The Philippines and Indonesia revised their constitutions in 1987 and 1999-2002 respectively. The revisions are purported to be the start of democratic consolidation after decades of authoritarian rule, as part of “a wave of democratization” happening globally especially in the Third World. It is important to note, however, that Marcos and Suharto also used “democracy with adjectives” to legitimize their regimes. Moreover, in the years leading to the constitutional revisions, after the countries’ struggle for independence, the term “democracy” has been used in different ways than its Western counterpart and has proven to be malleable as a means to gain international recognition, as a government propaganda, and as a national aspiration, among others. In the workshop, I want to think about how democracy has been transplanted from its liberal foundations in the West to archipelagic Southeast Asia and to examine how Filipinos and Indonesians understand power and their place in its legitimation. This understanding is influenced by the countries’ traditional notions of community, their colonial histories and struggle for sovereignty, and their political and legal cultures (in my study, as specifically shown in their constitutional histories). Therefore, I attempt to ground the recent “democratic” constitution-making of the two countries to their histories and cultures. The subject is also relevant to the other Southeast Asian countries where similar phenomena of syncretism can be observed, sometimes authorizing personalism and communitarianism along with democratic institutions. In a time when Western liberal democracy is questioned and populist tendencies are on the rise around the world, there is a need to reinvestigate the idea of democratic consolidation but this time from the lens of the sovereign people from which democracy gets its legitimacy.
Bionote:
Francis C. Sollano is a PhD student in La Trobe University and an instructor in Ateneo de Manila University. He is currently working on his dissertation project on the public sphere in the Philippine and Indonesian constitution-making.
Day 1 (May 27, Thu HK/SG time)
Panel 2: Organized Culture
11:30am-1pm HK/SG / 4:30-6:30am BST / 5:30-7:30am CEST / 11:30pm-1am EDT / 8:30pm-10:30pm PDT