Now is not the time to discuss the deeper meaning of the political upheaval in Thailand, or the significance of the Thai court’s disenfranchisement of certain politicians or, indeed, whether the increasingly aggressive street demonstrations were only a series of experiments in unsettling but effective political immaturity. It is the right time, however, to ask what Golez and, by extension, the president he speaks for mean by the claim that Filipinos are more politically mature.
They mean they are relieved that a throng of outraged Filipinos is not rattling the iron gates of Malacañang. They mean they are happy the political challenges to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s legitimacy have been successfully coursed through the much more malleable House of Representatives. They mean they are grateful beyond words that the military remains firmly in their control and is reliably barracks-bound.
In other words, they mistake “political maturity” for public apathy. The reason President Arroyo remains in power, despite a worsening crisis of legitimacy, lies in the people’s failure to demand more public accountability from her and her allies in Congress and the local governments. No doubt about it, public anger is real and metastasizing into a deep disgust. But the lack of a distinct alternative (as against one similar in most respects to the incumbent), the President’s deft use of political and other forms of intimidation to discourage or depress public demonstrations and, above all, the Filipino’s all-too-compliant spirit have allowed the Arroyo administration to survive into it’s eighth year.
Whatever is happening (or, more precisely, not happening), political maturity may be the last thing we can use to describe it.
ref. inqurer.net
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