MODULE 1

INTRODUCTION

Lesson 1 History of Political Parties in The

Philippines

Lesson 2 Meaning and Definition of Political

Parties

Lesson 3 Classifications & Functions of

Political Parties

Lesson 4 Party System

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MODULE 1
INTRODUCTORY CONCEPTS

INTRODUCTION

In contemporary states it is difficult to imagine there being politics without

parties. Indeed, in only two kinds of states today are parties absent. First, there
are a few small, traditional societies, especially in the Persian Gulf, that are still
ruled by the families who were dominant in the regions they control long before
the outside world recognized them as independent states. Then there are those
regimes in which parties and party activities have been banned; these regimes are
run either by the military or by authoritarian rulers who have the support of the
military. While these interludes of party-less politics can last for some years,
ultimately the suppression of parties has proved to be feasible only as a temporary
measure. As the military authorities relax their grip on power, or as unpopular
policies stir discontent, so parties start to re-emerge from ‘underground’ or from
their headquarters abroad.

The difficulty that regimes have in suppressing party politics is one indicator
of just how central parties are to be governing a modern state. If the conduct of
both politics and government in modern states seems to require that there be
political parties, this does not mean that parties are always revered institutions.
Far from it. In some countries there is a long-standing distrust of parties. This is
especially true in the United States where antiparty sentiments are evident from
the very founding of the slate in the late eighteenth century. At times this anti-
partism has manifested itself in moves to restrict the activities of parties. For
example, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Progressive reformers in many
of the American states introduced laws that prohibited parties from contesting
local government elections. This did not prevent them from participating
informally in these elections, but it did bring about a significant reduction of party
activity at this level of politics. Moreover, even in countries where extensive party
involvement in public lire appeared to have a high degree of public acceptance,
dissatisfaction with politics could rebound on all the major parties. For example,
in Germany in 1993 a protest movement calling itself ‘Instead of Party’ won seals
in the Hamburg provincial parliament. And organizations that are recognizably
parties may deliberately not use the word ‘party’ in their name, because of the
connotations that word has. This has been true of the Gaullists in France and of
the Northern League in Italy.

Given that parties are so important in the modern state, the next question
to ask is—what precisely are they? In answering this we immediately come up
against a problem. As many observers have noted, attempting a definition of
‘party’ is rather like attempting to define an elephant—anyone who has seen one
knows what one looks like, but providing a definition for a person who happens
never to have come across one is rather difficult. The problem is that of

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identifying precisely the boundaries between parties and other kinds of social and
political institutions. For virtually every definition of a party produced by political
scientists it is possible to find some institutions that are recognizably parties that
do not conform with the definition in some significant way.

In most cases the long-term purpose of this interaction is for the party to
take over control of the state, either on its own or in conjunction with other
parties, but there are some exceptions that prevent us from thinking of this as a
defining characteristic of a party.

 The goal of some parties is to bring about the ultimate dissolution of an

existing state rather than to exercise power within it. For example,
orthodox Marxists in the late nineteenth century saw the role of the
Communist Party as helping to bring about the demise of the capitalist
state; later, under Communism, there would be no role for the party.
Again, Gandhi saw the Indian National Congress as a body that should
dissolve once it had gained its objective of Indian independence from
Britain. Today there are parties, such as the Bloc Quebecois, many of
whose members have the ultimate objective of taking the province out of
the Canadian federation, rather than exercising power within it.
 As a tactic to achieve its ultimate objective of bringing down a regime, a
party may choose not to engage in one activity usually associated with
‘exercising power’, namely helping to form a government. In the French
Fourth Republic, for example, the Communist Party usually obtained about
a quarter of the vote. But, after 1947, even if other parties had been
willing to have it in the government, it would probably not have chosen to
do so. It believed it could affect better leverage for bringing down the
regime by acting explicitly as an anti-regime party.
 There are some political groupings that call themselves parties, and which
engage in some political activities associated with parties such as
contesting elections, but whose purpose is either to entertain or to ridicule
politics as an activity. Parties like the Rhinoceros Party in Canada or the
Monster Raving Loony Part in Britain fall into this category.

