THE POLITICAL HECKLER

Fight the system! The elite’s fortune rests on our toil below

- RONALD LLAMAS

“Yaman ng taas galing lahat sa ibaba.” This was the resounding chant of the Filipino rap collective Morobeats as they marched through EDSA with thousands of protesters to denounce massive corruption at the Trillion People March on Sept. 21.

I first met this group when they joined Atin Ito’s third civilian supply mission to the West Philippine Sea, and they are nothing short of geniuses. The group’s defiant chant in EDSA was catchy ina way that the crowd carried it easily. But more than that, it was also a brilliant political analysis and critique of Philippine society. In just seven words, Morobeats captured the deeper context of the protests — the grossly uneven political and economic relations of the “great unwashed” and the elite.

The deep-seated nature of the corruption, spanning multiple administrations, the Dutertes and allies of President Bongbong Marcos, indicates that this is more than a mere tale of unbridled personal greed. It is sewn into our political fabric. It is systemic, arising from patronage politics, elite democracy and political dynasties. Our political system is not just weak, it is rotten and corrupt to the core.

Decades of nontransparent and undemocratic governance have reduced the budget process to the private playground of the executive and the legislature. It is the rule of the few for the benefit of the few. Democracy in form, oligarchy in substance. The people, whose money fills the national treasury, are locked out of the process. Civil society groups are ignored, while we are asked to trust the same politicians who treat the nation’s coffers like their personal trust fund.