these things are our president and vice president can come
from two different political parties. They run as candidates separately. So may be we
should have the American system where they run together. Also, we let our
presidents win with just premier plurality. There is no runoff election. So, our
presidents are always plurality president, never in majority president because when we
have our presidency election, we have as many as five or six candidates.
Some of the challenges have been that Duterte, Arroyo before, and Arroyo now
have been coming up with draft constitutions. So, at this time, Former President
Arroyo is the Speaker of the House. And she has now a draft constitution which they
are saying they are going to get, to be approved. I don’t know how they are going
to do it, but it’s definitely an attempt to, to me, to subvert the 1987 constitution.
And in that draft that we saw, they have removed the term limits.
There is also a threat by the supporters of President Duterte to come up with a
revolutionary government. The only thing that is preventing them is there is no
acceptance by the people and by the military for this. But can you imagine if there is
an acceptance by the military. Then, we could easily become a military government
now.
Let me just go to the third. The third thing is the misuse of social media can
lead to corrosion of democracy. I think this is one the biggest threats that democracy
faces. On this chart you can see that, according to Philma House, the Philippines is
the biggest or the highest freedom in Southeast Asia. In fact, the only one that has
almost complete internet freedom in Southeast Asia. So it’s completely free which is
why it’s big, but the next slide says that the Philippines is also one that has misused
social media and this government manipulation in Southeast Asia. In other words,
this’s been used during the Duterte campaign to create an image of Duterte that is
basically mythical. For instance, one of the memes is that Duterte is the best
president in the solar system. And you would not believe that many Filipinos would
believe that.
Social exclusion and the lack of inclusiveness makes the people prone to accept
first promises by savior. By this we mean that it’s not really in the structure of
government whether it’s a democracy, presidential, federal. I think the main
foundation for democracy is that social exclusion itself. In here, we’re talking here not
ª£¸ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ only of economic quality, but also the lot of injudicious people, LGBTQ, and the
women and children. And in a diverse society like the Philippines, this is very
important.