OBJECTIVES

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

1. To gain understanding about the roots of the political parties in the
Philippines.
2. To understand the meaning and definition of political parties.
3. To explain the various classifications of political parties.
4. To discuss the functions of political parties.
5. To identify the kinds of party system.

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Lesson 1

HISTORY OF POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE

PHILIPPINES

1. Federal Party - the first Philippine political party, established in 1900 which advocated
peace and eventual statehood.

2. Nationalist Party (NP) and the Democratic Party were established. They did not produce
an actual two-party system, since the Nationalists retained exclusive control
and the Democrats functioned as a "loyal opposition."

NOTE: However, following Japanese occupation and the granting of independence, an

effective two-party system developed between the Liberal Party (LP) and the
NP.

3. The Progressive Party - formed in 1957 by adherents of Ramon Magsaysay, polled more
than one million votes in the presidential election of 1958.

In the elections of November 1965, Senator Ferdinand Marcos, the NP

candidate, received 55% of the vote. In the 1969 election, he was elected to an
unprecedented second term. All political activity was banned in 1972, following
the imposition of martial law, and was not allowed to resume until a few months
before the April 1978 elections for an interim National Assembly.

4. (Kilusan Bagong Lipunan- KBL) - the Marcos government's New Society Movement

Won that election and the 1980 and 1982 balloting for local officials, amid
charges of electoral fraud and attempts by opposition groups to boycott the voting.

5. People's Power Movement-Fight (Lakas Ng Bayan- Laban) - The principal opposition

party led by Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. until his assassination in 1983. This party joined
with 11 other opposition parties in 1982 to form a coalition known as the

6. United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO) - Following Aquino's murder, some

50 opposition groups, including the members of the UNIDO coalition, agreed to
coordinate their anti-Marcos efforts. This coalition of opposition parties enabled
Corazon Aquino to campaign against Marcos in 1986. In September 1986 the
revolutionary left formed a legal political party to contest congressional elections.

7. The Partido ng Bayan (Party of the Nation) allied with other left-leaning groups in an
Alliance for New Politics. This unsuccessful attempt for electoral representation
resulted in a return to guerrilla warfare on the part of the Communists.

8. Others

In the congressional elections of May 1987, Aquino's popularity gave her party
(Lakas ng Bayan) a sweep in the polls, making it the major party in the country.

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Marcos's KBL was reduced to a minor party. Some of its members formed their
own splinter groups, such as:

a. Grand Alliance for Democracy (GAD) - a coalition of parties seeking distance from
Marcos.

b. Others revived the LP and the NP, seeking renewed leadership.

c. The left-wing People's Party (Partido Ng Bayan) - supports the political objectives
of the NPA and was a minor party in the elections.

 In May 1989 Juan Ponce Enrile reestablished the Nacionalista Party.

d. A new opposition party, the Filipino Party (Partido Pilipino), organized in 1991 as
a vehicle for Aquino's estranged cousin Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco's presidential
campaign.

e. On 26 August 1994 Ramos announced a new political coalition that would produce
the most powerful political group in the Philippines. Ramos' Lakas-National Union
of Christian Democrats (Lakas/NUCD) teamed with the Democratic Filipino
Struggle (Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino, Laban).

 Following the 1995 elections, the LDP controlled the Senate with 14 of the
24 members.

f. The elections in 1998 changed the political landscape once more. In the Senate the
newly created Laban Ng Masang Pilipino was led by presidential candidate, Joseph
Estrada.

g. Political parties and their leaders in 2002 included: Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (New
Society Movement), led by Imelda Marcos.

h. Laban Ng Demokratikong Pilipino (Struggle of Filipino Democrats) or LDP, led by

Eduardo Angara;

i. Lakas, led by Jose De Venecia; Liberal Party or LP, led by Florencio Abad;

j. Nacionalista Party, led by Jose Oliveros;

k. National People's Coalition or NPC, led by Eduardo Cojuangco;

l. PDP-Laban, led by Aquilino Pimentel; and

m. the People's Reform Party or PRP, led by Miriam Defensor-Santiago.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 1

Make a timeline of the history of political parties in the Philippines.

