Democracy as a Weapon - Risa Hontiveros

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Democracy as a Weapon ANA THERESIA ‘RISA’ HONTIVEROS-BARAQUEL philippine senator

Remarks given at the Fireside Chat: Leadership in the Time of Democratic Recession at the 30th CALD Anniversary Public Conference held on 9 September in Taipei, Taiwan

I am delighted to be back in Taiwan! I was just here last May, irked and fueled by the Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines who threatened overseas Filipino workers living here, telling them they should not support Taiwan’s independence.

It was a very packed couple of days, and I had the chance to meet and have meaningful conversations not only with our fellow Filipinos, but also with the Taiwanese officials from the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Health Insurance, the Legislative Yuan, and of course President Tsai Ing-Wen. It was invigorating to have been able to engage with leaders who deeply value our hard-won democracies.

Since the ‘80s, since the victory of the People Power Revolution, since the promise of a more free, more equitable society, we in the Philippines are still struggling to show how democracy can make a positive, concrete, and tangible change in our people’s lives. The liberalization and deregulation of too many industries, for example, while a boon for foreign investors, started to widen inequality at home.

“Nonetheless, what is clear is that we are amidst a global democratic recession.”

We talked about how we can strengthen economic, security, labor, and people-to-people relations between our governments, and crucially, I raised the exacerbating tensions in the West Philippine Sea and the entire South China Sea, with China’s aggression making the situation worse by the day.

We had fruitful exchanges, sharing common challenges that both Taiwan and the Philippines face. I remember how the President of the Legislative Yuan, the honorable You SI-Kun, talked about how the islands of South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines all toppled dictatorships and began democratic transitions and processes around the same time in the ‘80s. We marveled at how we are not only part of an island chain that works to

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protect our national interests and national security; we are also part of the first island chain of democracy.

I often borrow Filipino activist and professor Nathan Quimpo’s term “contested democracy” to describe the Philippines, as this best encapsulates the struggle for a genuine democracy — one that should turn “an elite-dominated, formal democracy into a participatory and egalitarian one.”

last-ditch attempt to salvage what is left of their growing grievances. Our people’s discontent was taken advantage of.

While it has been said that democracy as we know it today has not always been kind to the most vulnerable among us, others do argue that this is only a narrative that our adversaries push to paint democracy as incapable of addressing people’s needs.

Nonetheless, what is clear is that we are amidst a global democratic recession. Since 2006, the NGO Freedom House has monitored a decline in political rights and civil liberties, while the Economist Intelligence Unit said that in a 2021 survey, only 8.4 percent of the world’s population lived in a fully functioning democracy.

Independent Foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung also reported that democratic erosion has been happening since the 2000s, highlighting the vulnerabilities of older democracies like Sri Lanka and India, as well as countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Thailand, whose democracy crises were punctuated by military putsches.

This democratic recession was made even more apparent at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Hungary, Viktor Orban used the pandemic to seize unlimited power, establishing what has been called Europe’s Corona dictatorship. In the Philippines, then President Rodrigo Duterte was granted similar near-limitless emergency powers as we were railroaded by our own Congress. In Cambodia, a one-party legislature passed guidelines making way for drastic surveillance measures that curtailed citizens’ political rights.

Instead of a health-centric approach to a health crisis, we saw how governments around the world used force and violence to implement lockdown and quarantine measures. The continuing worry is that democracy has become even more under threat as a result of the policies enforced during the height of the pandemic.

Democracy experts and political scientists have noted that this democratic recession in most of the AsiaPacific has taken the form of what they term “executive aggrandizement,” defined as a process that uses political power to insidiously erode democratic institutions through “legal” means. It is the chipping away of mechanisms of check and balance, the weakening of independent media, and the constricting of democratic spaces, whether on the ground or online.

In fact, as an opposition Senator in the Philippines, I have a front-row seat to how people within our government have hollowed out institutions of accountability.

A prime example is the million-peso confidential and intelligence funds proposed by the Office of the Vice President, led by former President Duterte’s daughter and Marcos ally, Sara Duterte. These are funds that have less auditing and reporting requirements than the regular public funds.

These are funds that are usually given to our security and law enforcement agencies to perform their mandate of addressing internal and external national security concerns.

However, the Philippine Congress, filled with Marcos-Duterte allies, has easily given these funds to the current VP. In fact, in the most recent

Unfortunately, the struggle continues. In the recent national polls, the Philippines elected the son and namesake of our former dictator, Ferdinand Marcos.

Barring talks of electoral fraud and the well-oiled ground and digital machinery of the Marcos-Duterte tandem, it cannot be denied that a significant number of Filipino voters still believed Marcos’s lies and propaganda, in what only seems like a despairing,

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budget hearing on the VP’s proposed confidential funds, the House of Representatives did not make way for interpellation, with Presidential son and Congressman Sandro Marcos moving to suspend the hearing and approving VP Duterte’s proposal under the guise of “parliamentary courtesy.”

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Minority Leader Senator Koko Pimentel and I were able to ask the VP about the use of these confidential funds, as it is beyond ridiculous that our security agency such as the Department of National Defense does not even have funds as large as the Vice President’s. Despite this, the Senate, majority of whom are allied to the administration, still went on to approve the 500-million-peso fund.

