#OPINION | The Philippines needs a monarchy
by La Liga Manoban*
*The author of this article as well as the featured artist have opted to use pseudonyms to protect their identities.
Democracy is in danger in our land.
Last July 3, President Rodrigo Duterte signed the controversial Anti-Terror Bill (now Law) amidst calls from groups and organizations, including framers of the 1987 Constitution and the United Nations. The law, which intends to curb “terrorism” and “terrorists” in the country, overbroadly defines these and other terms, which makes legitimate dissent such as in protests, and charitable organizations, prone to legal sanctions.
Even before the signing of the bill, the government has been harsh in controlling the democracy of its citizens. In several protests all over the country—Manila, Laguna, Cebu, Iligan—dozens of protesters were arrested and detained on non-existent charges. Last July 5, ABS-CBN, one of the largest media networks in the country, was denied its franchise renewal, stemming from an unaired ad in 2016.
In a time where our democracy as a people is constantly being attacked, our collective movement is not enough. Even after kicking both Presidents Marcos and Estrada out of power, we are still highly misrepresented in the national government and in the global market. We need someone to truly stand for us, our freedom, and our future, even if that means sacrificing some of our individual freedoms.
More importantly, we need to rethink the way we operate our nations, our states. Clearly, this modern democratic system has failed us, and its parties and congresses have led us into a battle with our fellow citizens and with our government. We as a society should turn back the clock thousands of years to an antiquated and outdated method of governance, one that will certainly work despite injustices and the revolutions of the people against them. The Philippines needs a monarchy.
A freedom of no choice
Unlike in a democracy, where the citizens elect their leader (a prime minister or a president) as well as their representatives to create laws, a monarchy’s leadership is based on heredity, which means that a throne passes from a monarch to an heir, the eldest member in their family.
However, as in all democracies transitioning to monarchy, they must select a leader first. Some former monarchies form when their leaders change their titles from President to Monarch. Some other monarchies invite “leaders” from other countries who have no attachment or relation to the country they are invited to.
Will they have any idea of how to run a foreign country that they reluctantly agreed to rule? Of course! Monarchs are excellently trained in geography and anthropology, which gives them the ability to damage unfamiliar terrain and murder local leaders.
Under a monarchy, all subsequent leaders will come from the same family, and so the succession is always streamlined. Besides, when a family starts to run out of members, the government can always force royals to marry their first cousins. These incestuous marriages will produce very specially-abled rulers that will do their best to maintain even the most broken of kingdoms. Take it from the Habsburgs, the famous rulers of Austria and Spain. They practiced cousin and uncle-niece marriages so well that they ran out of guys in the family and caused two major European wars.
Whether in a constitutional monarchy or an absolute monarchy, whoever sits on the throne has great power, much greater than that of a president. This allows them to do whatever they believe to be best for their country. This may include granting titles to notable citizens, handpicking members of their cabinet, implementing economic reforms without the permission of the Congress, augmenting excessive military presence around their citizens, banning all dissenting speech against the monarch and their family, and killing off opponents of the state.
Should we choose a monarchy, we can exercise our personal democracies in more and different ways than in a democracy. This is because the burden of having to elect a leader every several years or so is already removed from us. The economic and temporal costs of elections makes nations spend millions and waste months of time and resources just to elect a leader who would serve their personal interests anyway. Why waste your time when you can trust monarchs who will definitely not be corrupt and use their power to maintain their dynastic rule? In the meanwhile, we can spend more time and money on personal splurges such as cars, cards, and caviar.
A unified government
In monarchies like the United Kingdom, the monarch is required to stay neutral about politics. The monarch cannot endorse candidates or advocate policies like climate change publicly. That’s exactly why they must choose a prime minister with political biases in order to advance the true agenda of the monarch. There will be virtually no conflict of political interests or ideologies within the government, because the monarch, through the prime minister, is in control.
This will allow lawmakers to push for programs and policies that they aim to implement without the usual opposition from leftists, rightists, or whichever political stance does not agree with that of the monarch, as the Congress votes will always eventually lead to a whopping supermajority approval.
Under a monarchy, Congress will be able to implement programs such as foreign trade with powerful nations, not taxing the rich and the congressmen which the monarch favors and will retain in their positions, and land grabbing from farmers and small business holders. After all, to have freedom, shouldn’t the rich always be free to benefit from the toil and hardships of the poor?
There will be no interruption in the implementation of these good policies, as the monarch can easily tag people who do not agree with their policies as harmful towards the development of the country, and therefore they can take quick action against them. They can shut down articles and even entire publications that post critical opinions about them. They can also sentence writers and journalists to prison, or maybe execute them in public or private means.
If human rights groups such as Amnesty or the United Nations try to get in their way, that wouldn’t be a problem for the government, since the monarch enjoys immunity throughout their reign, and therefore they or their government will not be liable for any action they take for the ultimate benefit of their beloved kingdoms.
In a monarchy, we only need one person to lead the way. Conversely, the monarch doesn’t need 100 million pawns in the government. They only need one, and one is enough for the whole government to submit to their commands.
