Democracy is a word often used but little understood. Call it the rule of the majority or the rule of one man with the consent of the majority, it is the same as long as the duly constituted governments serves the common good.

In the city states of ancient Greece, democracy was the direct management by the people of the affairs of the government. But the people, who were sovereign, were also Slave-owners, an arrangement that was at once a contradiction in terms. The Romans adopted the democracy of Greece and it was ironically the force that impelled Brutus and company to assassinate Julius Caesar, over whose dead body Mark Anthony sorrowed… “O judgement, thou art fled to brutish beast…” To the Americans, democracy is the government of, by and for the people, an article of faith forge on the anvil of the American revolution, and in the crucible of the U.S. Civil War. Philippine democracy also gives sovereignty to the people and all government authority emanates from them. The Citizen Assembly was given deeper meaning by the precept embodied in the new constitution, which took effect on January 17, 11973.

In the old society, the people had the illusion of being the master. In Fact, the people were subservient to the politicians, to the few rich and powerful.

Under our constitution, no person shall be deprived of life, liberty and property without due process of law or a day in court. This provisions is classic in its beauty and purpose. But in the social order, the provision observed was loaded against the poor, made worse by the fact that the poor man could hardly afford the services of a good lawyer while the rich man enlisted the most adroit counsel, past master at bending the technicalities in the law for the benefit of the client.

A poor litigant, especially in the civil case, cannot bear the big expense of protracted litigation, while the rich man can get the best counsel and other assistance in winning the case, or in delaying court proceedings if the odds are against him, until the poor litigant unable to carry on submits to an amicable settlement even if the compromise leaves him short changed.

Of course, there were rare instances when the poor litigant prevailed over the rich man. This usually occurs when the poor man’s case happens to be coeval with another existing conflict between two or more quarreling oligarchs. But normally, if the poor man fights alone, he does not fight at all.

This lopsided situation was partly rooted in the inequities long accepted by all, partly in the laws the propertied class had made the passed into the books, because it was always the propertied class who had the opportunity to become lawmakers, or to be represented by lawmakers. With the abolition of Congress, the poor may now have a chance to improve their lot by dint of new laws, or amended laws, with the rich no longer standing as impediment to the striving of the poor for a place in the sun.

It is an historic fact that protection of property weighs heavier in law than protection of physical well-being. Consider this: the minimum penalty for robbery in accordance with the penal provisions of article 294 ranges from 6 year and one day to 8 years while the minimum penalty for physical injury, a crime against persons, is from 10 to 30 days. The wide disparity in the two sets of penalties gives greater premium to property than to physical security. Hence, it is only fitting that the New Society must take a harder look at many old laws, and presidential decrees correspondingly promulgated to correct inequities.

Since property receives better protection than the person of an individual, the man with property gets better protection than a human being of course, the law does not say in explicit terms that a man property is better protected but the protection of the propertied man is surely woven into the warp and woof of the old laws, as passed by the defunct Congress.

Take the case of an indigent accused. He cannot hire a lawyer. The de-officio counsel appointed by the court is usually the first person to persuade the indigent accused to enter a plea of guilty no matter if he has a fifty-fifty chance of acquittal or even perhaps if the indigent accused is not a guilty at all. In the face of this apparent evil, it would be serviceable if the New Society would provide for the defense of the poor in the court cases, through a special office staffed with competent lawyers.

Because the poor did not have enough protection under the law in the old society order, they contrived, as a matter of survival, to get protection by identifying with the rich. They did thus in various ways, perhaps by enlisting as body guards, overseers, servants, thus finding shelter under the rich man’s umbrella. This gave rise to instances where poor people, enjoying privilege and protection for the first time, became more overbearing than their masters. And many an enduring friendship develop  in this way between the very poor and the very rich, or between two poor people since misery needs company, but not between the rich and the rich.

And so in the old social order, the struggle of the poor to improve their status was blunted when the poor joined the rich. What remained was the monopoly by the rich of the wealth of the nation and the continuing, sometimes accelerated, conflict between the rich and the rich. In this conflict, the poor were divisively arrayed behind men of wealth, and by virtue of the moral support given by the poor through this arrangement, the rich continued to grab more power and influence, not for the purpose of liberating the poor and the enslaved, for a liberated poor has a tendency  to endanger the master by pre-empting the influence wielded by the former, but for greater self-gain.

In this polarization of strength, in the shifting modality of social movement, the rich always get the upper hand in the bargaining, reducing the poor to the role of minions. Assured of these minions, the rich increase the sound and fury of their fight for power.

But one will readily notice that in judicial clashes among the rich, involving corporate millions or even billion of pesos, the struggle is as silent as it is deadly-like the violence struggle of big alligators at the bottom of a deep river. The surface of the river is never ruffled. People are not disturbed by the death struggle.

Nevertheless, as the struggle between the rich moves out into the broader field of politics, as witnessed in the old society, noise, movement and intensity become marked. The polarization is still the rich versus the rich, and the poor have a field day choosing which side to support. And this is the time when loyalties between the rich and the poor are forged, with the fight between the rich and rich escalating. This is why in the elections under the old society, bloodshed erupts. The poor supporters of a rich candidate are usually slaughtered by another group of poor people, supporting the opponent rich candidate. Over the dead bodies of the poor, the rich decided the prize while offering sympathy, or pretending to offer sympathy to the survivors of the victims.

However, there are odd deviations from this social arrangement, as when a poor man is pitted against a rich man. This is rare. But in this freak occurrence, there is always behind the poor man a rich man, who wants to destroy the other rich man. Yet, in this case, if the poor man is lucky enough, he too becomes rich, and in process acquires new tastes, an entirely new orientation.

For that reason, while the former poor man had started out to fight the cause of the poor, using the weapons the rich provide, his success is disastrous. If his identification with the downtrodden is severed or blunted by influence and the influence of new associates, then his genuine affinity for his own kind, his crusade for the poor, disintegrates, becoming no more than a dim part of memory, or a footnote in his biography, if somebody cares to write one.

And then the circle closes once more, the rich against the rich, while the poor people, having chosen which rich to support are for a time lulled into a false sense of security. In this order of things, the shiftless poor are the natural and final victims. Is there any hope for them?

The New Society has the answer. Only when the poor begin to emerge from under the umbrellas of the rich, through the exercise of a new discipline, could they hope to be liberated? Because by analogy – When a small plant is located so close to a big tree, the small plant cannot grow as tall as the big one: the leaves falling from the big tree are not enough to give sustenance to the small plant.

But if they are willing to put their faith in the vision of the new society, a society of peers, this faith will break, as it had broken asunder the old chain, all other negative restraints, will allow all the people, rich or poor, to become equal participants in the forgoing of this country’s destiny.

Reference:” FOCUS PHILIPPINES”

 

By: Elizabeth P. Dumalag | Teacher III | Bonifacio Camacho National High School | Abucay, Bataan