Clearly, the democratic deficit in our country is structural, with political dynasties at the local level treating public service like inherited family businesses.

This is only one of the many modes of executive aggrandizement that we are witnessing firsthand. This mode is said to be the chosen tool for autocratization in Asia, replacing the armed rebellions and military adventurism of the pre-2000 period.

While this is not viscerally and visually scandalous than, say, an image of a group of military personnel in their full garb holding institutions hostage, executive aggrandizement is even more difficult to stop. It is stealthy, gradual, and consistent, making it hard to identify a sole perpetrator or

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point to one particular time or moment that signals democracy’s singular death.

our citizens, but also a show of solidarity for the people of Taiwan.

Thankfully, our democracies are not completely out of oxygen. We wouldn’t be here today if it were. But just as important is for us to continue to monitor, analyze, and study the ebbs and flows of democracy in the Asia Pacific region as this is where two of the three largest democracies in the world, India and Indonesia, are situated. We should closely examine the health of our democracy because what happens in our region signals what could happen with the state of democracy around the world.

In the face of a global superpower that is hell-bent on bullying us into submission, it is only necessary that pro-democracy forces band together to resist repressive actions.

On top of a democratic backsliding in many democracies in the Asia-Pacific, totalitarianism is also hardening in places like Hong Kong and Cambodia, whose governments have been deeply influenced and infiltrated by the People’s Republic of China. We in the Philippines and our friends here in Taiwan are also experiencing the heavy hand of the autocratic regime of China largely due to Beijing’s sweeping and hegemonic territorial claims.

At the moment, both the governments of the Philippines and Taiwan have categorically pushed back against China’s aggressive attempts to undermine our sovereignty.

As I mentioned earlier, it was China’s unwanted and unwarranted statements against our overseas workers in Taiwan that prompted me to visit and work on improving their welfare and living conditions. It goes without saying that my visit was not only a show of support for

We know that China wants to influence our region and promote its style of politics because a deeply authoritarian state views the liberal world order as a threat to its existence. An autocracy is never secure of its power as it is power that is not freely given by the governed.

This will not stop China from trying, however. She will try to reel us in through promises of investments and economic growth.

government can show a measure of good faith by reigning in its coast guard, navy, and militia. But, as believers of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, we cannot forgo our duty to a peaceful and diplomatic way of resolving our differences. Violence is out of the question.

As I told President Tsai during my last visit, peace is our only option. And the only way to ensure deep and lasting peace is all of our dogged commitment to democracy. Democracy is a powerful vaccine to armed conflict. Democracy guarantees that we can resolve disputes without the use of force. While far from perfect, democracy is the best thing we’ve got.

All of us here today know this and yet we still found ourselves in this democratic recession. In its 2021 report on freedoms in the world, Freedom House shared a bitter pill that we might as well swallow: “Democracy is in decline because its most prominent exemplars are not doing enough to protect it.”

We have seen this in how it is part of Beijing’s foreign policy to “invest,” or at least promise to invest, in developing countries, particularly in Asia, Africa, and Latin America through its Belt and Road Initiative. But ex“Leaders who perience has taught us that these promises are often respect, value, never met. and recognize

Leaders who respect, value, and recognize the significance of democracy should urgently and resolutely the significance of In fact, then President work together to deliver on democracy should Duterte’s kowtowing to democracy’s gains, fight ...work together Beijing never resulted in off democracy’s adversarto deliver on concrete, resplendent ies, and protect democragains for Filipinos. Sure, cy’s staunchest defenders. democracy’s there’s a China-funded, lessDemocratic leaders across gains” than-one-km bridge connectthe globe have the responsiing two cities in the Philippines. bility to help each other not only But major infrastructure plans in common issues that our nations never materialized. China had failed to face, such as the escalating tensions make good on her promises of support for in the South China Sea, but also in domesFilipino projects, all while dredging the Philippines’ tic problems, such as poor access to healthcare, sea bed, harassing our fisherfolk, and building artificial that one or the other can contribute solutions to. islands in the West Philippine Sea. Within our own countries, we need to keep pushing for Yet whether or not we have an administration that is and electing leaders who will uphold our democratic friendly to China does not matter. China will do whatevvalues in all levels of governance. We need to keep er it takes to get what she wants, according to her own broadening our networks and attracting more people pace, in keeping with what she believes is her Manifest to participate in strengthening our democratic instituDestiny. So instead of pursuing legal and diplomatic tions. We need to be talking about these things beyond means in solving disputes in the South China Sea, inour immediate spheres of influence, beyond ourselves. stead of simply following the rule of law at sea, instead of recognizing the 2016 Hague Ruling, China has fired With the power of new technologies and our traditional a water cannon at our indigenous boats, shined a milways of organizing, let us foster a stronger public unitary-grade laser that blinded Filipino personnel, derstanding of our cherished democratic principles. removed a naval gun cover aiming at Philippine Only then can every citizen make choices—whether in vessels—all in service of her delusion. their personal, professional, or public life—that would always err on the side of democracy.

It is hard to imagine China backtracking on her claims. It is hard to believe that the Chinese

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