Wednesday, July 04, 2007 Carvajal: 'Political ‘messianism’ as elitist By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
HAD Antonio Trillanes IV done a Kiko Pangilinan and ran independent, could he have won? We cannot possibly answer that question now, but I agree with those who claim Trillanes could not have won if he had not jumped on the Genuine Opposition bandwagon, a runaway train powered more by the excesses of the Arroyo administration than the merits of the team and its leader.
The fact, however, remains that, trigger-happy and shooting from the hips on the get-go, Senator Trillanes is acting like he believes he got elected on his own merits and not from the backwash of the political storm battering the Arroyo administration.
This false belief could be his undoing as it will color his actions with a self-confidence born of a wrong presumption that people voted him in for his own dazzling qualities as a leader.
Not that I expect much from Senator Trillanes. I have learned to mistrust people with a messianic complex. Political “messianism” is a strong sense of mission to bring about a new order. Nothing wrong with except that it basically includes deciding for the people what is good for them. That’s what’s wrong with it.
Therefore, it is fundamentally an elitist stance and I stand by my social theory that society cannot expect substantive change from elitist legislators and administrators. The elite basically want the status quo. The status quo is that they decide what is good for the nation. And what is good for the nation is what is primarily good for them and only secondarily (by a trickle?) good for the people.
Trillanes’ elitism emerged when he decided to stage a mutiny. That action defined him as messianic, charged with the mission of bringing about a new socio-political order. I can understand and empathize with him on his frustration with the existing order but I found his adventurism ill-advised, insensitive to what the people really aspire for: freedom. It was wrong for him to take the future of the Philippines into his own hands, the way Gringo Honasan did before him. I have to disagree with them both on this.
His elitism became even more pronounced with his morally relativist decision to ride Erap’s train towards his new social order.
How can he hitch a ride on ex-president Joseph Estrada’s political train when he was ousted for corruption and is now on trial for plunder? How can he campaign on the issue of corruption in the Arroyo administration under the banner of a man who toyed irresponsibly with this country?
Of course, the proof of the pudding will always be in the eating and I would like to give him the benefit of the doubt. Yet, I cannot help but wonder how he is going to pay his political debt to Erap and his bunch who are not, obviously, angels either.
