Correcting the CoRRECT Movement: Grandscale Midwitery

AHHH I'M COORRECTING

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The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, October 16, 1834, by Joseph Mallord William Turner

Editor’s note: Ryan Mello and Fellglow Keep closely collaborated on this feature. They shall collaborate closely again on taking down the remaining 3PA points. CooRRECTors were warned. They did not listen. They shall suffer the consequences.

The first piece probing the CoRRECT Movement was predictably met with a horde of midwits that fell for our trap and boosted public awareness for us (thus helping fulfill Fellglow Keep’s early-mid 2022 prophecy about March 2023 being the time the Pillar blows up). Never before has publicity been this high for a niche outlet, but CoRRECTOrs (to be called “CooRRECTors” from now on in this essay) have never been known for sharing a total of more than one braincell among themselves. Predictably, none of them brought up even one counterargument or rebuttal against any of our points—beyond of course petty drama by those so mentally stunted that they think they still study in high school. But despite our outlet’s small audience so far, no less [sic] than Orion Perez Dumdum himself would grace our humble social media page. Dumdum himself is no stranger to mistaking politics for petty drama (or vice versa). Unfortunately, Dumdum does not seem to have the brainpower to simulate self-awareness. Thus, we will have to explain to his audience—some of whom are hopefully smarter and more intelligent than this man—why your beloved 3PAs have nothing to offer you.

While well-intentioned, it has been the position of the Pillar that such ideas fall so short and ignore the real threats posed by ideological, cultural, and social subversion propelled by globalist, “progressive” organizations that are quasi-governmental (in the form of state-based foreign aid programs), non-governmental (NGOs and the whole complex of transnational entities like Amnesty International or the World Economic Forum, among many others), and corporate (foreign, mainly Western, companies that have made explicit their adherence and advocacy of corrosive frameworks like critical race theory, non-traditional gender roles, feminism, etc). It might very well be said that CooRRECTor ideas are useful and positively contribute towards national development, but it has yet to be established definitively as to why these are the key reforms that need be made towards that goal, or that these proposals are most sufficient in that regard, or that even the attendant assessment of the problems being resolved is actually valid.

Do not evade your responsibility with bluster and by vainly imploring your opponents to provide counterproposals. No one needs to be a mechanic to know when a car is broken. You as advocates of these constitutional changes must conclusively and without doubt prove that the positive results that you tout come solely and independently from the changes that you advocate and can only best be achieved through implementing these changes over any other alternative or other proposal.

Whenever advocates of changes talk about the benefits that they claim would arise through their implementation, they should seriously consider whether or not such benefits can realistically claim to have those changes as their cause. They must be able to conclusively prove that these positive effects arise as the specific result of the advocated changes above or even to the exclusion of all other factors. The strong claims that they make demand no lesser level of evidence than this, so that there can be no other course to follow than to make these changes.

Otherwise, if the advocates cannot or will not make such a justified determination, then they should be able to show that the changes that they hope to make are at least the best and most accurate choices to make in light of alternatives and other possibilities of change. Different systems or economic policies may be able to achieve the goals that advocates claim they desire, so the onus is on the same advocates to conclusively show that not only can their proposals best achieve their stated goals, but also that all other alternatives are demonstrably inferior to the proposed changes.

As with the preceding notion, even if advocates concede that benefits are not exclusive to the proposals they are making, they must at least show that every other alternative is inferior and insufficient to meet the results being desired. Evidence provided in this instance must show clearly that no other alternative is possible, and that the changes are in themselves alone and not owing to any other preceding or concomitant factor are uniquely capable of generating the desired results.

You who claim us to demand a utopia have lost all notion of reasoning and common sense. Implementing these changes will take time and adjustment, but most importantly, they will use taxes. It is as simple as that. Does anyone remotely rational think that nit-picking is merely splitting hairs when billions of pesos of public funds are at stake? If it turns out that the parliamentary system is no better than the presidential system, then we have spent all this money for nothing. Disproportionately screeching like high school girls at intelligent discussion will only convince many that these billions are not worth spending—in which case Dumdum’s disciples have done a great job at convincing many. For the rest? Prove that you have risen above high school classroom drama and GMA/ABS-CBN produced dramas in your view of reality.

Trusting the eXpErTs

Tally: 1/3 PAs that will never recover

Dumdum has an “essay” (if you can even call it that) on why the Parliamentary system suits the Philippines. All he does in said “essay” is look at top 10 lists of countries for certain metrics, then declare himself the winner since the Parliamentary system is on top. We shouldn’t even have to explain why this does not at all constitute rigorous analysis, but since Dumdum thinks he’s apparently a legend for doing so, we have to consume precious oxygen and ATP to explain why.

Dumdum thinks that he somehow found a causal effect by seeing the top 3 or so countries of world rankings on certain metrics be parliamentary. Never mind that in a distribution, having the top n percentile be of a certain category doesn’t also ensure that the x-th percentile will also be of that category. Never mind that descriptive statistics (if you can even lump what Dumdum did under that) of a percentile doesn’t substitute for causality analysis or impact evaluation. Some CooRRECTor coomenter commented that our initial probing strike wasn’t even scientific, it was “just observations” (never mind even that science is literally just observations). If ours wasn’t scientific, how much less is Dumdum’s? He has never done a single difference-in-difference analysis (does he even know what that means?), yet he somehow thinks he has the quantitative chops to analyze how parliamentary systems are allegedly better. Dumdum, if you are reading this, have you understood any of the statistical terms we used so far? Will you understand any of the ones we will use going forwards? He, professed to not even be a political scientist (much less a statistician), thinks that

As we can clearly see, there is even no need for complex statistical regression analysis to prove that the countries that come out at the top of each category happen to be countries which use Parliamentary Systems.

As we have drilled in already, Dumdum thinks that a poor excuse for descriptive statistics substitutes for rigorous impact evaluation and treatment effect analysis. This is the guy you love, CooRRECTors.

Dumdum then pulls some papers to back his claims. It is ironic that Dumdum doesn’t even have the chops to even begin to understand why a top 10 list doesn’t in any way prove or back his claims, but whines about the preview of the following teardown of these papers to be “highfaluting bullshit”. He and everyone who believes CooRRECTor claims should know that these papers started the highfaluting bullshit in the first place, we just returned the favor by pointing out why they make zero sense. That these studies made all these statistical errors completely invalidates any use of them to justify CooRRECTor positions—common sense that apparently is still too high for CooRRECTors in their grade school thinking to reach.

First, Dumdum links a paper by Lederman, Loayza, and Soares (2001) about political institutions and corruption. This study used both Ordered Probit and Ordinary Least Squares regression design. Technically the latter is supposed to be a Fixed Effects design since the authors included time period dummy variables, but we digress. Already, the authors fundamentally misunderstand what probit parameter estimates mean. The coefficients given refer only to Z-scores meant to calculate predicted probabilities. Estimating said predicted probabilities needs calculating marginal effects. While OLS estimates are marginal effects, doing so using discrete dependent variables is bad practice. Unfortunately, so-called “expert” economists have refused to see reason with this bad practice. For starters, economists have used Linear Probability Models (which is what the OLS estimates are in this case) for decades now. Many defenses have been made to do so, including the following gem:

The LPM won’t give the true marginal effects from the right nonlinear model. But then, the same is true for the “wrong” nonlinear model! The fact that we have a probit, a logit, and the LPM is just a statement to the fact that we don’t know what the “right” model is. Hence, there is a lot to be said for sticking to a linear regression function as compared to a fairly arbitrary choice of a non-linear one! Nonlinearity per se is a red herring.

So here’s a call to keep the LPM—it’s convenient, computationally tractable, and may have less bias than index model alternatives. In many settings we will never know. Of course as good practice we should explore result robustness to model choice. Hopefully, as in the case of our paper, specification choice just won’t matter for the bottom line.

Friedman, Jed. “Whether to probit or to probe it: in defense of the Linear Probability Model.” Development Impact. (2012).

For technical discussion on why doing so is wrong, please read Pua’s On IV estimation of a dynamic linear probability model with fixed effects—assuming CooRRECTors even have the brainpower to do so. For convenience, we quote the abstract:

Researchers still estimate a dynamic linear probability model (LPM) with fixed effects when analyzing a panel of binary choices. Setting aside the possibility that the average marginal effect may not be point-identified, directly applying IV estimators to this dynamic LPM delivers inconsistent estimators for the true average marginal effect regardless of whether the cross-sectional or time series dimensions diverge. I also show through some examples that these inconsistent estimators are sometimes outside the nonparametric bounds proposed by Chernozhukov et al. (2013). Although there are no analytical results for GMM estimators using Arellano-Bond moment conditions, I show through an empirical example that the resulting GMM estimate of the average treatment effect of fertility on female labor participation is outside the nonparametric bounds under monotonicity.

Pua, Andrew Adrian Yu. On IV estimation of a dynamic linear probability model with fixed effects. No. 15-01. Universiteit van Amsterdam, Dept. of Econometrics, 2015.