Plot history in a line. Research and note the specific dates in the history of
the political parties in the Philippines. Do them in chronology, a sequence
of earliest to latest. (You can use the format below or you have your way
of giving a more creative timeline.)
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Lesson 2

MEANING AND DEFINITION OF POLITICAL

PARTIES

Meaning of Political Parties

According to Michael Curtis, it is notoriously difficult to define accurately a

political party. The reason is that the views of the liberal and Marxist writers differ
sharply on this point. Not only this, even the views of the English liberals differ
form their American counterparts. The most celebrated view among the English
leaders and writers is that of Burke who holds that a political party is “a body of
men united for promoting the national interest on some particular principles in
which they are all agreed.” Reiterating the same view, Disraeli defined political
party as “a group of men banded together to pursue certain principles.”

So, according to Benjamin Constant, a party is “a group of men professing

the same political doctrine.” The key point in all these definitions relates to the
issue of ‘principles’ of public importance on which the members of a party are
agreed. But the American view is different in the sense that here a political party
is taken as an instrument of catching power. No significance is attached to the key
point of ‘principles’ of national or public importance in which ‘all are agreed.’ A
party is just a platform or a machinery for taking part in the struggle for power: it
is a device for catching votes; it is an agency to mobilize people’s support at the
time of elections; it is an instrument for the aggregation of interests that demand
their vociferous articulation. “We define a political party generally as the
articulate organization of society’s active political agents, those who are
concerned with the control of governmental powers and who compete for popular
support with another group or group holding divergent views. As such, it is the
great intermediary which links social forces and ideologies to official governmental
institutions and relates them to political action within the larger political
community.”

Such a view of political party makes it hardly distinguishable from a

pressure or an interest group. A ‘specific interest’ may constitute the foundation
of a political party. Thus, differences between or among political parties may be
sought based on specific interests. For this reason, Dean and Schuman observe that
political parties have become essentially political institutions to implement the
objectives of interest groups.” A similar vein may be discovered in the
interpretation of Grotty who says: “A political party is a formally organized group
that performs the functions of educating the public.... that recruits and promotes
individuals for public office, and that provides a comprehensive linkage functions
between the public and governmental decision-makers.” But basically, different
from the English and American views is the Marxist view on the theme of political
party as elaborated by Lenin. Here a political party is taken as a ‘vanguard’ of the

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social class whose task is to create class consciousness and then to prepare the
proletariat for a bloody and violent revolution. Every party is a class organization.
The ‘bourgeois’ parties of whatever name have their vested interest in the
maintenance of the status quo, but the party of the workers (communist party) has
its aim at the overthrow of the existing system and its substitution by a new
system in which power would be in the hands of the working class and the society
under the rule of this party would be given a classless character so as to eventuate
into a stateless pattern of life in the final stage of social development. As Lenin
says: “The communist party is created by means of selection of the best, most
class concierges, most self-sacrificing and far—sighted workers.....The communist
party is the lever of political organization, with the help of which the more
progressive part of the working class directs on the right path the whole of
proletariat and the semi-proletariat along the right road.”

It is true that political parties grew as a faction in the early modern age,
but now a distinction between the two is made. Opposed to this, party is a
respectable term. Its members take part in the struggle for power on the basis of
some definite policies and programs and they observe the sanctity of constitutional
means. So, it is said that while “a party acts by counting heads, a faction acts by
breaking heads.” But parties are ‘specialized associations’ and they become more
complex, organized and bureaucratic as a society approaches the modem type.”
Faction is a bad term, because its members take part in disruptive and dangerous
activities so as to paralyze the working of a government.

