5

Distinction between democratic governance and 'participatory democracy'

Citizenry as Sovereign Body Politic; and Government's role and accountability as servant, facilitator and leader in a working democracy

People,s collective self-empowerment through 'building-blocks' synergies

Human development and social harmony

Governing to serve the legitimate social, economic, political and cultural rights of the people

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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Strive for Real Democracy

By the Kamayan Forum Journal editors

Official newsletter serving the monthly forum on environmental issues, jointly published by the Clear Communicators for the Environment (CLEAR) and SanibLakas ng mga Aktibong Lingkod ng Inang Kalikasan (SALIKA), the co-convenors of the forum.  See also www.kamayanforum.8m.net.

This article, as retitled here, is the editorial of the KFJ issue number 61, dated March 2007, two months before the scheduled general elections in the Philippines for that year.

LET US STRIVE for democracy, but only for real democracy, which is the productive and beneficial synergy of the human bodies, human minds and human spirit of all for the interests of all. Let us be shorn of all partisan snobbishness and personality-oriented biases, so we can all be worthy advocates and beneficiaries of democracy, of the rule of law and of human equality, dignity and harmony

That way, we can extricate ourselves from the ridiculous situation with two warring camps of “democracy-lovers”: one partisan camp, now in power, self-righteously calling upon us all to “defend” democracy while the other partisan camp, seeking to get into power, self-righteously calls for us to fight to “restore” it.

Democracy has to be a synergy of all human social and natural capabilities to address all human needs in every big and small community, where the bigger-scope communities are synergies of smaller-scope communities, all the way to the family and the individual human.

The people’s self-empowerment process through the “magical” application of the principle of synergism is the only way the people can be empowered. 

Not by proxy empowerment whereby an entity seeks the people’s help to capture and consolidate political power and promises to exercise such power consistently in the service of the people’s “objective class interests,” earnestness assumed.

Neither by token empowerment whereby an entity already in power grants bits of high-publicity seats of participation in decision-making processes to representatives of the people but making sure to protect its own narrow interests from being really "disturbed" by such representatives.

Only the people’s direct self-empowerment can work to establish real democracy.

In the words of Prof. Nito Doria of the University of Sto. Tomas Social Research Center (UST-SRC):

“If progress is to be shared and enjoyed by all, then it must be the achievement of all, the result of concerted effort of a responsible citizenry to make progress a way of life for the nation; not the result of some singular heroic effort of some exceptional individual who does not exist except in myth.

“A responsible citizenry, however, is just a concert of responsible individual citizens liberated, informed and empowered, and made responsible for their own welfare, It must necessarily be in that sequence of development, for one cannot expect to make a responsible citizen out of one who remains un-liberated, un-informed and un-empowered.

“A strategy for national progress must be an exhilarating liberating factor in the nation’s life, one that will free the Filipinos from the disquiet and listlessness generated by failed models of dogmata that have shackled their mind for centuries and inevitably made them dependent on and beholden to the patronage of oppressive power.

“Such a strategy can be no less than a new conceptual scheme, no less than what Thomas Kuhn in a landmark dissertation, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, refers to as a ‘paradigm shift.’ ”

If we may add a paraphrase of what we state in the previous section, “failure to have such a strategy has been our consistent strategy for failure.”

And we bring in Albert Einstein, describing insanity  as “doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting to get a different result.  We cannot possibly solve problems with the same thinking we had when we created them.”

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