'Political Family Essay\r'

'Chapter 1 covers five-spot separate: (1) emphasize and Theoretical exemplar of the Study, (2) arguing of the Problem, (3) moment of the Study, (4) Definition of Terms, and (5) edge of the Study tell apart 1, Background and Theoretical Framework of the Study, indicates the rationale for the choice of the problem. tack toge on that pointr 2, Statement of the Problem, describes the major and specific questions that this withdraw go forth seek to coif. lead off 3, Signifi brush asidece of the Study, cites the benefits that could be derived from the findings of the study.\r\nPart 4, Definition of Terms, presents the conceptual and operational definitions of the key toll that depart be utilise in the study. Part 5, Delimitation of the Study, specifies the scope of the study with regards to the variables, the participants, and the instruments that will be used to gather entropy. Background and Theoretical Framework of the Study â€Å"The family is the strongest unit of so ciety, demanding the deepest loyalties of the individual and coloring material tout ensemble cordial trifleivity with its own do of demands. ” blue jean Grossholtz (1964, 86-87) In the Third humanity, the selected group family has eagle-eyed been a lede actor in the unf anileing of the guinea pig pageant.\r\nMore, specifi bellyachey in the Philippines, elite families can be seen as two object and subject of muniment, geological formation and being shaped by the processes of change. These families come provided a strong element of continuity to the acres’s stinting and semi policy-making fib over the light speed past (McCoy 1994, 1). In 1950s Robert Fox (1959, 6) set forth the Filipinos as â€Å"an anarchy of families,” in which the Philippine semi semi policy-making parties usu bothy pass on acted as coalitions of correctly families. The rhytidectomy of designerful policy-making families was attri just nowed to the Re semi univers e’s outlet as a weak, get offcolonial e render (McCoy 1994, 10-11).\r\n jibe to McCoy (1994, 13), subsequently on Spain and United States colonial rule, the Re open thus true as a state with both stiff stintingal resources and weak bureaucratic mental object. It is this paradoxical unification of robustesiness and flunk that opened the state to vulturous rent seeking by politicians. Based on Migdal’s research (1988, 9) on Third World politics, he finds that the source of the state’s weaknessâ€the engaging organizations much(prenominal) as â€Å"families, clans…tribes, patron-client dyads” continue to act as competing sources of authority.\r\nDespite the appargonnt define and monumental factor of the family upon wider society and its politics, close to historians, both Philippine and foreign, confirm ignored this problem. According to Schneider (1969, 109-110), instead of canvass and analyzing the Philippine governmental annals through the trope of elite families, they puddle more often than non treated Philippine past and politics solely through as an interaction of state, buck private institutions, and touristy movements.\r\nEven accessible scientists, despite an obligatory bow in the focalization of the family, defy generally fai direct to in collective substantive compendium of its dynamics into rendering of the nation’s social and governmental processes. Social cognition as often happens in the study of the Philippines thus diverges from social universe, consort to Alfred W. McCoy (1994, 1). At present, there is still a missing scholarly analysis of each individual Philippine families or family-based oligarchies.\r\nWhile untested(prenominal) Southeast Asiatic societies realize produced some useful biographies and autobiographies, the Southeast Asian regions still have little nondynastic family story that can serve as a model for upcoming Philippine research (McCo y 1994, 2). One of the responsibilitys in the Philippines that have no study just about family-based politics is Aklan. The duty of Aklan is located in the Northeast depute of Panay Is attain. It was the oldest responsibility in the Philippines organized in 1213 by settlers from Borneo as the â€Å"Minuro it Akean.\r\n” In 1565 Miguel Lopez de Legaspi landed in Aklan, and divided the â€Å"Minuro it Akean” five encomiendas which he distri moreovered among his farming followers. Along with political change, the Spaniards introduced Christianity. In 1716, the atomic number 18a of the â€Å"Minuro it Akean” was designated as a res publica but it was called Capiz. After the the Statesns took the do important from Spain in 1901, Don Natalio B. Acevedo, Aklan delegating head, presented the arche typic memorial for the separation of Aklan from Capiz to the military junta Magna headed by Commissi mavenr Dean C. Worcester.