This is an opinion piece. And so, allow me to express an opinion: the political is not necessarily about what is electoral, nor the electoral necessarily about what is political.
Let me explain:
To me, the essence of what is political is wielding power to achieve the greatest good for the greatest number of people. At least, this is what our Constitution says by way of its enumeration of the people’s rights in its opening provisions. The people are the citizens and residents of a “polity”, which refers to a governance unit that by law in this country could be a barangay, municipality, city, province, and nation.
From this, I see three key features of what is political: (1) acquiring power, (2) wielding power, and (3) agreeing on what would be the “greatest good for the greatest number of people”.
Acquiring power. The Constitution says that political power rests on and is dispensed (or handed out) by the people. This, by way of elections (or what’s also referred to as the electoral process). Constitution-wise, political power in this country is acquired through a regularly conducted and unbridled electoral process. This is what’s deemed a lofty and legal sense of acquiring political power,
Constitution-wise. Political power that has been acquired other than through regularly conducted and unbridled elections are supposed to carry no legal weight and validity (strictly speaking) and would be deemed a low (or perverted) sense of acquiring political power.
Wielding power. This is, by law, the exercise of legally prescribed mandates, using legally prescribed means, with legally prescribed accountabilities. This is the lofty and legal sense of wielding political power. Wielding power outside of prescribed mandates, means, and accountabilities are supposed to carry no legal weight and validity (strictly speaking) and hence a low (or perverted) sense of wielding power.
Greatest good for the greatest number. Identifying and agreeing on what would be the greatest good for the greatest number of people is probably the most nebulous feature of what is political. This has to be agreed together by the people and those who seek to be assigned power by the people. But what’s identified and agreed could shift from before the elections to after the elections.
Electoral aspirants may loftily agree to what the people say would be the greatest good for their greatest number before the elections, but then perversely drop or define it their way after the elections. That is why this “greatest good for the greatest number” thing could be tenuous, slippery, and temporal. But other than for this, any other intent for acquiring and wielding political power is not constitutionally prescribed. It’d be low and anything but lofty.
My take: aspiring for electoral victory may not be for lofty political goals and aspiring to hold political office may be more for only lowly electoral objectives and not for lofty political aspirations. When – and if – this happens, our Constitutionally-intended creation and use of political power would be perverted and made low through the electoral process that’s just used to merely gain power sans sound political intents.
But when – and if – this does not happen, and electoral intents are, in fact, for lofty political ends, we’d have a lofty political infrastructure and a lofty political life as a nation.
My final take: we’ll never be low if we, the people, would choose to be lofty and spurn what is low; we’d never be low if candidates choose to be lofty and reject all that is low (Not my sense of lofty and of low, nor anyone else’s, but as posited and prescribed in the letter and spirit of our Constitution). – NWI
