“Rev-Gov,” as of late, has become the popular (or unpopular depending on how one sees it from a limited perspective) acronym for “revolutionary government.”
It has somewhat re-appeared in our daily jargon as efforts by the Duterte government to reform Philippine society corrupted to the core seems to be taking it lightly or outrightly ignoring it.
The late president Cory Aquino, egged no end by her countless of political advisers salivating to latch on to the powers-that-be, acquiesced and discovered to her pleasant surprise that governance was quite an “easy thing to do.”
She gleefully dissolved both houses of Congress like they were just a deck of cards waiting to be shuffled. Then in another sweeping motion, she declared all local government positions vacant that left governors, city and municipal mayors scratching their heads in confused disbelief and bewilderment.
To cut the long story short, Cory merely waved her fairy godmother’s magic wand and voila, she became the self-appointed queen of the land!
She named everyone who kowtowed and suck to her like leeches and a nation-wide political revamp was underway.
The 1987 Constitution, proudly called the work of wisdom and art of 40 wise men she fingered as her constitutional geniuses, is now being painfully discovered to have been a flawed re-invention of a replacement package.
I think every right-thinking Filipino is agreed that genuine change and reform cannot be effectively put in place unless this nation of 100 million plus go through a total cleansing process inside out.
And everybody is presumably agreed that the so-called “democratic” tools that we have today are inadequate to institute effectively the necessary constitutional changes.
“Change is coming” was one of the principal advocacies of Mayor Duterte when he was on the 2016 presidential campaign trail.
Many strongly believe – especially those in the lower B, C, D and E economic classes – that the incumbent Chief Executive is very serious in ridding this country of corruption, illegal drugs trafficking, poverty and the inequitable distribution of wealth, bureaucratic red tape and inefficiency, among others.
I share with political philosophers, governance experts, psychologists and sociologists who take the view that a nation that has been immersed in a negative mindset because of centuries of oppression and exploitation will need a difficult and deep cleansing process before – like clothes – they can be washed white and clean.
There’s three and a half more years remaining in Duterte’s six-year term.
Would these be enough to overhaul a society that is plagued with cancerous tumors, if not the Big C itself?
I don’t think so.
The federal caravan has not even moved yet and already a contrarian proposal was already broached in the Lower House that necessarily pops the question: are we going East or West?
Whoa! This brings me back up to our headline: Is Rev Gov necessary?
Rev Gov, to define it in my own personal view, is an “uprising of the people” that summons the accepted notion that the government (and the state) exists for the governed.
Should the great majority of the Filipinos take this principle to heart and demand that the government accedes to the democratic practice that this is a “government of, for and by the people,” then by no means genuine reforms can be achieved under the present leadership that is inclined to employ it.
“Rev Gov” may be cloaked in a people’s initiative. A successful PI will give the President the constitutional imprimatur to declare a “Rev Gov” that is peaceful, smooth-flowing and effective.
Come to think of it, when just about any Juan, Pedro and Jose is discombobulating issues of public interest,