Pua deals with binary choices, but by induction (and some algebraic manipulation) one easily extends to the n choice case, and even to ordered choices. The paper that Dumdum cites unfortunately fails to give any estimated marginal effects for the Ordered Probit Model, so no one can take its findings seriously. This already takes down one of Dumdum’s so-called evidences, especially since said paper is one in a very long line of economist-written ones that rely on faulty statistical methods.

Next, Dumdum cites Gerring and Thacker’s Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitarism and Parliamentarism. Unfortunately, this paper simply uses a weighted least squares on two decades of data without any justification at all. There were no tests on autocorrelation, stationarity/normality, multicollinearity, panel cointegration, or so many possible features of the data set that can and will ruin the estimation. No one can take this paper seriously without exposing himself as someone who reads only abstracts without scrutinizing studies closely.

In another piece, Dumdum at least has the decency to pull proper descriptive statistics, no matter how jejune. We directly quote this opening line:

The frequent collapse of presidentialist regimes in about 30 third world countries that have attempted to establish constitutions based on the principle of “separation of powers” suggests that this political formula is seriously flawed. By comparison, only some 13 of over 40 third world regimes (3l%) established on parliamentary principles had experienced breakdowns by coup d’etat or revolution as of 1985 (Riggs 1993a).

Then again, Dumdum thinks that pulling descriptive statistics is a proper substitute for rigorous impact evaluation. The real question we need to ask: is it even possible to statistically determine whether parliamentary or presidential systems have direct causation on any metrics?

Let’s say we are testing the effects of a new medicine. We need to randomly select which patients will get the medicine and which will get a pill full of sugar (placebo), or there will be statistical bias in our analysis. Some med students will complain that observational studies exist and can be used to great effect. But observational studies for testing medications will have fewer confounders than testing entire political systems. How, you may ask?

Think. A constellation of factors, whether historical, economic, political, or anything else made 20th century nation states decide to adopt parliamentary or presidential systems in the modern sense of the word. How many statistical fallacies can one encounter? Omitted variable bias, self-selection bias, counterfeit counterfactual estimates, and these are just scraping the very top of the barrel. Whatever factors caused countries to adopt systems also affect much more than that. Factors that didn’t affect that yet by chance just so happened to align with some countries will also induce bias. We also need to account for heterogeneity among implementations of these systems, definitions of these systems, whether we can even validly compare pre-WW2 versions of these systems to modern ones, among so many other concerns. So many factors are at play here that we can’t just treat parliamentary vs presidential as placebo vs medication. We cannot even do difference-in-difference analyses because the slopes will surely not be parallel with how many factors are at play. Don’t even try and suggest propensity score matching. So much latent bias exists when it comes to treatments this wide reaching in scope.

Is it possible that Dumdum was just reading journal articles uncritically? Is it possible that he was just cherrypicking papers to make his worldview look better? We can cite our own papers showing how parliamentary systems are inferior (in fact we have, just scroll down). We can fling empirical evidence at each other all we want, and still get nowhere. Empirical evidence in the social sciences works to great effect, but being a philosophical field, we must start and end with first principles. Empirical evidence is only the cherry on top.

With these in mind, one of the key problems in trying to “prove” the superiority of parliamentarism over presidentialism is the just-so nature of comparisons between the two. If parliamentary country A exhibits better metrics than presidential country B (C, D, and so on), then CooRRECTors would argue that A proves that parliamentary systems can, in general, provide better results for other nations than presidential systems. Obviously, this method of analysis ignores a whole bunch of factors orthogonal, independent, and distinct from mere political systems. Economic, cultural, environmental, and biological considerations rightfully precede any discussion regarding political systems, and play more fundamental roles in establishing and determining the competencies of any society in terms of metricated output.

More crucially, the burden is on these CooRRECTors in their assertion that parliamentarism is the best possible system to adopt to prove that what they are proposing not only can deliver better results, but must necessarily do so. In attributing the political dysfunctions of a nation as the results of a faulty political system, one is effectively assigning blame and responsibility to that system. It is only thus fair to assume that a counter-proposal to be made by such individuals must necessarily be held to the same standard, such that prospective systems are undoubtedly going to provide the results that they are projected to provide. As with the pre-existing analysis of prior faulty systems, proposed systems must also stand and fall on their own merits. Faulty systems such as presidentialism caused and worsened national problems, and by the same measure, parliamentary systems ought to be axiomatically proven and practically corroborated to provide by itself the benefits that are being attributed to it specifically.

Literature Glorifying the Presidential System

Since CooRRECTORs insist that the experts are on their side, we shall present our own assortment of experts. Finding these took simple Google Scholar searches.

…if parliamentary regimes have a better record of survival than presidential regimes, it is not because they are parliamentary.

• Cheibub, J. A., & Limongi, F. (2002). Democratic institutions and regime survival: Parliamentary and presidential democracies reconsidered. Annual review of political science, 5(1), 151-179.

We argue that systems of government do matter, but their effects are indirect; they exert their influence through societies’ prior democratic records. Confirming the conventional argument, our data analysis shows that uninterrupted parliamentary democracies face significantly lower risks of a first breakdown than their presidential counterparts. Contrary to the common understanding, however, we find that the risk of a democratic breakdown can be higher for parliamentary regimes than for presidential regimes among the countries whose democracy has collapsed in the past. Furthermore, the risk of a previously failed democracy falling again grows as (the risk of) government crises increase(s). Hence our study questions the common belief that parliamentary systems are categorically more conducive to democratic stability than presidential ones.

• Hiroi, T., & Omori, S. (2009). Perils of parliamentarism? Political systems and the stability of democracy revisited. Democratization, 16(3), 485-507.

These nations are more complicated than just their systems of governing and it is terribly difficult to categorize them in a way that allows for an equal comparison point. Looking at the sections necessary in the survival of democracy — political stability, human development and economic potential —while being mindful of how historical context and constitutional strength play into the selection of the nations we compare, parliamentarism shows some benefits in terms of coalition building and ability to better represent the diverse voices of a nation without total gridlock. However, presidentialism shows that it is important to have strong control mechanisms in place and have those separate branches of power to prevent the abuse of executive power.

• James, R.M. (2021). Survival of Democracy in Parliamentary and Presidential Systems.

Presidentialism also appears to be more viable with parties that are at least moderately disciplined, and it is especially problematic with highly fragmented multiparty systems and with congressional elections that occur more frequently than presidential elections. Finally, we argue that switching from presidentialism to parliamentarism could exacerbate problems of governability in countries with very undisciplined parties. All of these points suggest that even if Linz is largely correct in his argument that parliamentary government is more conducive to stable democracy, a great deal rests on what kind of parliamentarism and what kind of presidentialism are implemented.

• Mainwaring, S., & Shugart, M. S. (1997). Juan Linz, presidentialism, and democracy: a critical appraisal. Comparative politics, 449-471.

We leave finding others as an exercise for the reader.

Fundamentally Misunderstanding the Problem

…pray tell, cher Marquis, how do you plan on having those judges and bureaucrats and legislators and teachers and journalists and bankers and industrialists, who have all grown up together, shared a secluded life as a unified ruling class; how the hell are you gonna make them check and balance each other? That can’t work. And it isn’t working. They marry each other and send their kids to the same schools. Yeah, they’ll do some show and play politics theater, or Kabuki as the American like to say for some reason (as if only Kabuki was fake and other theaters were real), but in the end they are an endogamic ruling class and they know it.

Spandrell, Leninism and Bioleninism

The abstracted notion of a parliamentary democracy does little to elicit for itself any notion of marked efficiency with regard to solving a country’s concrete and extant problems as compared to its other counterparts. It is rather farcical to assert the benefits of an unrealized model in opposition to a system that exists in practice, especially when variants of that model also exist in the real world and exhibit similar problems to that of the system being critiqued. In other words, it is much more “realistic” to expect pigs to fly than to expect a parliamentary system to fix things. Those who do put the cart before the horse. They believe that the problems that they see are rooted at a systemic level, ergo, change the system and the people will magically convert to the desired norm with acceptable losses.

The point of politics is that the system is second only, and downstream to the persons and cliques involved. In any demotic system, especially in Democracy, personality politics is a quick and easy Schelling point. Depending on the faculties of your broad mass of voters or whatever nominal stakeholders, you necessarily have to prop up figures to rationalize and demand loyalty from others.

The likes of Trudeau Sr and Blair are a good example of this in practice. These were dominant personalities within the parliamentary systems—no one can deny that without losing contact with reality. Trudeau Sr.’s main opponents were Silent Generation Nice Guy Robert Stanfield and boomer Nice Guy Joe Clark. Despite public disapproval from policies like declaring de facto martial law and nationalizing Western Canada’s economy, Trudeau Sr kept getting elected because he had the charisma when his opponents had none. The Canadian media even called it ‘Trudeaumania’. Blair, on his part, became the face and head of New Labour after his Nice Guy predecessor unexpectedly lost against Thatcher’s successor in 1992 (and was so bland that his face barely even changed between black-and-white and color TVs).

