Philippine Democracy Online

by Christopher Ryan Maboloc Ateneo de Davao University                                   World poverty, politics, and democracy are matters we discuss during dinner in our corridor. This text will be about democracy. But whether there is still hope in our land is another issue. Here, we are just reflecting on what can be done. Before anything else, let me provide some data and a little analysis. The inputs from my colleagues are religiously incorporated in the text.

by Jamil Adrian Matalam Ateneo de Davao University                                  I am no advocate of homosexuality. I even hate homosexual acts. But what I hate most are people who disregard the dignity of their fellow human beings, and are unmindful their sufferings. The doctors at the Vicente Sotto hospital, in Cebu , who operated on a suffering homosexual have no right whatsoever to that person’s suffering a laughable matter. It is good to laugh a lot in life, but I do not think it is good if the subject of our laughter is that of a person’s pain. He came there looking for help and remedy and not to be laughed at and be disgraced. What is more outrageous, as if a finishing touch, is that they uploaded it in youtube so that the rest of the world could see the operation.

by Eugim Migue ADDU Graduate Student                              The second part of the principle of justice according to John Rawls is concerned with the distribution of income and wealth and the design of public institutions. It deals with the task of opening offices and opportunities to all social ranks and classes; though not necessarily actually giving persons all opportunities, but giving them expectations and prospects for a more advantageous and fortunate circumstance through the design of the social structure. The second principle, further, allows, and does not restrict, inequalities to happen but on the condition that “everyone benefits” to such a designed inequality.

by Christopher Ryan Maboloc Ateneo de Davao University                                      Living in a poor country where hunger is the face of many people’s state of affairs, I have seen the terrible reality of human life which truly makes one doubt whether poverty can vanish from the earth. Inequality is a hard fact of life. About 25 years ago, fish was abundant in my beloved barrio, so they put a fishing port in the 90s. More than a decade has since gone by, and all the fishes have disappeared. They said the port will make the lives of people better, but after all, Fr. Pete Lamata of Davao City's Social Action Center was right in opposing the fish port. I have not understood him then. Right now I do. A hell lot of people in my barrio are still poor.

by Aimee Mesiona ADDU Graduate Student                                 The two principles of justice are the two fundamental philosophies that would constitute justice as fairness. According to Rawls, these are the two basic principles of a fair conception of justice that we would come up with as result of employing the veil of ignorance in the original position. These two principles should be the core rules that regulate how the basic institutional arrangements and agreements of society will distribute what he calls social primary goods, most essential of which are people’s rights, liberties, powers, opportunities, income and wealth.

by Eugim Migue ADDU Graduate Student                                         Robert Nozick acknowledges the superficiality of Kant’s dictum, at least in political philosophy. For him Kant’s strict dictum, “to treat a person not simply as a means,” is quite problematic: it simply is not possible; if we religiously practice it, a gross limitation, if not the total end, to all economic and social transactions is achieved. What Nozick thinks appropriate for political philosophy as its subject, and for any state as its ultimate purpose, is to specify the ways in which using a person is permissible. But here Nozick was quick to point out that there are certain demands which are unquestionably impermissible for a state to ask of its citizens, e.g., getting some citizens to aid others, asking the rich to share his wealth, to be a “sacrificial lamb” to achieve a greater purpose, and so on. The ...

By Hadji Balahadja Ateneo de Davao University                                   The NBN-ZTE controversy and the problematic testimony of "Jun" Lozada are actually the latest and relatively severe symptoms of the decay of a liberal democracy dominated by traditional politicians. They manifest the ripening of the evils of liberal democracy in a pre-existing situation of grave social inequality.