The Presidential System Promotes Anti-Intellectualism

I remembered when I decided to write about how it's all about BOTH people and systems that make a good government go round. It's not just the quality of the people but also the quality of the system. I would agree that a parliament won't work if people are all incompetent yet the presidential system hardly works because it really encourages popularity over competency. So how is the presidential system actually by all means anti-intellectual? Credibility and popularity are two different things. Need I remind you that the basic definition of a democracy is a government of the people, for the people and of the people and not a government of the majority, for the majority and by the majority? Majorities and minorities compose of people -- not just the majority yet the problem of the presidential democracy is that it's actually a rule of the majority in the form of bullying mobs. 

How does the presidential system promotes anti-intellectualism? 

Why do you think people are always voting for celebrities and athletes who know nothing about running a country over doctors, lawyers and economists into public office? It's because the presidential system is always ran by the rule of popularity. Anybody can vote in the current laws of the 1987 Constitution if they are at least 18 years old, a resident of the Philippines for at least one year and resident of the place where yo intend to vote. This is the problem when uneducated people (such as squatters) become voters -- that is as long as they can process at least two valid government IDs such as SSS and GSIS then they can already vote. These people know nothing about who to vote but they only know how to vote -- shade your circle, scan it into the voting machine then presto -- the vote is already processed and good as done. So in short -- it's very easy to buy votes by popularity, bribery or both. Worse, it has become a government for stupid people, by stupid people and of stupid people. 

So why is the Philippines stuck in a culture of anti-intellectualism? It's because it's ran on a system that's dysfunctional and anti-intellectual. Presidential systems has never been about credibility but popularity. The wins of former presidents Joseph "Erap" Ejercito-Estrada and Noynoy Aquino were because of their popularity. One's a movie star and the other is the son of both the late Ninoy Aquino and Corazon C. Aquino. If the presidents aren't the only problem (and I won't dismiss that both Erap and Noynoy did some economic amendments during their terms) -- it's all about their appointees and the people below them. The Senate (until now) is usually filled with stupid clowns such as Tito Sotto whose cyberlibel clause would just waste so much precious space in jail that could imprison real heavy libel cases if people can go to jail for petty libel cases. 

True, I agree that replacing people is part of the solution but terminating incompetent people is not a panacea. It's just part of the solution and NOT the whole solution. An illustration is that you have the office ran by a lousy system. A businessman can go ahead and remove people who mess up with their jobs but if he doesn't change the defective system then his need to fire more people increases. If the system doesn't allow proper delegation of authority and responsibility then how can you expect efficiency? It doesn't matter how good the managers and supervisors are but if they are stuck in a bad system then they might as well go in a meltdown and hand in their resignation letters. The same can go for the presidential system -- no amount of firing or impeaching stupid people from the government will work if the system keeps getting driven by popularity than credibility? It will then increase the number of cycles of hiring and firing incompetent people instead of reducing the need to fire incompetent people.

How does the parliamentary system fix the system of anti-intellectualism? 

The parliamentary system is ran based on competency and not popularity. The parliament respects both the Majority Bloc and the Minority Bloc. The Majority Bloc is the ruling party while the Minority Bloc has the role to offer their alternatives and to hold the former accountable to the public eye. This also includes that the Speaker of the House himself or herself can't afford to be like either Franklin Drilon or the idiot Pantaleon Alvarez. He or she has to be non-partisan and to listen to both sides within the Parliament during the debate. Senators from both the Majority and the Minority Bloc must also engage in the weekly debate.

You can imagine the set-up of how parliamentary works. Can you imagine if Drilon were the Speaker of the House and he sleeps in the middle of a debate? His attention would be called and probably both sides from the Majority and Minority will vote him out. Can you imagine of Alvarez were the Speaker of the House and he foolishly decides to abolish the Ministry of Human Rights because said Human Rights Minister failed to do his job? The weekly question hour would require both sides to prepare their pros and cons while working towards a common goal. Both sides have to be well-prepared or risk getting removed via a vote of no confidence one way or another.

So why is there so much scare-mongering about the parliamentary? It's obvious people from parties like Bayad Muna Partylist or the Liberal Party are just using the whole "Gloria Forever" scare as an excuse. In reality, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo if she eve becomes Speaker of the House can be removed if ever people lose confidence in her. The whole parliamentary system has both the Majority and Minority Bloc at each others' toes. It would be detrimental to the whole trend of anti-intellectualism when people must respond to intelligent questions with intelligent answers. They can't ask stupid questions and give stupid answers. That means the popularity contests would be dying. It's all because stupid systems create stupid people while good systems create good people.