Hell, one could even argue that CooRRECTors could obtain the results that they need without wholesale constitutional replacement. Strip the president of his veto and appointment powers and you kneecap the whole damned office, leaving it wide open for personality politics to simply migrate to the legislature. For midwits who seem to think ill of the Philippine Senate for this very reason, shifting towards parliamentary systems would only worsen it, the grandstanding in the US Congress notwithstanding even.

Barely Answered Questions

Of particular importance for this piece is the Frequently Answered Questions (FAQ) article of the CoRRECT movement, a document meant to explain their position to the public in a succinct and reasonable manner, and attempts to state their ideas to the broadest possible audience. While some of the questions and answers are rather unobjectionable, some others are so questionable in nature that they require not only correction but also self-reflection about the coherence and viability of both the claims made, and the underlying assumptions that ground them. Furthermore, while specific questions will be tackled and discussed, each question that had not been subject to such will nonetheless be stated in a postscript. For non-Tagalog speaking readers, translations will be provided for Tagalog entries both in discussed and postscript FAQ portions.

The FAQ is divided into three separate sections, each dealing with one of the prongs of the 3PA. The first section is on Economic Liberalization (with ten questions), the second on Federalism (with nine questions), and the third on Parliamentary System (with sixteen questions). For now, we follow that last section, from the first to the last question, and we provide commentary where needed. We hope that dealing with these questions will help clarify some of the Pillar’s positions to readers intelligent enough, while also explaining the shortcomings that those on the Pillar find in ideas or proposals such as the 3PA and as well as those of a similar or sympathetic nature.

2. Bakit natin kailangan ang sistemang Parliamentario? (Why do we need a Parliamentary system?)

- Ito ay dahil ang Pilipinas ay patuloy na nagdudusa sa ilalim ng talamak na korupsyon, kawalan ng kakayahan sa paggawa at pagpapatupad ng batas at pabago-bagong direksyon ng polisiyang pang-ekonomiya. (This is because the Philippines is suffering under widespread corruption, the lack of manufacturing capacity and implementing laws, and the regularly changing direction of economic policy.)

As part of the overall pattern of the original piece, the answer refuses to conform to any basic common sense treatment of the initial question. The question specifically asks for the need for a parliamentary system but the answer proceeds into a non sequitur detailing various problems and difficulties faced by the country, not bothering to explain how a parliamentary system is relevant and uniquely suited to address these concerns. Furthermore, this attempt to sidestep the substance of the question also tries to subtly imply it as if the parliamentary system is the ideal solution to fix these aforementioned problems, without any sort of short justification or evidence that would conclusively establish that parliamentary systems definitively solve these problems by their simple existence, not even considering the likelihood of other solutions that could address each of these concerns with the same or greater level of effectiveness.

3. Ano ang kaibhan nito sa kasalukuyang sistemang Presidensyal? (What is its difference with the current presidential system?)

Ang presidential system ay porma ng gobyerno kung saan ang sangay ng ehekutibo ay nananatili sa pagseserbisyo base sa tiwala ng presidente. Samantalang ang sistemang parliamentario naman ay porma ng gobyerno kung saan ang sangay ng ehekutibo ay nananatili sa pagseserbisyo base sa tiwala ng lehislatura. (The presidential system is a form of government where the executive branch remains in service based on the confidence of the president. On the other hand, a parliamentary system is a form of government where the executive branch remains in service based on the confidence of the legislature.)

Presidential = depende sa president (dependent on the president)

Parliamentary = depende sa lehislatura (dependent on the legislature)

On the whole, this definition is uncontroversial, but it should be pointed out that a parliamentary system is considered to have many different variants, some of which do not closely align with the presented definition and may arguably be plausible alternatives to the proposal being espoused by the advocates of the FAQ. Alternative models that these advocates could take heed to make adequate assessments of include the semi-presidential systems of France, Russia, and Ukraine, the parliamentary-presidentialist systems of South Africa and Botswana, and the various other hybrids in use by Taiwan, Guyana, and Nauru.

4. Anong modelo ng sistemang Parlyamentaryo ang mainam para sa bansa? (Which model of the parliamentary system is appropriate for the country?)

Ang Westminster model ng United Kingdom na ginagamit din ng Australia, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, India, at Malaysia, ang angkop para sa Pilipinas dahil ang mekanismo nito ay kailangang magkaroon ng Shadow Cabinet system kung saan ang oposisyon ay kailangang magtalaga ng mga katunggali ng mga kalihim ng pamahalaan upang busisihin ang trabaho ng mga ito. Kung gagamit tayo ng Westminster model, mabilis na mapepwersa ang pag-develop ng mga malalakas at matitinong partido at mawawala ang mga nanggugulo at pawang saling-pusa lamang. (The Westminster model of the United Kingdom that is also used by Australia, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, India, and Malaysia is appropriate for the Philippines because its mechanism is to need a Shadow Cabinet system where the opposition needs to appoint opponents to government ministers to check their work. If we use the Westminster model, parties would be quickly forced to develop as strong and sane, and the nuisances and interlopers will disappear.)

This is a strong statement that, like with most points being raised here, fails to make a complete and honest assessment of its own ideas. Like with most aspects of the Westminster system, the shadow cabinet is not a formal and constitutional aspect of its framework, being mainly a creature of convention and custom that evolved throughout the years, first originating in Britain during the 1920s. It has no separate legal existence of its own, and was even considered optional during those early years, and cannot formally or legally compel cabinet ministers to do something or otherwise. To the extent that members of a shadow cabinet can scrutinize and criticize their counterpart in government this is largely done so during the public spectacle that is parliamentary Question Period, if ever this questioning is somehow allowed to be conducted by the relevant shadow minister and not by the leading questioner, who is the leader of the opposition. Furthermore, as non-legally mandated entities, the activities of the shadow minister are largely provided for and conducted on behalf of the party the respective minister is a part of, and as such, is subject to the rules of the legislature, existing laws and/or parliamentary conventions, and the overall willingness of the government majority to provide information or answer questions before invoking cloture. The shadow minister has no power per se to compel the government to action, to successfully make requests contrary to government decisions, or to obtain information lawfully without having been previously permitted by the government itself.

To the extent that the opposition is able to meaningfully scrutinize and oppose government action, it is done so collectively, such as in defeating or delaying government legislation through votes as a whole, or within specific parliamentary committees. To the extent that the shadow cabinet serves a meaningful role, it would depend largely on the internal arrangements that constitute the opposition party or party coalition and on what broader arrangements are permitted to it by law, and not as an inherent constitutive part of the parliamentary system. A good portion of the seeming importance of the shadow cabinet is not so much its ability to grandstand against counterpart government ministers, but as a method of organizing the leadership of the opposition in preparation for assuming government. A leader of the opposition may place defeated yet powerful rivals in key positions in order to placate them (examples of this would be the 1994 appointment of Gordon Brown as Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer under Tony Blair’s shadow cabinet in the United Kingdom, or the 2006 appointment of Michael Ignatieff as Deputy Leader of the Opposition by Stephane Dion in Canada, where in both cases the appointed rival would end up succeeding the one who appointed them), all the while providing no guarantee that those appointed to the shadow cabinet would necessarily exhibit the necessary competence to serve effectively as a critic in the present and as a minister in the future.

Of particular importance here is to point out briefly how Westminster governments largely allow parliamentary opposition to affect or influence government legislation. To the extent provided by law and/or convention, all legislation is subjected to an up-down, yes-no vote after having received assent by the pertinent committees. Obviously, the opposition and its shadow cabinet would have very little ability to constrain such passage as such. It is in these committees within parliament that scrutiny is applied to legislation, whose composition is again agreed upon as part of parliamentary rules, and whose scrutiny mainly involves the usual process of reviewing specific articles of submitted bills, or by hoping that resource persons invited before committees would provide points that would favor their opposition, etc. before the majority party may decide to move forward with the bill, end the debate on its own, and submit it for a full vote by parliament. Note here that the process is largely similar and indistinct to what is practiced by presidential systems in their own legislative hearings, and that both systems also hold that the majority holds a dominant position in each legislative committee, thereby restraining what opposition members can realistically do besides questioning in order to constrain legislation. Interestingly, whether by convention or by parliamentary rules, legislative committees under Westminster systems may not include the pertinent minster or shadow minister in the committee responsible for their department or area of competency (in Canada, this restriction is explicit, ministers and their respective shadows are excluded from being part of the committee in which legislation for their field is decided; while in Britain and Australia, such is merely convention). Given this, the specific strength of any given Westminster shadow cabinet within existing sets of parliamentary arrangements is largely limited and dependent on the specific situation of the opposition as a whole.