Definition of Political Parties

Group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power. Formal

political parties originated in their modern form in Europe and the U.S. in the 19th
century. Whereas mass-based parties appeal for support to the whole electorate,
cadre parties aim at attracting only an active elite; most parties have features of
both types. All parties develop a political program that defines their ideology and
sets out the agenda they would pursue should they win elective office or gain
power through extra parliamentary means. Most countries have single-party, two-
party, or multiparty systems.

In the U.S., party candidates are usually selected through primary elections
at the state level. Political systemin which individuals who share a common set of
political beliefs organize themselves into parties to compete in elections for the
right to govern. Single-party systems are found in countries that do not allow
genuine political conflict. Multiparty and two-party systems represent means of
organizing political conflict within pluralistic societies and are thus indicative of
democracy. Multiparty systems allow for greater representation of minority
viewpoints; since the coalitions that minority parties must often form with other
minority parties to achieve a governing majority are often fragile, such systems
may be marked by instability.

Marxist Concept of Parties

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Revolutionary Marxists reject all spontaneist illusions according to which the

proletariat is capable of solving the tactical and strategic problems posed by the
need to overthrow capitalism and the bourgeois state and to conquer state power
and build socialism by spontaneous mass actions without a conscious vanguard and
an organized revolutionary vanguard party based upon a revolutionary program
tested by history, with cadres educated on the basis of that program and tested
through long experience in the living class struggle. The argument of anarchist
origin, also taken up by ultra-leftist “councilist” currents, according to which
political parties are by their very nature “liberal-bourgeois” formations alien to
the proletariat and have no place in workers councils because they tend to usurp
political power from the working class, is theoretically incorrect and politically
harmful and dangerous. It is not true that political groupings, tendencies, and
parties come into existence only with the rise of the modern bourgeoisie. In the
fundamental (not the formal) sense of the word, they are much older. They came
into being with the emergence of farms of government in which relatively large
numbers of people (as opposed to small village community or tribal assemblies)
participated in the exercise of political power to some extent (e.g., under the
democracies of Antiquity) Political parties in that real (and not formal) sense of
the word are a historical phenomenon the contents of which have obviously
changed in different epochs, as occurred in the great bourgeois-democratic
revolutions of the past (especially, but not only, in the great French revolution).
The proletarian revolution will have a similar effect. It can be predicted
confidently that under genuine workers democracy parties will receive a much
richer and much broader content and will conduct mass ideological struggles of a
much broader scope and with much greater mass participation than anything that
has occurred up to now under the most advanced forms of bourgeois democracy.
This argument is unhistorical and based on an idealist concept of history. From a
Marxist, i.e., historical-materialist point of view, the basic causes of the political
expropriation of the Soviet proletariat were material and socioeconomic, not
ideological or programmatic. The general poverty and backwardness of Russia and
the relative numerical and cultural weakness of the proletariat made the long-
term exercise of power by the proletariat impossible if the Russian revolution
remained isolated; that was the consensus not only among the Bolsheviks in 1917-
18, but among all tendencies claiming to be Marxist.

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Contemporary Views about the Parties

In contemporary view a political party is a political organization that seeks

to attain and maintain political power within government, usually by participating
in electoral campaigns. Parties often espouse an expressed ideology or vision
bolstered by a written platform with specific goals, forming a coalition among
disparate interests. Formal political parties originated in their modem form in
Europe and the U.S. in the 19th century. Whereas mass-based parties appeal for
support to the whole electorate, cadre parties aim at attracting only active elite;
most parties have features of both types. All parties develop a political program
that defines their ideology and sets out the agenda they would pursue should they
win elective office or gain power through extra parliamentary means. Most
countries have single-party, two-party, or multiparty systems. In the U.S., party
candidates are usually selected through primary elections at the state level.

LEARNING ACTIVITY 2

1. As defined by Burke, a political party is “a body of men united for

promoting the national interest on some particular principles in which
they are all agreed.” What are the future possibilities and/or
opportunities for the major political parties in the Philippines?
Enumerate and explain.
2. Political parties are well-known for their feuds and ideological,
political battles. In lieu to this, does faction make or break a political
party? Justify your answers with concrete examples. Cite at least 3
specific/particular situations.

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