Requiem

Our long-ailing political party system finally died this week. Instead of party politics, all we have now is celebrity/dynastic politics. This will not serve the nation well.

- ALEX MAGNO

It was a long, painful process of death. It began after the nation was put under martial law in 1972 and elections became highly controlled exercises. Organized party engagement in elections never recovered from this.

In 1987, a Constitution was hurriedly written and quickly passed in plebiscite. That vital document originally intended a shift to a unicameral parliamentary system. It provided for a multi-party system resembling the European pattern of representation.

At the last moment, one swing vote shifted the form of government back to a US-style presidential system. Given the rush to bring a new Constitution into place, all the provisions in the document suited for a parliamentary government were left unaltered. This is the reason we continue to quarrel over whether the two chambers of Congress vote jointly or separately over proposed amendments.

Over the years, we battled over the strange party-list system embedded in the Constitution and failed to enact any legislation that would ban political dynasties. We were never sure if the party-list system intended to amplify political party representation or ensure minority ideological factions survive. We never arrived at a common understanding about what "sectoral representation" meant.

What we did adopt was term limits. There is no final judgment on whether this works better for our democracy. It arbitrarily limits the tenure in elective office of competent officials. Even as it does, it encouraged whole families to enter electoral politics to substitute each other to defy the intentions of term limits.