As such, there is very little that would theoretically prevent a presidential system from adopting a method similar to parliamentary questions, as long as it remains within the realistic precedent set by actual existing parliamentary systems and not the vague intimations of certain advocates. The non-legal nature of shadow cabinets allows for presidential systems to make adjustments for their existence, with the same lack of actual power and absent the horsetrading inherent in existing parliamentary shadow cabinets. Through legislative committees, presidential systems provide similar methods of scrutinizing legislation, and may even potentially provide more of such oversight by way of bicameralism and the scrutiny of two co-equal branches of the legislature.

In any event, the onus is on the advocates of this system to prove that the political system that they are proposing is by itself sufficient and capable of achieving the goals which they themselves have publically stated will take effect by its adoption. Advocates must be able to demonstrate first that the shadow cabinet mechanism is truly able to compel and effect changes on government policy on its own, and not merely as part of a broader strategy of political pressure with components both in and outside the government structure. In as much as the government can provide at least a defense of controversial actions when questioned, the prerogative remains with the majority to relent or push through certain policies, and the opposition can only formally vote against the motion until at least such time that a change in government becomes possible and their own majority would make repeal of aforesaid actions necessary. That is the only effective challenge that can be meaningfully posed by any parliamentary opposition in an existing Westminster system, to replace an existing majority with their own. At the point where a government majority is willing to withdraw and replace a proposed policy, to what extent, if any, are opposition actions and questioning even relevant in terms of making such a decision to scrap legislation? Would it not be public discontent that would be the chief driver of such decision, and that this is driven from within the public’s own sentiments and/or the actions of a notionally independent media reporting on government actions rather than the expected and partisan complaints of the opposition frontbench? These are but a few questions that advocates have yet to properly answer.

6. Maalis ba po ang mga problema sa Pilipinas kapag nagpalit tayo sa sistemang Federal-Parliamentary? (Will the problems of the Philippines vanish if we change to a federal-parliamentary system?)

Walang magic pill or silver bullet para sa mga problema sa Pilipinas dahil ang mga problema sa Pilipinas ay napaka kumplikado at kailangan nito ng kombinasyon na solusyon. Ang panukala ng CoRRECT Movement, PDP-Laban, Centrist Democratic Party at People’s Draft ay kombinasyon ng tatlong reporma (Economic Liberalization, Evolving Federalism and Parliamentary System) bilang lundagan ng Pilipinas para masolusyonan ang iba’t ibang mga problema. (There is no magic pill or silver bullet for the problems of the Philippines because the problems of the Philippines are very complicated and need a combination of solutions. The proposal of the CoRRECT Movement, PDP-Laban, Centrist Democratic Party at People’s Draft, are a combination of three reforms for the Philippines to solve the different kinds of problems.)

This question strikes at the very root of the disputation being made here against the proposals being put forward. Firstly, while an acknowledgment is made about the complicated nature of the problems involved, little is spent in describing these problems so as to be able to ascertain if the solutions put forward would be up to the task. In effect, readers are being asked to take it on faith, faulty reasoning, and misused data that not only are the thin view of the existing problems to be correct, but also that the proposals would more than make up for this assessment and deliver effectively on the benefits being implied or explicitly promised. Another cause for concern is the lack of consideration for less extensive yet equally applicable remedies and solutions to the problems at hand. Taking the advocate’s position at face value, as indicated earlier, why would a parliamentary system be necessary if parliamentary questions (within actual existing precedents and limits) can be adopted within presidentialism?

8. Hindi ba magsusuhulan lang ang mga politiko para maipasa ang mga batas (Wouldn’t politicians simply bribe each other so that laws can be passed)?

Hindi na kailangang magsuhulan para maipasa ang mga batas dahil nasa loob na mismo ng lehislatura ang nakaupong administrasyon. Kung ano ang mga panukalang batas mula sa ehekutibo o sa iba pang mga mambabatas ay direkta na itong mapagtatalunan dahil nasa iisang kamara nalang silang lahat (There will be no need for bribery to pass laws because the administration is already inside the legislature. Whatever proposed laws would come from the executive or from other legislators would now be directly debated because they will all be in a single chamber.)

This argument can be charitably described as at least one of the most staggeringly incoherent and naive statements ever put forward in matters of political science. It rather implies that bribery and corrupt behaviors are a result of the political system being used rather than as an inherent, reducible yet ineradicable part of the existence of government, and as an emergent property of human interactions within any organizational structure. Needless to say, advocates must properly justify the reasoning behind this assumption, prove that bribery is a function of the separation between executive and legislative branches, and that collapsing this divide by integrating both branches would nullify the need for legislative bribery, rather than merely making vague implications and treating it in an off-hand fashion....

9. Hindi ba magsasabuwatan lang ang mga politiko para pumili ng Punong Ministro (Wouldn’t politicians simply just conspire with each other in order to select a prime minister)?

Hindi, bagkus ay mababawasan pa ng husto ang sabwatan sa pagpili ng Punong Ministro at gabinete dahil ang bawat partido o pangkat na nakasungkit ng pwesto sa lehislatura ay maghihikayat na sila ang makaupo bilang administrasyon ng gobyerno (No, instead it would greatly lessen conspiring in selecting a prime minister and cabinet because every party or group that gained a place in the legislature would try to encourage that they would become part of the administration of the government).

In yet another instance of advocates being so intelligent and smart that they would overstep and miss the very basic point of the question that they themselves are asking, especially when the actual answer to this question is actually yes. Among parliamentary systems, and not just the Westminster variant, it is a basic principle that the prime minister is formally elected and installed into power not by voters (as is the case in a presidential system) but by a majority of politicians in the legislature. A prime minister directly gets his position not by the actions of voters, who mainly selected a member of parliament for their constituency or for a specific list, but by gaining the collective assent of his fellow party (or coalition) members within the legislature. By definition, this constitutes a collusion of politicians to select a figure that would serve as head of government.

Within Westminster systems, to be able to be even considered as someone who is capable of becoming a prime minister, it has been a largely-held convention that it is the leader of the majority party or the leader of the largest party within a coalition that becomes the prime minister and not just any other member of parliament. Depending on the party, the selection of leader may be wholly left to the party’s members of parliament (such as in Australia until at least 2014) or be drawn out into a set of different polls for legislators of the party and rank and file party members, which would then be consolidated in various mathematical methods in order to generate a single result, that could lead to successive ballots, that would indicate that a candidate has gained the support of the overall party. Even then, the removal of a prime minister remains largely in the hands of his fellow members of parliament, who may move for a vote of confidence either in the whole legislature (where a removal could trigger a new election), or for a vote of confidence within the party (allowed in the UK and Canada, or by the related process of a leadership spill (in Australia, where a replacement can be selected in the same ballot simply by having more votes from other MPs than the incumbent leader). All in all, this means that the prime minister is very much beholden to keep the other members of his parliamentary caucus happy and satisfied since the risk is always present for collusion and conspiracy towards an actual ouster.

Indeed, by fusing the executive with the legislative branch, instability in legislative assemblies is bound to increase as a result of a standard for replacement and ouster that is far lower than that of presidential systems, where the legal removal of a chief executive necessitates a strict criteria and quasi-judicial procedures to determine if the officeholder is guilty of an actual wrongdoing (impeachment also exists in parliamentary systems, but is rarely used against prime ministers and other members of parliament given the less stringent requirements set by the aforementioned parliamentary legal methods of removal) rather than mere political convenience.

In presidential systems, the distribution of powers means that a party would necessarily have different leaders in the upper house, lower house, and in the presidency, with each chamber selecting its respective leader within the confines of the chamber and its rules (The presidency, of course, necessitating a different selection process altogether). This distribution means that there is less emphasis on selecting a singular leader which can command the loyalty of the rest of the party, especially when a party is in opposition or the legislature is divided. In the legislature, a simple majority is required in order for a party or a coalition therein to appoint a leader to serve as the Speaker of the House or President of the Senate, the former being most closely analogous to the powers and position of Prime Minister. The process in which such a leader is to be nominated and determined for the rest of the chamber to select involves a substantial effort in dialogue and negotiation in order to attain the needed number of votes to be elected as leader of the House or the Senate. In making their unfocused claim, advocates would need to properly establish first that the leadership selection process within the legislative chamber of a parliamentary assembly would somehow be meaningfully be more different and productive than similar processes in non-parliamentary systems before the claim of lessening collusion and conspiracy can be properly made.

But at a deeper level, it is important to note here how it is simply supposed that collusion in selecting the effective leader of the legislature would somehow decrease in comparison to a similar but distinct prior system without even taking into account all of the changes that would transpire upon the adoption of a new system. Advocates do not even bother to meaningfully quantify by their own metricated standards as to how and what extent this collusion is to be lessened. The motivations, systems, and even the human agency underlying legislators are simply ignored in the supposition, disregarding even their own observation that other parties would be clamoring for a place in the cabinet once it has been established as an entity within the legislature, behavior that would at least be equivalent to legislative horsetrading in a multi-party presidential system if not even more rampant than in such a system given a parliamentary government’s increased reliance on majority votes to secure the passage and approval of its policies.

