Two Party System

The exercise of people’s electoral rights is one of the basic parameters of democracy. Vote-buying, cheating and violence are never tolerated; candidates are faithful to their respective parties and people’s trust in the elections is high. In retrospect, our elections, the latest was held in May, exhibit a political culture that perpetuates symptoms of floundering democracy as it permits fraud from the precinct up to the national level of canvassing and counting. Belonging to a party is important only during elections out of expediency.

In the US, where two-party system is the norm, loyalty to the party is important and political switching is a lost relic of the past. A two-party system, however, does not guarantee that politicians would remain loyal to the party they belonged to such that turncoatism is a taboo. It depends essentially on the tradition of the elite where an internal mechanism, not sanctioned by any enacted law, penalizes disloyalty.

Philippine colonial politics saw the dominance of one party, the Nacionalista in which Quezon and other prominent colonial politicians built their reputations, in contrast to the Democratas, Federalistas and Progresistas. Quezon, nostalgic possibly of the Partido Nacionalista’s dominance, relished the idea of a single party within a government under the rubric of a “partyless democracy”, which Renato Constantino, then a student-editor at UP, derided as prelude to totalitarianism. In less than forty years, a bar topnotcher, acquitted of murder, and one of Quezon’s boys, would become a dictator in Marcos. Philippine politics today is dominated by the party in power, usually a coalition party under the leadership of the president while other majority and minority parties constitute the opposition in a multi-party presidential system.

In contrast, US politicians are divided as member either of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party although other minority parties exist. Party allegiance is high not only among them but also among ordinary citizens. Being a member of a party, i.e. Republican or Democrat, speaks a lot about interests and values.

Its strength lies in the polarization between two contending parties as they deal with their respective platform. As long as the other party provides the alternative to the policies of the party in government, it would remain viable because the electorate had to opt for the other that would satisfy the inadequacy of the status quo. The danger is apparent when the other party, which is supposed to give an alternative, only assumes the responsibility of effecting regime change with minor modifications. In short, it does not provide real option. It seems to be a mirage for the confluence of interests and policies of the two parties.

In 2004, this bleak scenario fits the political debacle in the US. A two-party system paved the way for the collapse of democracy. The reason behind this is that more than 25 percent of Americans vote for the other candidate they do not believe represent their true sentiments because they are trapped in a system that disallows free and runoff elections. The other reason was Kerry.

Months before the electoral campaign kicked off, Bush had found an ally in Senator John Kerry. Kerry supported the American occupation of Iraq, justified Iraq’s continued occupation, and continuously professed his support of the occupation in the wake of protest from the American public. Also he was a crucial factor in the passage of the US Patriot Act, a law curtailing civil liberties of Americans suspected of being terrorists. He had championed the cause of the Iraq War and promised to do better than Bush.

If Bush had spoiled the war, Kerry had assured his supporters of effectively carrying out the war in Iraq. If Bush stood as the stupid devil, he postured as the wise Messiah to save US honor in Iraq and still pursue the same imperial policy. Such was the bane of a two-party system.

In the end, Dubya got reelected while Ralph Nader turned up a poor third, a victim of a dirty Democrat-Republican conspiracy. Come November 2008, can Americans get out from this dilemma? Or will corporate America still dictate its outcome?

[First published in People's Digest Newsweekly (Dagupan City)(August 7-13, 2007)]