Same wild goose chase / Pacquiao: How really good?

We’re still on the same wild goose chase, hunting down the parliamentary form of government as the end-all and be-all of our political system. Now that she has flagged down the presidency, to be more precise six years of the presidency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo isn’t so sure anymore she wants to be a three-year transition president. Why have half when you can have the whole?

If the deal is indeed off, Speaker Jose de Venecia will again tumble off the shelf. GMA reportedly agreed that after three years in Malacanang, she would pass the torch of national leadership to Joe de V. He would become the prime minister, she just a ceremonial president. Finally, it is said by champions of the parliamentary system, the Philippines will scale the political heights.

The economy, our lop-sided social system, would follow and we would have the best of all possible worlds.

I have always rejected the parliamentary form of government for the Philppines, seeing it as another collar for the same dog. I haven’t changed my mind. I argued the same politicians would be in power, the same ravenous greed for money, perks and fortune. The only thing that would be different is that the prime minister would be elected by parliament. So, the razzmatazz goes, legislation would speed up like a meteor since the executive and legislative branches would be one.

Does that really make a great diffference?

We are told virtually the rest of the progressive world in East and Southeast Asia practise the parliamentary form. Speaker Jose de Venecia loves to rattle them off – Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, China, India, Taiwan, ad infinitum. Europe from the very outset had settled into the parliamentary system. So what are we waiting for?

For the uninitiated, there are two kinds of parliamentary systems. The first, the real McCoy, is the European model. Political parties are the glue, honest political parties. They are differentiated from one another by political doctrine and ideology. The Labor Party espouses the cause of labor and the working man. The party sees to it that no longer can the old powers that be degrade the laborer who manufactures the goods of capitalism. It makes sure that he earns his keep as the equal of everybody else in society. As a result of labor’s mighty struggle, the welfare system was born.

We don’t have that here. We have an upper class, a social aristocracy that looks down on the laborer, treats him as a footstool. In fact, labor generically would also include all the domestic help, servants and maids, gardeners, drivers, chauffeurs, a subclass really, the exploited muchachas and muchachitas and peones of Spanish yore. That is the truth and it hurts. They have no representation in Congress, no great leader and spokesman like Clement Attlee who even became prime minister of England.

The Conservative Party, the Tories of England, embodied capitalist ideology, the Empire, the storied greatness of Great Britain, its philosophers and great thinkers, its poets and great men of letters like William Shakespeare, its heroes like the Duke of Wellington and Winston Churchill. Do not forget. The Industrial Revolution was launched by England, by its Protestant core. And it was this Revolution that midwifed Capitalism with a big C, and the free enteprise doctrines of Adam Smith. And later John Maynard Keynes.

We can go on and on.

We can switch to Germany, to France, to the Netherlands, to Belgium and Switzerland. They all underwent the same political, economic and social experiences, and we forgot to mention the Renaissance and the Reformation. Capital, capital, capital. Work, work, work. Mediaeval age to the modern age. And now we have the Green Revolution, purists who seek to preserve the pristine heritage of the world against the excesses of a profit-hungry capitalism.

All that, we don’t have in the Philippines. We are a copy-cat country, dazzled by names, by superficial sheen.

Actually, the only way we can change for the better is to change and improve our culture. But we all saw how that was impossible for the nonce during the Congressional Canvass. All of our congressman and senators were engrossed in the game of Hide and Seek, hide the votes and seek the votes. All they regurgitated was their self-serving knowledge of the Constitution and nothing else so they could remain in power. Not once, did they allude to the welfare of the poor. Greed was writ on their face as evil is writ on the features of Mephistopheles.

Oh, there is another species of the parliamentary system.

It is found in many authoritarian countries of East and Southeast Asia. The majorityof this species are one-party systems and parliaments. Actually these parties serve the interests of the dominant party, like the People’s Action Party of Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, the Golkar in Indonesia during the Suharto dictatorship, the UMNO under Dr. Mahathir, the Nationalist Party under Taiwan’s Chiang Ching kuo, the KBL under the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship.

Speaker Joe de V should not spook the Filipino by saying it was the parliamentary system thast triggered East Asia’s economic miracles. What triggered these tiger economies was dictatorship or revolutionary regimes where a command-and-control economy took over to eradicate poverty fast and gun the nation to economic progress super-fast.

Parliaments in these countries were simply furniture exhibits.

* * *

Just days ago, I saw a replay of the Manny-Pacquiao-Juan Manuel Marquez world title fight and I began to rethink my assessment of Pacquiao as possibly the greatest Filipino fist-fighter ever. He was (at least in my mind) when he destroyed Marco Antonio Barrera in Texas last year. According to the Ring magazine, pound for pound Barrera was incomparable and inimitable. And he probably was until our Pacquiao laid gloves on him and took him apart.

Now to that controversial fight with Marquez, who holds the WB and IBF featherweight titles.

Thrice, Manny decked Marquez in the first round. Under the old rules, that was a technical knockout, and Manny should have won. And even if the old rules were still in place, Manny had no business losing that fight. Okay, there was that judge that held a 10-7 card for the first round, when that should have been 10-6. The Filipino should have won by one point.

Be that as it may, the replay showed things and elements I did not see very clearly in the first fight. In a rematch, Marquez will take care from the first round on to avoid Pacquiao’s murderous left. Pacquiao cannot kill with his right, only with his left. He does not have a homicidal right hook in his arsenal, as southpaw Gabriel (Flash) Elorde had.

Marquez will henceforth take care to avoid any bruising exchange with Pacquiao. He is not a charging Brahma bull but a boxer, a counter-fighter with steaming fast hands, three for Pacquiao’s one in close exchange. Hardly anybody in the world beats Marquez in counter-punching. He throws out short knifes in a jiffy, then moves out. During those ten rounds after the first, Marquez was so elusive Pacquiao never landed his left on target.

Another thing. Pacquiao threw a lot of punches all right, but hardly or ever in savage, relentless combinations the way Flash Elorde did, the way Sugar Ray Robinson did, the way Muhammad Ali did. There was no such thing as patay kung patay, matira ang matibay. Maybe his right hand hurt, as he said afterward, his left foot turned leaden because of a blister.

But in extreme crisis situations, like a house on fire or a sinking ship, or an aerial bombardment, hurting right hands and left foot blisters don’t matter much.

You fight because your very life depends on it. You fight because two world featherweight titles are at stake. You fight because a nameless fury possesses you, and you survive or you die. You fight because you are fighting for 84 million Filipinos who are hanging on for dear life. And the national flag is up there, stirring wildly in the wind

I have all the admiration for Manny Paquiao.

But that doesn’t mean I can no longer dwell on his weak points. And he still has some. He hardly ever slams to the body, seeks the shortest route out, the bone-crushing left to the face, the knockout. When he meets Marquez the next time, he should be more versatile, more long-distanced, slamming to the body when he cannot get to the head fast. His priority should be to develop a right hook, the way Flash Elorde did late in his career. And so did Emil (Bill) Tinde. Manny’s rights are probing rights, tentative rights, rights seeking an opening.

With a right hook, mean, wicked, sprung suddenly like a steel trap, Manny Pacquiao develops a second deadly weapon.