|
Tuesday, June 07, 2005
Roperos: Political ideologies
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
The news that some members of Lakas, the administration party organized during the early 1990s to support presidential candidate Fidel Ramos, were set to bolt the group did not surprise me at all.
The move is reportedly caused by a sense of discontent in the way the party was reacting to, and handling, its problems. But it is a situation that is bound to happen sooner or later simply because the Lakas’ ideology has never taken strong enough roots in each member to bind them together.
Indeed, the difference among Lakas-NUCD, other political parties in the country and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), is ideology.
While the CPP, as a party, has solid ideological content, the others have only ideologies in name but never in practice. Note that the names of existing current political parties indicate some sort of ideological content, but it is possible that these are just indications as articulated during the initial organization of the party, but never intrinsically well defined.
Keen political observers would know that most, if not all, existing political parties have been initiated or organized to support a political personality aspiring for a position in the national or local government. It is, in a sense, more of a political cult “built” around a person who has a political aspiration, and willing to put up the “seed” capital to fund its existence and the group’s day-to-day operation. This person is also the one who draws recruits.
The problem, though, is when the election is over, and the person that “spent” for the group may have either lost or won the battle. Then the political party’s life might hang on the balance. It does so in the sense that the organizer would either abandon it in favor of another to acquire more strength and membership, or it is merged with still another for the same purpose.
Consequently, since the ties that bind the members of the party is not an ideology but the mere goodwill and “cash” of the head of the party, a little misunderstanding, discontent, or conflict of need or aspirations, could easily become like a storm. And unless there is a strong intellectual anchor that has established roots in the heart and mind of each member, it could shake the party’s weak network of personal relationships, rather than draw the members tighter in search of solutions.
Thus, what is happening to the Lakas chapter in Cebu can happen to any of the other existing political parties in the country anytime. In fact, the smaller local political groups would be better off than the ones with a national dimension because any “brush fire” can easily be contained. The Bando Osmena-Pundok Kauswagan is one such local party that has survived the wear and tear of many elections already. It has remained intact because the leadership has had the necessary logistics, not ideology, to stabilize it.
It is not, as though Lakas does not have an ideological base. It has, but since the party gained its ascendant political power with the victory of President Ramos in 1992, it tried to consolidate and augment its political strength through the sacrifice of its ideological content. It initially planned to hold in-depth seminars on Christian democracy as a requisite to membership in the party, but I do not know how long it was done. But it seems it was later abandoned. Christian democracy is solid ideology that was de-fanged.
I know because in the late 1980s, I was the regional chairman of the National Union of Christian Democrats in the Central Visayas but I gave way to professional politicians. And so, it really does not come as a big surprise to me if Lakas should crumble as a political party in the region. It is a situation that has been quite long in coming.
(June 7, 2005 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here. |
|
[return to top]
[home]
[network page]
|
LOCAL NEWS
BUSINESS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFESTYLE
FEATURE
SUPERBALITA
WEEKEND
|
