Death to the "Trapo" System!

(part one three parts)

By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

“TRAPO” has been a word that has had a worn-out and dirty connotation in the Philippine political context, where it has come to be used to refer to “traditional politicians.” But the term falls short of both accuracy and “political correctness.”

Let’s start with the first word of the binomial. As widely used, “traditional” represents the antiquated undesirable. It falls within and contributes to what we may refer to as many Filipinos’ fixation to the “glamorous and convenient modernity” and aversion to the inconvenient, 'ignorant' and raw simplicity of “old-fashioned” technologies and habits, which pushes so many of us to embrace and idolize Western inventions and products that are, indeed, more convenient to use but actually wreak havoc on the health of our bodies and even that of our only planet of residence.

This thinking makes us laugh or sneeze at the “primitive” ways of our grandparents and makes us try to conserve our bodies’ energies, gradually becoming unwilling and incapable of long walks, and stairs- climbing, and many forms of physical exertion in general, almost getting prepared to lose our arms and legs and other muscles to atrophy. Without much physical exertion, on our part the food that we consume in large volumes, after being made so delicious by various poisons among the latest inventions, often ends up as bulky body fat under our skins.

Such thinking makes many Filipinos consider attaining a deep understanding of our rich historical heritage an unproductive exercise in hollow sentimentalism.

In the field of medicine, the term “traditional medicine” has emerged and there has been a growing number of followers because “real doctors” from America and Europe who even possess very expensive modern equipment (very expensive, so “they must be right!”) believe in the efficacy of Philippine TRADMED traditional medicine), that are coming here in droves just for the opportunity to learn more about it.

And whatever is traditional should have been passed on across many generations, numbering more than four or five. The phenomenon we call “trapo” has been with us for only a little more than a century, definitely no more than five or six generations, and so it does not yet have the established longevity to be called “traditional.” So, since it does not yet have any real longevity, let’s forget the time-sensitive term and stick more to the essence of why the “Trapo” phenomenon ought to be banished from these islands.

We don’t dislike anything just because it is no longer new; that which we call “Trapo” is despicable because it is a tool of elite control over our political life; because it is exploitative, with government functionaries getting motivated and enabled to serve not the sovereign body politic but mainly themselves and their powerful patrons; it is conservative while only the poor have deeply-rooted motives to desire and work for basic change in societal arrangements and such politics as we call “trapo” could only be “safely in the hands” of those who can only gain by the perpetuation of the existing inequitable social order.

Moreover, it is also grossly violative of the democratic governance system that it is supposed and pretended to operationalize. It also abets cheating, lying and violence in electoral processes. The “Trapo” politics that we have had in our country for decades on end, as protected and preserved by an official and cultural atmosphere of impunity, is indeed despicable! And the attendant reasons do not at all include its being an “old system.”

About the second word that goes into the term “trapo,” the “traditional politicians” did not get together one day and unanimously decided to invent and implement the “Trapo System” that we have learned to curse under our breath but have allowed to continue, anyway. These politicians were produced by the system; without exonerating these politicians in any bit of measure, we have to see that the system has been much bigger than all its products and operations, combined. As long as that system continues to thrive, inextrically linked with our economic, business, legislative, police, schooling and all other systems and sub-systems in society, it will stay in our nation’s political life even if we could have all the “Trapos” lined up against the wall and shot.

We can’t afford the effort to simply kill the thousands of mosquitoes, flies, or cockroaches one by one; we have to find out exactly where and exactly how they breed so fast.

For starters, let’s study the “traditional politics” as a system” and study the “trapo politicians” as the current batch of these pests, of their misdeeds, and of their witting and unwitting supporters. We may be in for a great surprise. We have been guilty of supporting them, of breeding them! Jailing demons would not suffice; jailing Satan himself would not suffice. We ought to end all the points of vulnerability we have had that these politicians use to make us sponsor their heinous activities.

(to be continued)