Critique On Sona "08

Last 28th July, 2008, President Arroyo delivered her eighth State of the Nation Address (SONA) in her eighth year of presidency at the Batasan complex on the occasion of the joint opening of the upper and lower legislative Houses. Aside from the content of her speech, many Filipinos used to count the number of applause the president gets from her audience. This year, she was applauded 104 times, much higher compared to last year’s 103 (thanks to the Bugkalot mayor in Bahag). While the president was on her fullest effort of eluding the people from the real situation of the country, different groups of leftist and protesters were shouting along the defined street of Commonwealth Avenue. This kind of rally is typical scenery whenever there is a SONA. The protesters exclaimed that the SONA was no different from her previous SONAs. The president downplayed the leftists’ reaction saying it was no different from their previous SONA reactions; and comes the saying “history repeat itself.” Actually, the president in her SONA defended herself from her political enemies, “My critics say this is fiction, along with other facts and figures I cite today.”1 In this manner, she knew and anticipated the fact that she received and will continue receiving substantial criticisms from the people. They say that Bush and Gloria have something in common aside from their fathers were both former Presidents; they assumed office on the same day!(January 20,2001); they both use "Executive Privilege" to prevent congressional investigations from discovering their gross mistakes; but most 1

http://thefilipinoweb.com/news/gma-sona-2008-2

especially, they both suffer all-time low public approval ratings! The fact that there is always a mass protest during SONA is one proof that progress is still an illusion if not a joke. The point now is what hinders us from achieving the dreamed progress and satisfactory living? Perhaps we can get answers from Althusser’s “Lenin and Philosophy.” Althusser said that philosophy is political and that there is partisanship in philosophy, thus neutrality is impossible.2 How about if the country has pluralistic parties and ideologies? Our false democracy became the home for many, varied and differing ideologies, each claiming and aiming for ascendancy. This is the reason why those in position will not end-up without receiving negative impressions from persons or group of persons whose ideals contradicts with them. Since the declaration of the false independence, history shows that there was no leader and party who never pushed their own interest upon assumption into power. There was a time when Enrique Dussel asked Rorty if the exploitation of Latin America or of the poor North Americans is caused by capitalism, “Is there in any event a system without exploitation?”3 the latter replied. Although Rorty was playing safe in his answer yet seemed affirmative, capitalism for the Marxists promoted division and has become an obstacle for us to leap forward (in Maoist sense) to a better future. For capitalism means accumulation.

2

3

www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1968/lenin-philosophy

Dussel, Enrique. The Underside of Modernity. Trans and Edited by Eduardo Mendieta, New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1996.

Some Church people and religious congregations went out and joined the anti-Gloria’s SONA rally, remarkably the Franciscans. This shows that even inside the Church there is no place for neutrality, for the God they believed-in is a bias God. The Catholic religion is of great influence in the country’s politics and day to day life. However, during the rally, certain personalities asked, “Where is the CBCP? This led me to ask, is the Church guilty of mediocrity? Or their absence only shows partisanship and division within the Church’s hierarchy? Indeed, partisanship has apparently entered the Church patterned with that of the secular world. We have proved that the issue on partisanship becomes one of the major, but not the ultimate, hindrances for the country’s economic progress. If Althusser was right, why is it that only few, if none, communist states achieved economic progress? Was communism doomed to failure? Working hand in hand is not hard to do in these countries for they are under one banner and one party. Perhaps there is a more concrete reason for all of this. The United States of America is so enthusiastic and motivated in fronting democracy as the answer to progress, crashing Hussein for capitalistic and imperialistic purposes. However I believe in a saying “do not impose your own definition of success to others.” The utopia of democracy (in the sense of Manheim) is a failure here in the Philippines. Our democratic concept of freedom becomes a tolerance for those in power. Going back to the SONA, some interesting part of her speech aside from one great announcement made at this year’s SONA; that “texting”

would now only cost .50 cents, were about the issues on land reform, ancestral domain, and the much awaited issue of scrapping VAT (value added tax) which was denounced by the president. "If we remove the VAT, business confidence will decline, interest rates will go up, the more the value of the peso will fall, and the more commodity prices will rise."4 I can make a lot of critique from this statement. However, another statement that comes from her mouth got my attention, “I said this is a global crisis where everyone is a victim. But only few can afford to avoid, or pay to delay, the worst effects.”5 Globalization is often used to refer to economic globalization, that is, integration of national economies into the international economy through trade, foreign direct investment, capital flows, migration, and the spread of technology.6 Globalization has become the hegemonic culture of humanity. In the case of the Philippines, we cannot escape this trend. Perhaps, Gloria is right partly in putting the blame into global crisis but failed to put the blame in her administration. Focusing again on the question posited above, I shall now break my intellectual neutrality by accepting the leftists critique on capitalism. The archipelago is a home for capitalists, especially foreign investors. The country depends so much to the global economy being a member of the 4

