Today we celebrate the 150th birth anniversary of Gat Andres Bonifacio, founder of the Katipunan, father of the Philippine revolution. While the 1896 revolt started from “below”, it took no time before Bonifacio’s leadership of the Katipunan was hijacked by the illustrado class who saw through the demise of the Spanish colonial power and its replacement by the Americans. . . hence, the sobriquet “ The Unfinished Revolution.” Like the 1896 revolution, many Filipinos consider Edsa 1 and Edsa 2 as unfinished revolutions as they did not lead to genuine social and political change in the country. To this day, a narrow elite governs us and majority of our people remain poor. Social justice, which now includes environmental justice, has not been realized. Graft and corruption abounds even in the world of ‘daang matuwid”, President Aquino’s path of good governance. As we have seen in Edsa I and II, the Supreme Court merely impressed its imprimatur on a fait accompli, that is, to put a stamp of legitimacy to the new order established by the people. But if we mean by the term revolution - radically changing the status quo - then the recent SC decision on the unconstitutionality of the congressional pork barrel may just qualify as a revolution of sorts. While it had a choice to limit its decision to the PDAF issue, the Court’s decision is broad and comprehensive; it encompasses all pork barrel, “formal and informal”, practices; it is retroactive and prospective; as categorical, as one would hope it to be, leaving very little wiggle room for our political branches. While I am still writing a primer on the implications of the court’s decisions, including its implications on how Congress must now reorganize its budgetary and oversight processes, it is clear to me that the Supreme Court is potentially revolutionary. Coupled with a possible decision on the Disbursement Acceleration Program that could severely limit presidential discretion on spending, it could lead to major transformation, not just piecemeal reform, of our governance and political system. By a mere stroke of a pen, and probably unintentionally, the SC had done through peaceful means what normally would have been done through mass actions, protest rallies and even violent confrontations. It is my hope that the PDAF decision by the Supreme Court abolishing the pork barrel and the impending DAP decision which hopefully will limit presidential discretion will be a blaze of light, the light of liberty, for our country. How amazing, that it is the most conservative of our institutions, the Supreme Court, which provided the fitting sequel, if not conclusion, to Andres Bonifacio’s unfinished revolution for genuine change.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Nov 2013 23:36:42 +0000