Wanted: Opposition

THERE’S THE RUB

By Conrado de Quiros - Inquirer
We had an interesting item on the front page last Sunday, which was the Kapatiran Party’s lone winner in the last elections keeping the party’s hopes alive. That lone winner is John Carlos de los Reyes who won as a councilor in Olongapo City and who now carries on Kapatiran’s work there. All of the party’s other bets lost, notably the three who ran as senator -- Martin Bautista, Zosimo Paredes and Adrian Sison.

I myself do not see why the flame of Kapatiran’s future should be kept flickering solely by that victory. There’s much air, or oxygen, to fan it to a roaring fire these days. Not the least of it being the not-very-poor showing of the Kapatiran candidates in the elections despite bucking near-impossible odds. Despite meager funds and even more meager time to kick off an effective campaign, they managed to capture the imagination of media (which featured them more than the others) and of many civic-minded citizens and groups (who volunteered to campaign for them for free). The party can always take heart from that.

But more than that, the fierce wind that should blow Kapatiran into a raging fire over the next few years is simply that there is a need for it. That need comes from the fact that there is no opposition left in this country. You look at the current state of the so-called “opposition” and you will be hard put to see what its members are opposed to. Or, well, it is easy to see what they are opposed to: They are opposed to others being in power, not they.

The first thing they did after elections was to fight for spoils in the form of committee chairmanships, trading their votes for Senate president the way merchants sell their wares to the needful and whores sell their bodies to the lustful. Forgetting that one of their own was even then struggling to put his head above water while a flood of cheating swirled around him, who was of course Koko Pimentel. He drowned from his cries reaching heedless ears.

The second thing they did, or at least three of them did, was to eye the prize in the form of the presidency, like prospectors half-crazed by the sun and time spent in dancing wildly at discovering fool’s gold. Who are Manny Villar, Mar Roxas, and Loren Legarda. Do they seriously think the one who wears the crown will give it up so willingly after all the blood that now taints it?

If only by default or the principle that a vacuum will always be filled, Kapatiran should have its future burnished like gold or its flames stoked to a blinding light, whichever image you prefer. This country is looking for a way out of the crippling bind it finds itself now. This country is looking for a way out of the clashing rocks that are threatening to turn the ship of state, or ship of fools, or ship of slaves, into a pile of flotsam and debris -- if they haven’t done so already. This country is looking for a way out of Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the entertainers and the “trapo” [traditional politicos], the administration and the loyal -- or opportunistic -- opposition the way the down-and-out are looking to other shores as a way out of their desperate straits.

If only because this country needs to survive, Kapatiran has every reason to thrive.

I’ve always said that if there was a stage where a country could achieve self-sustaining growth, there must also be a stage where a country could reach self-perpetuating backwardness. If by an accretion of the right elements a country could reach a point where it might “take off” and never look back, then by an accretion of the wrong elements, a country could reach a point where it might fall into a pit and never be able to climb back out. You believe in God, you have to believe in the devil.

That’s what we’re on the brink of today. We’re falling downward, in a swirling, spiraling, self-propelling way, and we’re gathering speed. All our neighbors, including Cambodia and Laos, are rushing past us, while we whistle in the dark. I was tempted to say like the Seven Dwarves, but the Seven Dwarves at least had jobs. We don’t arrest that fall over the next few years, we won’t have a country left.

But it’s more than our floundering in an angry sea that should make us search desperately for safe harbor that is a Kapatiran, it is also that Kapatiran itself offers a beacon of hope to the storm-tossed. It is the only real political party in this country, which shows exactly what is wrong with our political system. I used to say other than the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), but even the CPP tends to have leaders that are bigger than the party and not a party that is bigger than its junta. And Kapatiran is the only (non-clandestine) party that will have nothing to do with “trapo.” Of course right now, that makes for good news and bad news: The good news is that Kapatiran has no “trapo,” the bad news is that it has little else. But that can always change -- when you realize the joke is on you.

I personally think Kapatiran should strike an alliance with the other groups that contested the 2004 elections -- notably the Aksyon Demokratiko Party and Eddie Villanueva’s group, the Catholic Church, the NGOs and other elements of Edsa People Power I and II -- and form a coalition to challenge the ruling parties, or party since they’re just really one. Cory did it, and we’re back to the days of martial law anyway, fighting another Marcos. And I seriously suggest Kapatiran adds an emotional appeal to its mental one, regaling the world with stories and not just agendas, with passion and not just platform, with dream and vision and not just facts and figures.

If you build it, as “Field of Dreams” says, they will come. That isn’t just faith, that is truth.

A pipe dream? Well you think becoming a First World country in 20 years, or the person who says that will step down well before then, isn’t?