A true symbol for the country
Especially in territorial states such as the Philippines, where peoples of different ethnicities and cultures are forced into a nation through Western colonialism, we need a monarch to be a symbol and driver of unity among a divided nation. We need just one person to fight for the conflicting needs of the hundreds of distinct local cultures.
Monarchs are educated and trained in every subject and aspect of society; from birth, their upbringing and education is geared toward ruling. As a musical once said, how do you solve a problem like monarquía? They can easily solve gentrification by awarding more land to the upper and middle class, or maybe even taking the land themselves; or resolve cultural conflicts by reciting a speech; or extinguish economic problems by allowing foreign investors to steal territory. Oh, all the things that only a monarchy could do.
As leader, the monarch can indeed defend our freedom as a nation, in exchange for some of our personal freedoms, such as the right to vote, since that wouldn’t be necessary anymore; as well as the right to free speech, assembly, pre-trial release, and due process; and the right against arbitrary arrest, torture, capital punishment, ex post facto laws, and extradition, among others. In addition, the monarch as general-in-chief can increase police and military presence in order to make citizens believe they are protecting the nation from terrorists and outside invaders, when in reality they are just defending the government from detractors.
In our current state, where we are plagued by the COVID-19 crisis and the rise in injustice and immorality, we need to look to someone like a monarch to be our inspiration and guide, to be the one to provide all the solutions.
When we need a role model of justice and morality, the monarch can be our one exemplar. The monarch is our paragon of morality because they are legally entitled to have mistresses throughout the course of their reign, and are privileged to sexualize women in speech and in practice. The monarch is our baton of justice precisely since they are free to advance the interests of the kingdom, and will do anything for the beloved land, even kill their top opponents.
Success stories
History and contemporary news have shown us how monarchies around the world have succeeded in advancing their kingdoms.
In France, Louis XVI, known as “the Last,” and his wife Marie Antoinette are notable examples. However the nickname, they were firsts in a lot of things. As economic strategists, they were the first monarchs to advocate the deregulation of the grain market, which was so successful that bread prices rose up and people revolted against it in 1775.
Louis XVI was also a pioneering diplomat. He ensured great foreign relationships with countries in Europe and America by spending France’s whole treasury to free countries they have never visited before from fellow imperialists such as Great Britain. The successful diplomacy led to a well-known national debt, which of course inevitably led to the French Revolution which gave Louis XVI yet another first—the first French monarch to be guillotined.
In the Central African Republic, former President Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who loved everything about France, a very successful monarchy as we have seen, declared himself Emperor in 1977 in a $20 million ceremony, funded by France, inspired by the great Napoleon I of France.
History shows that Bokassa used very gastronomical strategies during his sweet and tender 3-year reign as Emperor. He bootlicked off France‘s president Valery Giscard d’Estaing in order to encourage foreign relations and trade (it was Giscard d’Estaing who funded his coronation, by the way). In return, he allowed France to suck their gold mines anytime in order to gain funds for the development of the empire. He also advanced the economy of the Central African Empire by beating up schoolchildren and eating their flesh, something which Jonathan Swift first suggested in 1729 when he wrote A Modest Proposal.
In Thailand, no one has upheld a monarchy better than the current king Vajiralongkorn. A semi-divine figure who lives in Germany with His modest harem of 20, His Holy Majesty King Vajiralongkorn epitomizes virtue and morality in Thailand. Even His name is so holy that the world’s strictest lèse majesté laws are needed to protect it; you could compare these laws to the Christian Third Commandment, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, except you can be jailed for 35 years just for writing satire about His Holy Majesty or even His royal holy pet dog named (and titled) Air Chief Marshal Fufu (may he rest in peace).
As a monarch, Vajiralongkorn enjoys the unrelenting support of His chosen people—the brave and loyal military. After all, He needs His apostles when He is not in His kingdom (24/7/365) to carry out His holy mission of banning all forms of legitimate dissent against the monarchy on a daily basis. His apostles’ loyalty is such that Vajiralongkorn already awarded them the government to run anyway.
The future of our land
Over the course of history, monarchies have always lasted longer compared to republics. This is because monarchies have always had the compelled support of its citizens, notably the military and the upperclassmen, who truly represent the desires of the kingdoms. Due to its continuity, monarchy is set to stand against the test of time, even when monarchs are unmercilessly executed by their citizens after civil wars that call for their true national freedoms.
After all, certain rights are just a small price to pay if we truly want to advance as a nation. The right to vote and the right to speak will just be minute sacrifices if the end result is the advancement of our nation, both economically and politically. The silencing of activists and killing of dissenters would ultimately help, if that means our nation will be very peacefully-controlled by the intimidating military who could probably go after you too. All of this would be possible if we could only have a monarchy.
The Filipino democracy is being threatened more than ever. Nowadays, the action we are taking is not enough. Not even ousting the president is enough to change the state of the Philippines. For we must not only remove “democratic” governments from power; we must overturn this modern excuse of a political system and turn back to the medieval times, to a feudal government that has truly worked for the people.
¡Viva la Vida!