10. Paano kung pare-parehong korap lang ang mga kandidato ng partido (What if the candidates of the parties are all equally corrupt)?

Sa sitwasyong ganito ay mas lalo pang mapadali ang tanggalan ng mga kurakot sa lehislatura sapagkat ang bawat partido ay may boses na upang ilantad ang kalokohang ginagawa ng isa’t isa. Kung lahat sila ay may korupsyon na ginagawa, kalaunan ay mauubos silang lahat sa lehislatura at mapapalitan sila ng mga kandidatong malinis at walang bahid galing sa ibang partido (In this situation, it will be much more easier to remove corrupt officials in the legislature because each party has a voice to expose the bad behavior being done by their colleagues. If all of them are doing corrupt actions, they would soon all be removed from the legislature and be replaced by clean and spotless candidates from other parties).

Again, this is another example of what can charitably be described here as wishful thinking and naivete bordering on ignorance on the part of the advocates of these changes. The assumption that corruption is mainly a function of the system itself rather than as a behavior exhibited by individual human beings in certain contexts and situations greatly undermines any argument for changes with the system made under this principle. If this purported process constitutes the simple operation of a parliamentary system, then nations using this system would have naturally removed corruption over time. By the same evidentiary standards set by the advocates, one can easily observe corruption indexes do not spare parliamentary nations from the taint and perception of corruption. Nations that specifically use the Westminster system such as Bangladesh, Papua New Guinea, and Pakistan, not to mention non-Westminster yet parliamentary countries like Ethiopia, Iraq, and Somalia, remain higher than the Philippines when it comes to apparent levels of corruption. As a brief aside, if it is to be contended these nations can be said to have separate reasons for their higher levels of corruption than their parliamentary system, then it should also be conceivable that better-performing parliamentary nations to be in such a condition for reasons other than by simple adoption of a parliamentary system¹. As such, the claim that the mere existence of a democratic parliamentary process can somehow meaningfully repel and deter corruption on its own requires at least serious reconsideration and reevaluation, if not complete retraction.

There are other strange assumptions being made in this statement, such as the idea that corrupt officials are somehow static objects that voters can simply replace with non-corrupt counterparts by virtue of the ‘exposure’ of corrupt activities that incumbents may or may not do. Arguably, this is a grave overreach when explicating specific beneficial qualities of the parliamentary system as these forms of behavior by voters should rightly be regarded as independent and separate qualities from the system in which they are participating in, parliamentary or otherwise. It is a demonstrable fact that many corrupt officials all over the world are easily re-elected despite allegations or even convictions of corruption and other wrongdoing. Also, another problematic implicit assumption being made here is that ‘exposes’ and ‘revelations’ of corruption are generally correct and worthy of disqualifying candidates irrespective of their actual merit and truth, insofar as long as a politician can be marked as corrupt by a parliamentary colleague irrespective of any criminal or impeachment proceeding then the public ought to replace such person with a figure that, as they see it, is clean and spotless. Never mind the fact that the replacement might as well be one who is excellent in hiding or erasing information that would uncover his own actual corruption, or that he might as well be subject also to another campaign of political mudslinging without any basis in reality, it is simply taken for granted that his removal is desirable and can be easily done by voters, with the questionable politicians somehow being static and helpless figures incapable of resisting or circumventing the mainly correct and unmanipulated sentiments of the public.

Furthermore, to reiterate what had been also mentioned earlier, it has been shown that the effects of parliamentary questions on actual government decisions and voter behavior is either lacking in evidence or is largely overstated by its advocates. In consideration of similar activities in presidential legislatures, such as Congressional or Senate hearings and debates, as well as the relatively limited legal powers that these processes hold in general with respect to actually compelling action on the part of the rest of the legislature or of other relevant authorities, then it must be considered that the impact that parliamentary questioning would have on other members of parliament may not significantly vary with what occurs in the present presidential system, and that if such variance does exist in a meaningful way, then it would be the responsibility of advocates to demonstrate that such questioning is actually different and more effective in compelling legal investigation or intervention, and also in affecting voter behavior and electoral outcomes. Beyond all that, what might be the most important challenge for advocates in this case is to also demonstrate that clean and spotless candidates can and do exist in such quantities that, granting their own premises, the public can reliably replace ‘corrupt’ candidates with those fabled clean and spotless candidates over time and while also overcoming any potential for actually corrupt politicians to affect and allow for results that would favor them, any handpicked successors they may have, and other corrupt goals.

11. Hindi na ba direktang makapaghahalal ng Pangulo ang taumbayan (Will the public no longer be able to directly elect the president)?

Sa sistemang parliamentario, maari pa ring iboto ng direkta ng taumbayan ang Pangulo. May dalawang paraan ng pag-nominate ng kandidato (In a parliamentary system, it is still possible to directly elect the president. There are two ways to nominate a candidate):

UNA, sa pamamagitan ng bilang ng mga nakaupong miyembro ng mga partido sa lehislatura, ang standard requirement upang makapag-nominate ng kandidato bilang president ay 20% of the total seats or more. Ang kadalasang nangyayari ay may dalawang kandidato, isa mula sa mayurya, at isa mula sa oposisyon. (First, through the number of the sitting members of the parties in the legislature, the standard requirement in order to nominate candidates for the presidency is 20% if the total seats or more. What usually happens is that there are two candidates, one from the majority and another from the minority.)

IKALAWA, sa pamamagitan ng pagkuha mula sa mga hanay ng mga batikang mga Pilipino na binigyan ng gantimapala ng pagkikilala sa kanilang serbisyo para sa bansa. Ang mga halimbawa dito ay ang Philippine Legion of Honor, National Artists, at mga ex-officio members ng Supreme Court. (Second, through getting people from the ranks of seasoned Filipinos that were granted rewards of recognition for their services to the country. Examples of this include the Philippine Legion of Honor, National Artists, and the ex-officio members of the Supreme Court.)

On one hand, this explanation is uncontroversial, but the underlying points that it implies deserve some more scrutiny. While it is correct that the people will still be allowed to directly elect a president under these proposals, it should also be said that the president that they will be electing is a very much diminished and less-powerful figure than that of a presidential system. With executive power being centered at the hands of a parliamentary caucus/party-chosen prime minister and his handpicked cabinet, the president becomes a largely figurehead political figure that, in the practice of Westminster parliamentary republics, can at best only suspend legislation if at all despite his own direct popular mandate from voters across the country. The person that the public is directly electing with the broadest mandate in terms of number of votes is no longer a person with the political capability to effectively represent the interests of the people that elected him, and has been deprived of this responsibility by a person that at best, voters have only elected in an indirect fashion, by way of electing a parliamentary majority.

12. Mawawala ba ang checks-and-balances sa sistemang Parliamentaryo (Will checks-and-balances disappear in a parliamentary system)? Paano ang accountability (How about accountability)?

Mas lalong lalakas ang checks and balances sa sistemang Parliametario dahil nasa loob na mismo ng kamara ng lehislatura ang executive department kaya direkta nitong mabusisi ang mga ginagawa nito at may kapangyarihan ding tanggalin ang nakaupong Punong Ministro at hanay ng gabinete. Kapag nawala na ng husto ang tiwala ng lehislatura sa mayurya, magrerekomenda ito na lusawin ang buong lehislatura at magpapatawag ng panibagong eleksyon. (Checks-and-balances would be strengthened in a parliamentary system because the executive department will be within the legislative chamber and so it [the legislature] will be able to directly assess what is being done [by the executive] and be able to remove a sitting prime minister and the cabinet. If the legislature has lost trust with the majority, it will recommend that the whole legislature be dissolved and a new election called.)

The answer provided here is instructive because, as with previous answers, it introduces a set of implicit assumptions that are supposed to be taken for granted but only serve to weaken the actual proposal being made. To briefly recapitulate what had been stated in preceding entries, advocates have yet to prove that parliamentary questioning can and has by its own compelled the government majority to act differently simply by its own power and independently of being buoyed or aligned with already existing negative public sentiment. To the extent that this scrutiny is even meaningful, advocates should also be capable of establishing that this questioning is the decisive factor that motivated the government to change its course as opposed to broader concerns about the loss of public support or of charges being filed due to any seemingly irregular activities that the government may have conducted. As it currently stands, the stability loudly touted by advocates of the Westminster system also prevents the government from removing the Prime Minister or his cabinet by a simple vote, especially one that will likely be advanced by a numerically inferior opposition and will be opposed in turn by a cohesive and largely united governing majority party. Even with the options that are presently available to nations actually utilizing a Westminster system, the task of defeating a stable majority government remains slim to none indeed.

