A Presidential pronouncement has made this one of the buzzwords of this week: “Oligarch.” Simply put, an oligarch is someone who belongs to the “few” who rule a community. The term comes from the word Oligarchy which means the bad rule of a few. It is from a typology of rulership laid down by Aristotle, that Greek student of politics from over two millennia ago.

Aristotle, based on his study of hundreds of political practice of Greek rulers during his time, argues that there are basically three kinds of ideal rulership—Monarchy (the rule of one, a Monarch), Aristocracy (rule of a few), and Polity (the rule of the many). If these rulers reign against the interest of the state or of the people, the states degenerate to become a tyranny, and oligarchy, or a democracy (yes, that is what democracy meant, originally; today that is called mobocracy). To reiterate, oligarchs are bad rulers and they are but a few.

Who would be these oligarchs today in the country then? The term is now loosely used to refer to anyone with great power. The President has now used it to specifically refer to the Lopez clan that controlled ABS CBN.

If we are to be more analytical and prudent, we will see a bigger picture that could make the President’s claim rather tenuous.

One related study on this matter was done in 2018 by Dr. Julio Teehankee of De La Salle University with former Chief Justice Reynato Puno and former Budget Secretary Salvador Enriquez Jr., and they have shown that there are at least 295 political families who control power in various regions -- with Metro Manila having the most number with 31.

The regions with the most number of dynasties apart from NCR are Central Luzon with 21, Calabarzon with 20, Bicol Region with 15, Western Visayas with 12, Mimaropa with 11 and Central Visayas with 10.

In other words, just a few hundred surnames have controlled this country since it became a Republic. To appreciate how these surnames basically performed—that is, whether they were “good” or “bad”—one has to turn to other literature.

For instance, former House Representative Walden Bello, in his book The anti-development state: the political economy of permanent crisis in the Philippines (2005) sought to “understand how and why every attempt at economic and social change failed during the EDSA period.”

In its attempt at an explanation, the book explores the interaction of several factors, namely: the failure to address the structural problems of the country with a program of agrarian reform, the Philippine (Aquino to the Estrada) administrations’ prioritizing foreign debt service, and the hegemony of the neoliberal, free-market perspective among policy makers that was institutionalized in the program of unilateral liberalization and membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO).

Bello advocates here the need for a "hard" state. Such a state is one that can put the Philippine polity in order not by disciplining just anyone as some are wont to argue, but particularly the most powerful forces in Philippine society—the so-called elites who hold political economic power.

Bello, known as a noted scholar way before he treaded formal political waters, strongly posits that what we need is a ‘strong state’ that promotes development and disciplines the elite and the private sector. This goes way beyond what many other authors on Philippine development suggest. To quote Bello: “What most studies fail to explore… is that the public agent… could be seen in two ways: either as an individual, such as a government bureaucrat or politician, or as a class, such as a country’s ruling elites who by virtue of their control over economic and political resources—often determine who gets to sit in public offices. Hence, transactions of individuals… may be defined “corrupt” but so could entire groups of people or classes.” The bad rulers—the oligarchs!

From these arises the point of labeling the Philippine state an anti-development entity. The book’s analytical approach is class-laced, as it argues that the state may not be just an arena nor an arbiter. Since it could have an active interest in what is termed a “permanent crisis” — the state is in permanent crisis because it must maintain what is, in the final analysis, an “un-maintainable,” hard to defend, inefficient, or irrational status quo. The state is an instrument of class domination.

What needs to be done then? Truly, the point is that we need to make government or the state respond to our—the peoples’—needs, and there are various ways of effecting this. Our collective and individual experiences, capacities, skills, and resources will guide us or ultimately determine our most probable political recourse. Among others, we can tap the available legitimate channels to lobby for national government action. If government is invariably unresponsive as noted in cases presented herein, it is well worth to remember that governments and states are created.

Governments are made. They can be unmade. In the case of the Philippine state (post EDSA I), it must be unmade. Bello’s last few lines in the book lays down a radical imperative, “There is an alternative to the political economy of anti-development that currently reigns in the Philippines. This, however, cannot be pursued without first doing away with the anachronistic system of governance that is the EDSA state.”

Going back to the point of oligarchy, Bello specifically points to a key piece of the Philippine development puzzle — our irresponsible elites, our oligarchs. Bello argues: “a ‘strong state’ that promotes development and disciplines the elite and the private sector is what is missing in the Philippines.”

I concur with Bello and thus perhaps loosely with the President that irresponsible elites or “oligarchs” need to be made accountable for the disaster that is the Philippine development situation. They must be disciplined. The questions are, which elites, for what, how, and by whom?