http://thefilipinoweb.com/news/gma-sona-2008-2

5

http://thefilipinoweb.com/news/gma-sona-2008-2

Bhagwati, Jagdish (2004). In Defense of Globalization. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. 6

international communities such as the WTO. Capitalism and consumerism is fast changing and its growth is seemingly unstoppable. The country is not yet an industrialized one but the advanced countries kept on advancing and accumulating while we are left lame and ultra dependent to them. We are dependent because our then and now leaders allowed this to happen and that majority of the Filipinos just tolerated if not passive to such critical public issues.

However, I cannot put the blame to the vast poor Filipinos

whose accessibility to public involvement is being thwarted by economic and political dominators. We are all victim of this industrial and capitalist culture as Horkheimer said that the sociological theory that the loss of the support of objectively established religion, the dissolution of the last remnants of precapitalism,

together

with

technological

and

social

differentiation

or

specialization, have led to cultural chaos is disproved every day; for culture now impresses the same stamp on everything.7 This is what Marcuse is telling us, the one dimensional society, one dimensional thought and one dimensional man.8 Gloria’s SONA is actually contradictory to what is happening in the reality. However, it appears through media and television impressive. The SONA is like a sound film through live coverage and documentation

of

the

media;

Batasan

complex

can

no

longer

be

distinguished from the CCP; there are directors, protagonist (Gloria),

7

Marxist Literary Criticism Philosophy Archive @ Marxist.org: The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception 8

Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideologies of Advanced Industrial Society. Boston: Beacon, 1964.

supporting actors (Bugkalot in Bahag, etc.) and fans club (all slave and pervert audience). A society which commodifies culture is a place of massive contradiction for the talented innovator.9 There are techniques by which the innovator can use and exploit this condition, these including satire and irony, manipulation of the medium, independent production and alternative distribution. Derrida and Baudrillard would interpret this as implosion but not yet in the last phase10. Many intellectuals have just interpreted the world in varied ways; the point is to change it.11 If I would be asked how to change it, I will not just settle for Foucault’s aesthetic of existence. We need more than that. Much more to Baudrillard’s overconsumption, our third world dwellers don’t have access to that. My assessment thus is first; we should have one strong philosophical party (in Althusser’s sense) that would combat the one dimensional culture (in Marcuses’s sense) imposed to us by the multinational owners of production through putting artificial needs that leads to “mass deception” (in Horkheimer and Adorno’s sense). Secondly; that this party should be composed by the intellectuals who have time and access to public domain’s privileges, for a typical passive Juan dela Cruz is busy devoting his time in fulfilling the “basic needs”12 for survival. Thirdly; that these Leninized people (just a term for orthodoxy and loyalty to the party) 9

http://barneygrant.tripod.com/cultureindustry.htm

10

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation

11

XIth thesis on Fuerbach as cited by Althusser in his “Lenin and Philosophy”

12

Abraham Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs.

shall start the logico-dialectic-artistic way of living through great refusal that would lead to a collective revolution. There are many ways of revolution. Arm struggle is typical if dialogue is not appropriate. In the early part of this article, I ask the question why most communist and socialists or at least independent states did not achieve prosperity? What is the common factor with that of the poverty of the third world republican countries? We may win the revolution in our own independent states, however, the problem is global. The issue still is the unequal distribution of goods and services controlled by multi-national companies mostly settled in the West and other center countries. I did not find the true answer to all discussed contemporary philosophers. We can emancipate ourselves through reason and intellectual masturbation but not our living, still they are the owner of mass production and the deception will continue with its advanced pleasuristic forms. This utopia will never be realized unless the “Ego” will give way to the third world “Other.”13

Our Lady of the Angels Seminary Bagbag, Novaliches, Quezon City

A Marxist Critique on President Gloria Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address (SONA)

13

Dussel, Enrique. Philosophy of Liberation.

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements In Contemporary Philosophy

Submitted to: Professor Gerardo Lanuza

By

Adam E. Dalac First Semester, 2008