It is important here to note that the advocates here are presenting the conceptual possibility of a government majority being removable as something rather easier than in practice. A parliamentary majority is largely cohesive enough that members are expected to hew closely to the party line and to vote in accordance with the leadership through the existence of party whips (which can cause those who object to the required vote to be removed or expelled), since any weakness in delivering votes in the legislature would mean the defeat of policies and possibly even the government. By definition, the government having a majority in the legislature means that dissolution is mathematically only possible with the help of actual members of the government to break ranks and to vote for the dissolution motion, and it is only by such action is any dissolution possible irrespective of how loud and how much the opposition can heckle and mock the government. It should be pointed out here that if it is to be assumed that a modern Westminster parliamentary democracy would incentivize the formation of cohesive and tightly-knit political parties, one of the important selling points that advocates make regarding such system, then it would also make defections of a sufficient size that would allow for the dissolution of the legislature rare if not effectively impossible, which will be demonstrated moving forward. A strong party system would mean that individual members in the legislature would be making a risky decision to not only defy the party whip but also join a motion that would most assuredly remove their own party from power and likely even themselves, notwithstanding any other individual punishments that they may incur from the party, the electorate, or the courts. In this case, advocates have glossed over such concerns of understandable, practical political behavior by the mere assertion that simply shifting to a parliamentary system would transform these figures to become selfless and noble individuals who would be perfectly willing to collapse their own government, and even their own careers and reputation, under some vague principle that would align their sentiments with that of the opposition. Furthermore, this whole conceptualization of the dissolution process also simplistically assumes that if the legislature somehow is compelled to dissolve, that the reasons for doing so and the results of such action, would be sufficient and justifiable on their own to overcome perceptions of malice or ill-will by the opposition. If the government were to be in a precarious situation, such as a major recession, and the opposition were to scuttle any decisive actions by calling for a dissolution, then it would be the average citizen who would have to bear the immediate negative results of the policy shift towards another election, irrespective of any actual results thereafter.

To remove a government majority, actually existing Westminster systems allow for two methods for doing so, a money or supply bill and a motion of no confidence. A money or supply bill effectively refers to a government’s proposed budget, usually submitted shortly after the inauguration of a new parliament, and that if such bill is defeated in the legislature, then the new government can effectively do nothing without the parliamentary approval to spend money and resources. Defeating a supply bill, also called a loss of supply, means that the government is left only with the ability to resign or call for another election. In contrast, a motion of no confidence is a motion that is put forward at any time during a government’s tenure in office, whether by itself or as part of any piece of legislation under consideration, such that if a majority of parliamentarians vote in favor of such a motion then the government will have no choice but to step aside and allow for a new election to be called.

The nature of money bills is such that it is highly illogical for any members of an existing majority to vote in sufficient numbers to defeat their own budget and collapse their own government, which would doubtlessly threaten their own position. Furthermore, with their adherence to the sovereignty of parliament over all other branches of government, Westminster system using countries have developed safeguards wherein neither an upper house, the head of state, or the supreme court would have the power to reject a supply bill outright, rather than merely impose delays. This means that a parliamentary majority, most likely one that had just won an election and still in the early days of its rule, would have very little to no incentive to make concessions to objections or recommendations by an electorally humbled opposition against time-limited and legally feeble delaying tactics, and the broad capacity to override any possible objections given the supremacy that is afforded parliament. In the UK alone, the last time in which parliament was dissolved due to a rejected budget was in 1909 (and was due to the rejection of the upper chamber House of Lords, which was subsequently stripped of its powers to reject the budget after the succeeding election), and that since then, with the House of Commons assuming full and sole jurisdiction over the budget, has not seen any dissolution as a result of the budget nor of a large enough backbench defection to trigger such a dissolution. In other Westminster countries, budget defeats are relatively rare and are largely the results of a parliament divided by multiple parties and the situation of minority governments (where the governing party has a plurality but not a majority of seats) wherein defectors need not come from the governing party to gain the needed majority. In Canada, the last time the legislature was dissolved as a result of a budgetary setback was in 1980, under the specific circumstance of a minority government and with the defeat caused by the combined votes of the opposition parties rather than by a defection by members of the ruling party, being the only successful budgetary ouster out of six dissolution attempts in both the 20th and 21st century. Since its first parliamentary election in 1918, there has only been one successful ouster of a sitting government due to a loss of supply, in 1982, and that was due to a similar situation involving a minority coalition government. In Australia, since its first election in 1940, there has also been only one successful ouster as a result of a loss of supply, in 1940, with independent members of parliament siding with the notional opposition party of the wartime all-party coalition, replacing it directly with a coalition government without dissolving the legislature and calling for an election. All in all, the chances of dissolving a legislature by way of defeating a supply bill remain relatively remote, largely requiring that the government be already in the precarious situation of a minority, with actual majorities being effectively unassailable by a defeat of the budget.

As for motions of no confidence, while more usual instruments for dissolving governments as compared with money bills, is much less common than what advocates would imply. The nature of a no confidence motion is such that any opposition seeking to defeat the government would necessarily require the defection of a certain number of the government’s own members of parliament in order to overcome the existing majority. The consequences of working to betray one’s own party, both electorally and politically, makes such prospect relatively unappealing that it would be far more rational to allow the majority to lose in a scheduled election than for a minority of dissidents to take on all the risks that could end their own political careers, the collapse of the government being far more welcome than re-electing turncoats (and that, to the extent that defectors could simply cross the benches to join the opposition party, then an election may not even be desirable in contrast to directly assuming power as a new majority), with voters potentially having scruples over someone who betrayed their own party irrespective of its unpopularity as compared to voting for an honest opposition candidate. To the extent that a government may prove to be unpopular, then it is far more likely for the prime minister himself to either delay an election as soon as possible to try and salvage his electoral fortune, dissolve the government on his own, or resign. Even then, the likelihood of the alternatives is much more higher and largely dependent on the agency of actual leaders such as the prime minister or the measured sentiments of the general public than in the simplistic assumptions bound together in this view of motions of no confidence.

In the history of actually existing Westminster parliamentary governments, successful motions of confidence are rather rare, with slightly more success being observed in terms of local or provincial governments than in dissolving national parliamentary majorities. The weaker and more aristocratic nature of parliamentary assembly made successful no confidence votes more successful in the past, before the existence of strong political parties that could instill discipline among individual members (the long example of Great Britain, where the Westminster system gradually formed, in this regard also shows that the institution of strong political parties is largely independent of the mere existence of a parliamentary system, and is more reliant on contingent economic, socio-political, and historical factors of elite formation, with the formalized political parties recognizable by modern standards largely having matured during the early 1900s, more than a century after the institutionalization of Parliament and the House of Commons).

This trend is consistent among the more prominent and well-documented examples of Westminster adoptee nations. Consider that in the United Kingdom, there have been about a total of twenty-five successful motions of no confidence since 1741 (when the office of prime minister is largely considered to have fully developed), but many of these were before the emergence of modern political parties or the advent of universal suffrage, with twenty-two before 1900, two in 1924, and only one in the post-war modern period of 1974 (out of a total of 23 attempts from 1945 to today). In contrast, the related motion of confidence, which is put forward by a ruling majority to confirm the confidence of the house, is much more rare and has never been known to be defeated in the four times that it has been attempted since its formalization during WWII, from then until now.

• In Australia, motions of no confidence have never been able to defeat the government and force a dissolution since the first election of 1901.

• In Canada, the only times that a motion of no confidence had caused the defeat of a government and dissolved the legislature was in 1963 and 2011, mainly as a result of a minority government being defeated by the combined votes of the various opposition members of parliament, showing again that the vulnerability of a Westminster parliament to an opposition-initiated dissolution is largely dependent on the nature of a government’s size in the legislature.

To recapitulate a similar point made earlier, the chances of dissolving a legislature by way of a successful vote of no confidence remain relatively remote, largely requiring that the government be already in the precarious situation of a minority, with actual majorities being effectively unassailable by a motion of no confidence.

Thus, simplistic assumptions that a Westminster system can somehow effectively manage to ensure a more stable government while also being receptive to easier removals and dissolutions of government should be regarded with great skepticism, if not outright rejection. The task of defeating a government absent an election remains a heavily daunting task, one that requires not merely the mundane and arguably publically-insignificant task of heckling the government in the legislature or in committee, but also a numerical cohesion and risk that poses significant danger to any who may decide to attempt it recklessly, and which can easily lead to governmental disarray and political turmoil if recklessly attempted. With regard to the notion that these processes can somehow provide a meaningful check-and-balance to a ruling parliamentary majority, its efficacy remains rather overstated, requires further reassessment of the facts at hand, and a frank and realistic view of the various experiences of nations that make use of the Westminster parliamentary system that advocates regard rather highly.

13. Sa sistemang Parlamentaryo, walang bang katatagan ang pamahalaan kung papalit-palit ng Punong Ministro (In a parliamentary system, will there be no stability in the government if the prime minister keeps changing)?

