Philippine Democracy

We generally defines democracy as a government of people, as a power-to-people government or even as a political philosophy with relative numbers of laws and rulings, but the question is, “Are we still living in the freedoms and rights as a citizen of democracy or these things were buried in the past?”.

In our country, government has a constitutional right or even an obligation to protect the democratic order against the enemies of the state. Since, our president imposed the Presidential Proclamation No. 1017, it causes the whole nation a legal basis for the emergency. This proclamation defines the forces of the so called “elements of the opposition” to take into rest their extreme rights and lefts against the government.

The accuracy of state actions is one of the central foundations of democratic governance. This basic thing applies to democracies in any part of the world. The government holds and protects the rights and liberties of all Filipinos. From a democratic point of view, it is always problematic if the government says that they need to hold back the democratic rights to protect democracy, which are an irony and usually a redundant question among leaders and rulers.

Public statements and expression that restrict the basic freedom have a relevance to stopping a person from breathing. One of such freedom which is a cornerstone and foundation of every democratic society is the freedom of expression and the mere fact that the chief of the Philippine National Police went on record and threatened the freedom of the press to allow the nation know what is happening, is such serious democratic decay.

Furthermore, the raid on a pro-opposition newspaper and killing those representatives who are at the opposition are symptoms of highly illiberal intentions of the government. With this kind of society the political parties will remain weak and will have no impact to the mass and all the departments of the government will sonly be under the full control of the president’s allies.

As a matter of fact the Philippine democracy has once more become an international issue. In the present report on the global state of human rights, our country is downgraded from a free democratic country to a partly free democratic country because according to them the negative status was based on massive electoral frauds and corruption

This allegations can be considered as a snap on the face for the nation because we are about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of people power revolution that gave us freedom from dictatorship yet we are downgraded.

Well, democracy is such a serious matter for us Filipinos and the question is “where does the problem lies? Is it in the people who always complain about their lives but doesn’t take a move or those leaders who close their ears on the sorrows of these suffering people or both?

Think of it and you will understand the real situation of our democracy on this 21st century.