There are three ideas that a democratic society wouldn’t miss: the absence of term limits for elected officials, preferential voting rights for some and a two-party system.
No term limits
The two main arguments for the removal of term limits goes like this: term limits prevent legislators from gaining policy experience, contributing to bad legislation; and that term limits deprive voters of their right to choose who should represent them. Both are accurate enough, but neither tells the whole truth.
While term limits will prevent a legislator from gaining policy experience on the job, the mere fact that they are out of office does not mean they are actually prevented from honing their craft. In fact, when a legislator is out of office is the perfect time for him to do deep dives, unencumbered by the multifarious demands on incumbent officials, into their selected policy fields. Ultimately, the opportunity to conduct in-depth studies will translate to better legislative proposals.
And while it is true that a term limit will prevent a voter from choosing to vote for a particular candidate again and again, there is great intrinsic value in letting voters infuse new blood into the government. New elected officials represent potentially new ideas that are better, more innovative, and perhaps more responsive to perennial problems.
Preferential voting rights
Those who argue for preferential voting rights to be accorded to some specific classes of citizens—taxpayers, college graduates, or even just “good people”—are unwittingly advocating for the institutionalization of inequality. Even leaving aside the fact that being a taxpayer does not automatically make one better qualified to determine the future course of the nation (or vice versa), the creation of a privileged class represents nothing less than a regression of society.
Throughout our long history, we have struggled to secure equality in society for ourselves and for our descendants. We have, as a people, rejected the notion that not being born into the aristocratic classes should be a hindrance to advancement—thus installing in our pantheon of heroes the likes of Bonifacio and Mabini, alongside the patrician Rizal. To say now that a Bonifacio should have less of a voice in charting the future of the nation, compared to a Rizal, would be a betrayal of that struggle.
Two-party system
It’s not difficult to understand the allure of a two-party system. Countless sophomores in all the universities across the countries have, at one time or another, railed against the proliferation of political parties and bemoaned the lack of any discernable ideological differences amongst them. The idea of a two-party system creates the sharpest possible dichotomy, and such duality seemingly makes the job of choosing between political parties much easier.
What these sophomores—and sophomoric advocates—fail to appreciate, however, is that two-party systems are particularly vulnerable to zero-sum scenarios. In a political environment characterized by strong political groupings (usually families) such as ours, this tendency to see one side’s gain as being exactly balanced by the other side’s loss will very quickly cause the degradation of politics into the mere pursuit of domination.
The voting public may appreciate the ease with which they can label one side “good” and the other “evil,” but in doing so lose sight of the fact that they are increasingly no longer voting to promote their own interests, but simply in order to keep one or the other faction in power.