Mas magigign matatag ang pamahalaan kahit papalit-palit ng Punong Ministro dahil ang pangangasiwa sa pamahalaan ay mapasakamay sa PARTIDO ng mayurya. Ang mga plataporma at polisiya ay hindi papalit-palitan dahil ang pinanggagalingan ng ipapalit ng Punong Ministro ay galing din sa mayurya (The government will be stronger even if prime minister keeps changing because the administration of government will be at the hands of the party of the majority. The platform and policies will not be changed because the replacement of the prime minister will also come from the majority).

Mapapalitan lamang ang direksyon ng polisya’t plataporma kung mananalo ang ibang partido bilang mayurya matapos magpatawag ng panibagong eleksyon (The direction of policy and platforms will only be changed if another party wins a majority after a new election is called).

To a certain extent, the answer provided here may seem to be somewhat correct and consistent with the general account of parliamentary systems that the advocates have provided so far. However, there are certain irregularities present here that should be considered if such kind of answer is to actually be seen as aligned with the truth. It should be said here that in this response advocates consider political parties in themselves to be an undifferentiated mass that would lend stability to policymaking as a collective even if a prime minister were to be somehow removed, in sheer ignorance of the common experience of political parties in parliamentary systems to be prone to changes in policy depending on existing circumstances and changes in leadership. A simplistic assumption that underpins this questionable claim is that a replacement prime minister would necessarily emerge from the same majority that appointed his predecessor, which is only true in the loose sense that the replacement would necessarily come from the same group of members of parliament that comprise the ruling majority party. It is certainly not the case that this successor would necessarily uphold previously established policies, nor does he have any compelling reason to do so.

In order to understand the problematic nature of this claim, it must first be understood as to how leaders in modern Westminster parliaments are selected and appointed before any conclusion can be made as to how they would positively or negatively affect policy making moving forward. In order to replace an existing leader, who may be prime minister or a leader of the opposition, each party must first comply with the mechanisms that each of them have in terms of removing the current leader. For varying reasons, a leader may simply resign and thus trigger the formal process of changing leadership, usually as a result of a defeat in a general election or as a result of personal reasons such as poor health or pending charges. If this is not the case, then the situation would involve the leader himself being removed from his position, mainly requiring a form of an internal vote of no confidence within the party, which may or may not include sitting members of parliament and the broader membership of the party.

The method in which this process is fulfilled largely depends on the party and the country in question. In Canada, every major party had eventually adopted a leadership review system, where parties would hold conventions after a general election and all members were to affirm or disclaim their confidence in the current leader. Informally, a threshold of 66-70% (or two-thirds of the party) was needed to be reached by the existing leader if he desired to remain as head of the party and whichever position he held on to by virtue of his leadership, otherwise he would be expected to resign and call for a new leadership election. For some parties, another threshold of 50% + 1 is needed in order for an incumbent leader to be allowed to stand in the ensuing leadership election and attempt to reclaim his post. In parliament, the Reform Act, 2014 also allows for the leader to be removed (but not replaced) by his fellow members of parliament within the party by means of a majority vote. In the United Kingdom, removal of the leader remains a matter strictly decided by the individual parties. The Labour Party only allows for a leadership contest against an incumbent if a challenger is nominated and supported by at least 20% of the party’s sitting members of parliament, with votes of confidence among sitting members of parliament possible but have no legal force to remove the leader or to allow for a leadership election. The Conservative Party has a different process, where a replacement need not be nominated in order to remove a leader, requiring only that its Private Members’ Committee receive from at least 15% of its sitting members of parliament a letter indicating a desire for a vote of confidence in the leader. Upon reaching this threshold, a secret ballot vote of confidence is held, and upon which the incumbent must achieve a simple majority in order to remain as leader, with him being unable to contest the succeeding leadership contest if he loses the internal confidence vote. In Australia, the process of replacing a leader was until only recently a quick and common affair, where members of parliament of a given party gathered together and either retained the incumbent or replaced him with a standing challenger by a simple majority vote. In the present, leadership spills (the Australian term for leadership elections) are now much more difficult to trigger, with the major parties either restricting any spill motion from occurring for the full length of the parliamentary term if serving as the ruling party unless backed by two-thirds of the parliamentary caucus (the Liberal Party), or requiring that a spill motion be backed by sixty percent of the whole caucus if in opposition or seventy-five percent while in government (the Labor Party), either of which can be held as an open or secret ballot. New Zealand retains a system largely similar to Australia’s previous system, but is held as a secret ballot and with exact tallies of the result largely not made available to the public.

14. Paano kung supermajority ang nakuha ng isang partido, kontrolado na ba nila ang pamahalaan?

May tatlong paraan upang pigilan ang pag-aabuso ng mababang kapunongan kung naging supermajority ang pamahalaan (What if one party gets a supermajority, will they control the government? There are three ways to stop abuses by the lower house if the government has a supermajority):

A) Opposition

Ang mga natalong partido, kahit maliliit ang mga ito, ay mayroon pa ring pangil sa loob ng lehislatura kung saan busisiin at babatikusin nila ang supermajority at madali pa nilang maisumite ang mga polisiyang labag sa konstitusyon sa presidente at korte suprema. Ito ay nangyari sa bansang Singapore, kung saan ang mga natalong partido ay 1/3 na lamang sa lehislatura, ngunit napanatili nilang malinis ang hanay ng namumunong partido sa pamamagitan ng linggu-linggong pagtatanong at pagdedebate (Defeated parties, even if small, can still have strength inside the legislature where they can assess and criticize the supermajority and they can easily submit policies contrary to the constitution to the president and the supreme court. This happened in Singapore, where defeated parties were only 1/3 of the legislature, but they were able to keep the ruling party clean through weekly questioning and debate).

B) Supreme Court

Ito ang sangay ng kapangyarihan na magpapaliwanag sa konstitusyon at kaya nitong ideklarang labag sa konsitusyon ang anumang pag-aabuso na batas o polisiya na gagawin ng supermajority (This is the branch of power that explains the constitution and it can declare as unconstitutional any abuses of the law or policy that the supermajority does).

C) Head of State (President)

Ang presidente ang tigabantay ng konstitusyon at pwede niyang i-veto o lusawin ang lehislatura base sa nakalaan sa konstitusyon kung paglalabag itong ginagawa (The president is the protector of the constitution and he can veto or dissolve the legislature depending on what is allowed by the constitution if there is a violation being committed).

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15. Paano mababago ng sistemang Parlamentaryo ang ugali ng mga pulitiko (How will a parliamentary system change the behavior of politicians)?

Ang sistemang Parliamentaryo ay pipilitin ang mga pulitiko na kumilos bilang isang grupo. Kung sa sports pa, ito ang tinatawag na “teamwork”. Sa pagsungkit pa lamang sa pwesto ng Punong Ministro at gabinete, kailangang mag kumpol-kumpol ang mga nanalong pulitiko para maging mayurya. Sa pagbago ng sistema mula sa pagkakanya-kanya patungo sa teamwork, mababago rin ang ugali ng mga pulitiko kung saan hindi na nila iisipin ang kanilang sarili lamang, kundi ang nakabubuti na rin para sa kanilang mga partido. Kalaunan ay mapipilitan silang unahin ang kapakanan ng bansa (A parliamentary system forces politicians to act as one group. In sports, this is called ‘teamwork’. In snatching the position of prime minister and the cabinet, winning politicians need to come together in order to become a majority. In changing the system from individualism to teamwork, this will change the behavior of politicians so that they will no longer be thinking of themselves only, but what is also good for their parties. They will soon be forced to place the welfare of the country first).

The answer provided here is at rather broad yet simplistic, bordering on careless ignorance or willful negligence of common sense. The supposition that non-parliamentary systems do not encourage political collusion (what advocates term here as ‘teamwork’) and instead promote individualism whereas a parliamentary system would encourage this form of collusion and partisan behavior. It should not be a surprise to anyone that in any form of a collective legislature, whether in a presidential or a parliamentary system, it is necessary for a sufficient number of members to vote a certain way in order for any sort of proposed legislation to pass. Even in the congress of a presidentialist system, political parties (whether as a single party or as a coalition of parties) need to form a coherent majority in order to select their ruling Speaker of the House or President of the Senate, with the overall mechanism for electing legislative leaders remaining largely indistinct from those utilized in a parliamentary system and whatever differences that may exist remaining mainly trivial and academic. As such, the behavior of colluding with one’s colleagues, whether within or without a political party or coalition, in order to set up internal hierarchies or to secure the passage of legislation, is hardly a unique or singular property exclusive to parliamentary systems. It is up to the advocates of this change to somehow justify the distinction between collusive behavior in parliamentary and presidential systems as somehow significant and meaningful so as to make a general case for one system over another.

