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PRIOR to Spain's arrival, our islands were populated by indigenous settlements and villages called barangay, headed by local chieftains, a datu, assisted by a council of elders — maginoo, or local nobility — who helped in decision-making and governance. The people under this system were the maharlika (generally the warrior class) and the commoners known as timawa — freemen, who had limited rights and were obligated to provide labor and resources to the datu in exchange for protection and security.
In a system of serfdom, the alipin rendered services and labor under a complex system of obligations: alipin namamahay, paid servants, were housed within the premises of the people they served, and alipin saguiguilid were the unpaid servants. These are forerunners of our current kasambahay (maids and yaya), and not a system of slavery, later introduced by our Spanish colonizers through the encomienda system.
The datu oversaw a few hundred kindred subjects composing a stable sociopolitical unit. Leadership was hierarchical. Authority and power were concentrated in the hands of the datu and maginoo. His ascendancy was based on lineage, wealth and ability to provide for his community. A centralized, unified government structure over the entire archipelago was nonexistent. The villages were decentralized.
The 300 years of Spanish colonization, the introduction of a bureaucracy and the influx of the Catholic Church hierarchy evolved a semblance of centralized government, eroding the preeminence of the datu and the ruling class on top of the social order.
Decision, decision-making and morality
The colonial regime eventually converted the polity into its instrument for governing the territory, collecting taxes and keeping the peace — all in the name of the Spanish crown. The original pre-colonial bonds between social classes, maginoo, maharlika, timawa and alipin, primitively feudal but a perfectly working arrangement, were eroded and eventually broken, their nature transformed by Spanish fiat.
American tutelage
The imposition of another system of governance piggy-backed on these traditional bonds further altered the character of the rulers and the ruled. Filipinas was America's first colony, and these baby steps at colonization were a trial-and-error. For instance, America, whose people take pride in their individual freedoms, injected democracy and republicanism, particularly the idea of representative government, bypassing the cultural and political practices and roles of the datu and maginoo.
"Filipino aristocracy" was never subscribed to by either Spanish or American colonizers, effectively dismantling the structure. But the cultural imprint of centuries of clan interrelationship was indelible, where the clan heads/patrons were expected to perform their traditional roles, providing protection and even livelihood to their clansmen. The patrons, therefore, had to accumulate the wherewithal, wealth, and political power to perform these obligations and tasks. Driven to preserve their prerogatives, patronage politics (polpat) began to take root.
America introduced alien institutions like the three co-equal branches of government, further complicating traditional governance. Yet, what was structurally imposed was a far cry from the American system itself. Instead of a federal structure suitable for diverse clans proliferating in the islands, a unitary system of government headed by a president was instituted. But the most glaring defect of the presidential system is that this became the embryo upon which patronage politics was centralized, nurtured and dispensed.
When we claimed full sovereignty from America after the commonwealth period, the traditional patronage system was structurally ingrained as a systemic anomaly buttressed by the 1935 Constitution. Thus, it was bequeathed to our Philippine presidents the role of the top patron, reaching its apex during the Marcos Sr. years. The dictator elevated patronage politics, practiced to perfection during the martial law years, when "crony capitalism" came into our political lexicon. To hold on to power, patrons and padrino could dip their dirty fingers into the public coffers — thus, a new sub-species of the oligarchy appeared in the glossary, "kleptocracy."
And in our presidential system, where the president, the most powerful position in government is elected at large, he is expected to provide the resources for an expensive election campaign. This opens an aperture for the oligarchy and the moneyed elite, which was coming into its own, to influence the outcome.
And this goes down to all levels of governance. Today, polpat has become more pervasive, fomenting corruption. Our electoral processes, for instance, are the overarching environment upon which political patronage incubates.
With the constitutionally mandated term limits of elective officials, the desire for continuity in office easily morphs into a deviant model of "public service as a private business," becoming a strong impetus toward the perpetuation of this power base — thus the need for the patron/clan head to pass this on to wife, husband, children or relatives. This assures the family control over its portion of the local government unit, seeding public elective or appointive positions of power with blood kin. Thus, the flowering of "political dynasties" ("Presidential system, patronage politics and political dynasties," The Manila Times, March 28, 2018).
Oligarchy, political dynasty (olipolidyn) intertwine
In the Philippine setting, the oligarchy, as defined, refers to certain large private multi-businesses, some of whose wealth can be traced back to the Spanish colonizers. Some sources of wealth were gifted to families from Catholic friar lands for their services to the crown (encomienda).
Growing over time, this wealth is passed on to the next generations. Many of these businesses started as monopolies and continue to the present time. But many indubitably grew out of sheer hard work by founders, gifted with talent and the ability to convert opportunities into wealth creation.
But to exist, survive and flourish, they needed to acquire and possess political power to protect their economic clout. In the present context, political power is acquired through a legitimizing process of elections, perverted or otherwise.
This marriage of interests between the oligarchy and political dynasty blurs the line between economic and political power accumulation, resulting in several phenomena with grievous consequences.
First, encroaching directly into the political mainstream, political parties are created or captured. Cases in point (read part 2 of the series, TMT, April 3, 2024): The Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC) of the late Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, Jr., now under successor Ramon Ang; the National Unity Party (NUP), chaired and funded by Enrique Razon Jr.; and the Nacionalista Party (NP) of billionaire and former senator Manny Villar.
Party-list system
The second phenomenon is the travesty of the party-list system. Originally a political innovation patterned after European party lists to give broader voice to the "non-political" sector of society — the farmers, fisherfolk, labor, peasants, etc. — the purpose of which was to democratize the lower house of Congress which the oligarchy and the political dynasties had co-opted. What was meant to allow one-fifth of the lower house greater democratic representation was instead perverted by the oligarchy and the political dynasties by installing family members as party-list representatives. Today, the party list has become an adjunct to the twin evils of Philippine politics — the olipolidyn.
The seeds of the oligarchy and political dynasty (olipolidyn) on the fertile soil of political patronage (polpat) germinated during those centuries on Spanish and American influence and now have grown in their full glory.
Politics in the Philippines as a family business is thriving.
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