Why Is the Filipino Right so Weak?
It is a truth in politics that organization is a decisive factor in scoring victories. History has shown that the decisive factor in a revolution, one that distinguishes it from a mere rebellion, lies in its leadership and the extent of its organization. Without organization, a political movement will inevitably devolve into an inert mass of individuals guided by nothing more than their intuitions and sentiments.
Such remains the present case of the Filipino right wing. While there have certainly been developments since the COVID pandemic, the Right as it stands still remains embryonic. To begin with, the vast majority of right-wing action is issue-based: the Left pushes a bill (SOGIE, absolute divorce, CSE); the Right moves to block it. This model of political action, however, is too defensive and resembles a long, protracted, siege. The goal of any political movement that seeks to take control over a nation’s institutions is precisely to take control of said institutions, and one does not achieve that by dancing to the tune set by one’s enemies.
It is true that many Filipinos are beginning to swing right in particular issues, but sentiments alone will not win us political success. There is plenty of conservative sentiment in Philippine society, and yet the Right remains a loose coalition of online movements, church groups, and family organizations who squabble among themselves and have not made any serious efforts to establish channels for institutional cohesion or coalitional leadership. Conservative organizations are still cash-strapped, and the CBCP is too big and slow to fight a winning fight.
Upon comparing the situation of the Right with its counterparts, we can notice some striking differences. Ever since the 1980s, the Left has established a robust political machine that continues to have a large presence in education, the media, the bureaucracy, and the houses of Congress. They have millions, if not billions, of pesos in donations, the support of a good number of established politicians (the Left is not immune to “patronage politics”), along with other means of procuring funds and enforcing compliance whether by persuasion or petty force, not to mention the patronage of public, taxpayer-funded, institutions. The average run-of-the-mill conservative movement lacks these resources, nor does it have the internal cohesiveness to properly wield these resources to their decisive advantage.
There is also something to be said for the fact that what counts as the Right in the Philippines is really a loose umbrella term which embraces a variety of divergent, and sometimes mutually exclusive, interests, which is often reflected in the subtle differences in worldview one can notice from “conservative” voices. We have the Catholic post-EDSA consensus (the CBCP and its many lay organs), anti-woke business owners, a portion of Marcos loyalists and Duterte diehard supporters, military personnel, evangelical Protestants, and other people who, though “progressive” for twentieth-century standards, are scandalized by the real or perceived excesses of the Left.
These groups may have common enemies, but they are not natural friends. They do profess belief in a Filipino nation, in certain democratic or constitutional principles, or in what they call “common sense,” but these do not suffice to distinguish them as an internally cohesive or externally distinctive ideological movement. The social democrats (Akbayan), the run-of-the-mill establishment liberals, and even the reaffirmist Left (to some extent) appeal to these principles to a greater or lesser degree of sincerity, and often to their advantage.
This is further complicated by the conflict of class interests which characterizes the present order. Samuel Francis’ Leviathan and Its Enemies (Radix, 2016), building on James Burnham’s theory of the managerial revolution, understood that what we now know as “woke” or “progressive” liberal ideology was concomitant with, and convenient to, the displacement of locally-established bourgeois and aristocratic elites by mass organizations (both in the public, private, and so-called “third” sector) controlled by managerial elites with an overwhelming propensity towards the use of manipulation over force.
In order to promote the new “soft” managerial order, it became necessary to override the institutions of previous elites through the promotion of a hedonistic, cosmopolitan and utopian ethic. The destruction or mutation of traditional family and community bonds allowed for the homogenization of tastes and preferences, which was necessary for the continued persistence of mass organizations (195). It is therefore unsurprising that certain conservative elements in society—such as the Catholic and some Protestant churches—would raise alarm at the protracted attacks on the family levied by the Left, given the role the family plays in the shaping of localist Catholicism or bourgeois Protestantism.
Francis, however, speaks of a different form of managerialism which occurs when mass organizations are controlled by managerial elites with an overwhelming propensity towards force rather than subtle manipulation. This “hard” managerial regime would be characterized not by an emphasis on hedonism or cosmopolitanism, but on in-group solidarity and notions of sacrifice (ibid.). Such a regime can be found in that of the Martial Law era (1972–1986), and traces of this ethos can also be found among the supporters of Rodrigo Duterte.
This “hard” managerialism is no less unfriendly towards traditional institutions, however. Population control, by means of contraception, was part and parcel of Marcos’ New Society and remains a state priority to this day, as was the creation of an artificial “Filipino” identity by means of educational and migration policy. Indeed, this “hard” managerial ethos appeals most to those who derive their interest both from massified organizations as well as the use of force: those in the armed forces and law enforcement being one such example.
These factors make it very difficult for Filipino (and, as Francis notes in Leviathan and Its Enemies, even American) conservatism to take proper form. The divergence of parochial, localist interests associated with a much older order with the solidarist, hard-managerial nationalism exemplified by old Marcos loyalists, the military, and Duterte supporters as well as the moderate factions of the liberal, soft-managerial establishment makes it difficult, if not impossible, to form a cohesive ideological base capable of defending a common interest. This is precisely because there is no common interest to defend, even in the presence of a common idiom (nation, shared faith, etc.) which may obscure, but not erase, the Right’s profound fissures.