This peculiar view is held rather strongly by the advocates, given the added presumption that in non-parliamentary systems politicans are beholden not to the party but to themselves alone. This view is also problematic mainly on the grounds that it presumes a strict dichotomy between party and self-interest, rather than actually considering in which parties help advance the self-interest of its individual members while that selfsame self-interest also necessitating that the party be well-supported. As said earlier, collusive behavior is all but necessary in order to achieve specific goals in a collective legislature. Horsetrading, pork barreling, and quid pro quos are all time-tested ways of obtaining and providing political capital and patronage to allies, and also are methods that are not adversely affected by simply having a parliamentary or presidential system, as shown by the continued presence of corruption and governmental malpractice in nations using whichever kind of organizational system. In support of one’s self-interest, providing for oneself, one’s allies, one’s donors and sponsors, the party is also strengthened by the formation of support networks that can be relied upon in turn to provide financial and manpower aid during elections or in terms of assisting other electioneering efforts. The notion that party and self-interest are not fundamentally at odds with each other is basic and self-evident reality that need not be pedantically recapitulated, with the burden still being in the hands of the advocates to demonstrate somehow that this behavioral dichotomy exists, that it does so comparatively between systems, and that a change therein would necessarily and exactly manifest in the positive manner in which advocates claim it would be.

Conversely, these advocates would also have to properly justify and defend the notion that after moving forward from self-interest to party-minded interest, politicians would somehow simply by sheer necessity be compelled to prioritize the welfare of the country above all then. It would be interesting to hear as to how and what force a parliamentary system would exert on politicians to act in a manner that no other existing or alternative system or ideology has managed to achieve from its own particular ruling classes, and also how it uniquely is able to exert such a force that other systems are somehow unable to provide. Political pressures to collaborate, which as pointed out are not exclusive to parliamentary systems, do not simply resolve themselves into remaking politicians into civic-minded and selfless figures, which would again require substantiation by advocates. In intensifying partisanship and encouraging parties to consolidate, it may very well be more logically plausible to assume that party politicians in a parliamentary system would put party interests first, irrespective of any actual benefit to the nation as a whole, as an extension of the preservation of their own self-interest, which is now more intrinsically tied to the party itself, which is quite likely the case in existing parliamentary nations dealing with issues pertaining to corruption that advocates assure others is illusory or non-existent. Advocates do not or cannot properly take into account for such rightfully pre-existing factors or alternative effects in their totalizing account as to the effectiveness of their vaunted parliamentary system.

It is rather telling that even the advocates simply assume that as a result of these ineptly corroborated processes, politicians will be compelled to put the welfare of the country first. Advocates merely make this assumption without any proper explanation or justification why this would be the logical and necessary result of a simple change in the system of government. If a parliamentary system by nature would lead to the consolidation of parliamentary factions, political parties, and partisan collaboration as the primary and most effective way in which legislation and governance are to be conducted, then how and why would this state of affairs somehow evolve into a nation-minded orientation on the part of politicians? It should be taken for granted that in any democratic polity, even with regimes that have only a notional claim with respect to actual democratic practice, policies and laws are ultimately justified as being for the sake of the people and of the nation itself. Democratically elected politicians irrespective of the system would naturally justify their actions as stemming from a desire to uphold or promote the common good, and never explicitly do so as a matter of benefiting their own selves or friends or partners, even if their actions or proposals would in actuality resolve into public harm or private gain. As such, disregarding mere rhetoric by politicians or political parties, why would political figures and groups in a parliamentary system not attempt to maximize the advantages and benefits that could be achieved by their own parties or caucuses since partisan action is the only viable way to initiate and conduct actions within that system while also helping them to retain power and give them a superior position against their opposition vis a vis electoral or other legal forms of contest? The process of transition from self-centered to party-centered behavior has been explicitly mentioned by advocates as an effect of the system and vaguely attempted to outline and justify the necessary emergence of such an effect, and yet the transition from party-centered to nation-centered behavior has merely been assumed and has been left bereft of plausible evidence or reasoned justification, which must certainly be conclusively defined and established before such an argument can ever be ceded some form of credence and viability.

16. Hindi ba kahit anong sistema ng gobyerno ang gamitin, walang mangyayari sa bansa kung hindi papalitan ang taong nagpapatakbo nito (Wouldn’t it be the case that whatever system of government is used, nothing will happen to the country if the people who run it are not changed)?

Ayon sa mga eksperto (According to experts):

If you put good people in bad systems, you get bad results.

• Stephen Covey, educator, author, businessman, and keynote speaker

A bad system can destroy good people.

• Gary Mottershead, chemical engineer, businessman, entrepreneurial coach

A bad system will beat a good person every time.

• W. Edwards Deming, engineer, statistician, professor, author, lecturer, and management consultant

Behavior is shaped and maintained by its consequences.

• B.F. Skinner, psychologist, behaviorist, author, inventor, and social philosopher

Since Dumdum insists on using quotes as arguments, we will deploy our own quotes too.

The best size for a country’s territory is one that produces enough resources to support a life that is neither frugal nor luxurious, but gives the citizens sufficient leisure to live in freedom and moderation. The terrain should be easy to defend but hard to invade, and allow for ease of movement internally.

• Aristotle

The old monetary mole is the animal of the spaces of enclosure, but the serpent is that of the societies of control. We have passed from one animal to the other, from the mole to the serpent, [not only] in the system under which we live, but also in our manner of living and in our relations with others. The disciplinary man was a discontinuous producer of energy, but the man of control is undulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network.

• Gilles Deleuze

The administrations in charge never cease announcing supposedly necessary reforms: to reform schools, to reform industries, hospitals, the armed forces, prisons. But everyone knows that these institutions are finished, whatever the length of their expiration periods. It’s only a matter of administering their last rites and of keeping people employed until the installation of the new forces knocking at the door. These are the societies of control, which are in the process of replacing the disciplinary societies. ‘Control’ is the name Burroughs proposes as a term for the new monster, one that Foucault recognizes as our immediate future.

• Gilles Deleuze

It is necessary for those in the city to bear arms among themselves for ruling on account of those who are disobedient, as well as against those from outside who try to do them injustice.

• Aristotle

Once [the bureaucrats] consoldiate their position within an institution, their objective interests no longer fully correspond to the interests of the other groups involved—voters, owners, members, teachers, students or consumers. A decision on dividends, mergers, labor contracts, prices, curriculum, class size, scope of government operations, armament, strikes, etc. may serve the best interests of the manager without necessarily contributing to the well-being of the other groups.

• James Burnham

The kind of economic-technical thinking that prevails today is no longer capable of perceiving a political idea. The modern state seems to have actually become what Max Weber envisioned: a huge industrial plant. Political ideas are generally recognized only when groups can be identified that have a plausible economic interest in turning them to their advantage. Whereas, on the one hand, the political vanishes into the economic or technical-organizational, on the other hand the political dissolves into the everlasting discussion of cultural and philosophical-historical commonplaces, which, by aesthetic characterization, identity and accept an epoch as classical, romantic, or baroque. The core of the political idea, the exacting moral decision, is evaded in both. The true significance of those counterrevolutionary philosophers of the state lies precisely in the consistency with which they decide. They heightened the moment of the decision to such an extent that the notion of legitimacy, their starting point, was finally dissolved.

• Carl Schmitt

It is as futile and dangerous to aim at making of society one large family, as sentimental socialism seeks to do, as to aim at making of it one large team, as positivist socialism seeks to do.

• Bertrand de Jouvenel

Where will it all end? In the destruction of all other command for the benefit of one alone—that of the state. In each man’s absolute freedom from every family and social authority, a freedom the price of which is complete submission to the state. In the complete equality as between themselves of all citizens, paid for by their equal abasement before the power of their absolute master—the state. In the disappearance of every constraint which does not emanate from the state, and in the denial of every pre-eminence which is not approved by the state. In a word, it ends in the atomization of society, and in the rupture of every private tie linking man and man, whose only bond is now their common bondage to the state. The extremes of individualism and socialism meet: that was their predestined course.

• Bertrand de Jouvenel

Epilogue: Part One

Orion Perez Dumdum will complain that CooRRECTors wish only to spread simplified versions of their ideas to the general public. They had their chance to properly define what they wanted and how it wouldn’t be a waste of billions of pesos with our last piece. They showed that what they wanted amounted to high school girls’ dreams of the perfect husband nay, boyfriend, with how little intelligent discussion they gave. Instead of rational discourse, they resorted to what high school girls do best: make Jiang Qing’s Gang of Four look sane in their interpersonal interactions.

We will continue with pieces about the remaining 2 out of 3PAs. After these, we will give our own vision of the Philippines, from birth till future and counterproposals, in our book. Stay tuned.

We wish Fellglow Keep all the best as he steps down from being our Head Writer as he has stricken a deal with the government for a large project. Luid ca! Anggang quecatamung tutuquing pangamiquit!

Unlike Dumdum et al, who remain committed social media addicts earning centavos by comparison.

Long live Ryan Mello! Our new Head Writer!

1. To the extent that it could be argued that these nations are prosperous as a result of policies consistent with the other planks of the 3PA, those will be discussed in later commentary articles that assess those other planks.