Wednesday, August 06, 2008 Osmeña: Let’s redefine politics By Antonio V. Osmeña Estatements
POLITICS is concerned with the distribution of resources in an orderly fashion—who gets what, where, how, and why.
Since resources, such as food, water and air, are provided by natural systems, politics – like economics – rests on ecological foundation. As resources become scarce, the Filipinos’ dependence on politics based on ecology is more and more apparent.
Since there is always competition for resources, politicians must always deal with conflicting groups, each asking for resources or for money that will enable them to purchase or control the resources. Due to these conflicts, politics has been called the “art of the possible.”
For most politicians, the “art of the possible” is focused on making their own re-election possible, primarily to maintain a proprietary control over their territory. The failure of our political leaders today to avoid hard thinking, risk taking and leadership has brought us from the seemingly possible to the impossible.
The traditional social change methods—such as education and persuasion, legal action (lawsuits), political action to institute new laws or change (like “mutual coercion” that has been agreed on) and coup d`etat—have seemingly made it impossible for our country’s politicians to go beyond traditional political strategies (to ensure sustainable earth or cybernetic), which combine long-range planning and action with short-term planning and action.
Today’s rice crisis is obviously the result of the complete failure of the past government to institute long-range planning to attain self-sufficiency in rice production. The Philippines was once upon a time a key-player in the entire Asia in rice technology. But today, our country is the biggest importer of rice in the Asian region.
Filipinos who are fed up with waiting for government to act should now redefine politics. Politics is no longer just a question of what candidate, party or issues you vote for.
Today, politics can be much concerned with how you live your life as with what you think about national security issues or energy policy. For example, while elected officials argue over a national energy policy, bow to special interests and spend much of the national energy budget on centralized coal-power to provide electricity, a growing number of Cebuanos are planning to decrease their personal reliance on such centralized energy sour-ces. Instead of buying energy for heating, they are heating their water with energy from the sun.
They are also driving fuel-efficient cars or riding bicycles to work.
Some get the electricity they need from photovoltaic cells mounted on the roof.
In taking these personal steps toward energy self-reliance, these individuals are also acting politically by reducing the need for imported oil and for building more coal-powered power plants to generate electricity. Thus, by adopting a lifestyle of voluntary simplicity (doing more with less), individuals are taking political actions to help steer the national and global transition to a sustainable earth society.
They are learning that buying more products and luxuries doesn’t provide security or freedom. Instead it can lead to insecurity because the more things you own, the more time and money you must spend protecting and repairing them. If enough people voluntarily adopt a simpler lifestyle, a sustainable earth society will eventually be achieved with or without government leadership and action.
A number of defects of the Philippine system of government that has seriously hindered the transition to a sustainable earth society are: 1) absence of a permanent and effective mechanism for developing and instituting long-range forecasts and plans; 2) disproportionate influence in government for special interest groups; 3) inadequate information flow within Congress and between Congress and the people; 4) the bureaucracy bottleneck, and; 5) failure to ensure the election of sustainable earth leaders.
I hope world leaders will think that the solution to most problems is to deliberately slow the flow rate of matter and energy in the industrialized nations and to encourage appropriate technologies in less developed countries to meet the people’s needs and to foster self-reliance.
