Oligarchy and how it exists in the Philippines

When is the oli­garchy’s judg­ment day?
Let us begin to de­fine oli­garchy, for it has be­come vogue (“I dis­man­tled oli­garchy”) yet de­fined se­lec­tively. Those who rely on its Aris­totelian def­i­ni­tion (rule by the rich) need a crash course on up­dat­ing. 
That mean­ing has been su­per­seded in the early 20th cen­tury when oli­garchy was ex­panded to how the po­lit­i­cal elite in a democ­racy abuse the sys­tem to trans­form them­selves into the rul­ing class con­cerned with pro­tect­ing their own power.
For the ben­e­fit of po­lit­i­cal pyg­mies and their trolls (have they been paid now?), let us cherry-pick the eas­i­est def­i­ni­tion ever. Mer­riam-web­ster de­fines oli­garchy in only four words: gov­ern­ment by the few (Greek oli­gos: “few”). 
It pro­vides a sec­ond mean­ing to clar­ify the brevity: a gov­ern­ment in which a small group ex­er­cises con­trol es­pe­cially for cor­rupt and self­ish pur­poses. Mer­riam-web­ster can be charged with ter­ror­ism.
And that is where we are, when po­lit­i­cal dy­nas­ties bend even the small­est of laws such as the req­ui­site res­i­dency for elec­tion can­di­dacy. 
A mar­i­tal bed is split into two dis­tricts such that the wife is con­gress­man of one dis­trict, the hus­band of the other dis­trict. The twain shall never meet so that their pork bar­rel mul­ti­plies us­ing this for­mula: P90 mil­lion per year x 3 (years) x 2 (dis­tricts). 
Then add more if one is speaker or deputy speaker of the House (P750 mil­lion in an­nual pork bar­rel). Add some more if one sis­ter is se­na­tor and a brother is mayor. The re­sult is 20th-cen­tury oli­garchy: What they pro­tect is ob­vi­ous.
That is only one lo­cal­ity. An­other is ap­par­ent: Fa­ther is pres­i­dent, daugh­ter is city mayor, one son is deputy speaker of the House, and the other son is vice mayor. 
All the voter needs to re­call are the first names on the bal­lot, be­cause the sur­names are all the same.
That is the real mean­ing of oli­garchy. Aris­to­tle’s def­i­ni­tion has be­come ob­so­lete be­cause it was re­placed by a term to sig­nify a later emerg­ing re­al­ity: plu­toc­racy (ploutos, “wealth”; kratos, “power”), a so­ci­ety ruled or con­trolled by peo­ple of great wealth or in­come. 
It is where the oli­garchy of po­lit­i­cal dy­nas­ties in­ter­sects with plu­toc­racy, for it is an open se­cret that in the Philip­pines, pol­i­tics is an or­ga­nized crime and the most cer­tain path to wealth.
This, too, is as con­tro­ver­sially oli­garchic: A re­li­gious sect as­sumes power by in­duc­ing the pop­u­lar vote through the bloc vot­ing of its mem­bers. 
A con­gress­man-mem­ber of that sect can block the fran­chise of a me­dia net­work when his church takes in­ter­est to se­cure that same fran­chise for its own broad­cast net­work.
Po­lit­i­cal elites who freely in­ter­pret the laws like toi­let pa­per rule the Philip­pines. 
We are no doubt an oli­garchy, but those who de­fine it de­fine it in such a way that we do not see the ele­phant in the room. In fact, there are herds of ele­phants, not just 70 but thou­sands of them. 
They are con­spic­u­ous but they are de­lib­er­ately over­looked be­cause it makes them un­com­fort­able, hence the need for an anti-ter­ror­ism law. 
A so­ci­ol­ogy and psy­chol­ogy of re­pres­sion is in­ten­tion­ally cre­ated on a macro scale to hide the true grotesque oli­garchy. The re­jec­tion of ABS-CBN was a smoke screen in re­defin­ing oli­garchy.
The longer the decades dy­nas­ties rule us, the dum­ber we will be, for dy­nas­ties dumb down our po­lit­i­cal cog­ni­tion and stan­dards. In the process, we for­get that democ­racy is about hav­ing a voice and a rule of law that ap­plies to all, that no one is above the law.
These oli­garchs will flatly fail the test of even cir­cus tri­als like those of the House com­mit­tee on leg­isla­tive fran­chises, be­cause they know no other lan­guage but ly­ing. 
A bo­gus democ­racy like ours may vomit from the cor­pu­lence of its po­lit­i­cal thiev­ery and im­punity. 
We do not wait for its self-im­mo­la­tion. Nei­ther do we wait for bal­lots sold with money stolen from us.
We wait rather for the judg­ment day of the oli­gos. When jus­tice is the aim, the wronged re­dressed, and the or­phan’s plea heard, it will come. 
It is when the peo­ple will turn in­flam­ma­tory and rage with days of wrath on the cho­sen few thieves of democ­racy. Next week is the State of the Oli­garchy Ad­dress (SOOA).
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippines Jul 20, 2020 A9 AN­TO­NIO J. MON­TAL­VAN II On Twit­ter: @An­to­nio­j­mon­tal2. Email: an­ton­monta@gmail.com