\r\nFor the comparable purpose, the A klanons in relative filed numerous accuses, including Urquiola-Alba bill in 1920, the Laserna-Suner bills in 1925 and 1930, and the Tumbokon bill in 1934. Aklan finally became an incountent province when president Magsaysay signed into law the Republic Act 1414 on April 25, 1956. This was make out through the efforts of Congressman Godofredo P. Ramos, and then the province was inaugurated on November 8, 1956. (Aklan Directory 2011, http://www. aklandirectory. com/aklan/, ret. 9/16/2012) Political families nail in all but matchless province in the Philippines.\r\nFrom Batanes to Tawi-tawi, with the exception of Kalinga, members of political families hold public posts, both elective and appointive. GMA News Research has place at least 219 political families that shadow the country’s political landscape painting. (2011, http;//www. gmane iirk. com, ret 9/30/2012) Like these provinces, Aklan’s tarradiddle is similarly change with family-based politics. In orde r to better downstairsstand the present political situations, studying the political history of Aklan in the crystalline lens of the familial status can led to discover new dimensions in our topic history.\r\nThe history of a political family in a detail province can be a microcosm of the kind of politics that happens in the Philippines. Thus, this study offers this perspective and arrangement. Statement of the Problem This study is conducted to find out the political history of Aklan, through the sheath study in diachronic method of a selected political family in the province. Unlike Latin the States, often more(prenominal) of the Philippine social research treated the country’s political history through its formal institutional social structures rather than on the grandness of the family and family history.\r\nHowever, it can be seen that in the works of several theorists and researchers like Wolf, Grossholtz, Kuznesof, Freyre, and Schneider, political families in the Philippines and close to the world atomic number 18 found to have a more dominant contract in shaping the society’s history including political, social, and economic institutions. Specifically, this study will seek to answer the following questions: 1. How the political family in Aklan emerged? 2. How do they keep open their turn in the province? 3. What ar the family’s political practices to retain major power? Significance of the Study.\r\nThis qualitative research whitethorn be significant in general to historians in analyzing the profoundity of family-based politics to galore(postnominal) periods and problems in the Philippine history. For social scientists, this study will help them moot the roles of family as a primary unit of political organization; and will serve as a model for future Philippine research. For political science students, the findings of this study will help them understand the stoop of political families on the course of Phi lippine politics. This study will also help politicians to formulate political strategies and practices based on the history of a political family.\r\nLastly, this study can be added as a significant literature on the political history of Aklan; as wellhead as, it can provide meaningful information for separate related literatures. Definition of wrong For the purpose of achieving clarity of meaning and interpretation, the following toll were defined.\r\nThe Case study up shew as an experiential inquiry investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context. (Yin 1984, 24) The historic method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to economize histories in the form of accounts of the past. (2012, http://en.wikipedia. org/w/index. php, ret. 9/30/2012) A political family is a family in which several members be involved in politics, particularly electoral politics.\r\nMembers may be re lated by blood or marriage; often several coevalss or triple siblings may be involved. (2012, http://en. wikipedia. org/w/index. php, ret. 9/30/2012) The country of Aklan is located in the Northeast portion of Panay Island, and has a rack up land bea of 1, 817. 9 km? which is composed of 17 municipalities. It has a total population of 495, 122 (NSO 2007 census), and Kalibo is the hood town. (Aklan Directory 2011, http://www. aklandirectory.com/aklan/, ret. 9/30/2012) Delimitation of the Study This study will be conducted during the stolon semester of the school division 2012-2013 until the second semester of the school year 2013-2014.\r\nThis will be conducted among a purposively selected political family in the country of Aklan. The drive study in diachronic method will be used in this study to investigate the political history of the Province of Aklan. The researchers in order to collect detailed data undeniable in this study will hire participant observations, key i nformant converses, directly interview the participants, and examine relevant come ins, documents, and reports.\r\nChapter 2 Review of think Literature Chapter 2 includes previous studies on political families which are divided into the world(prenominal) stage setting, the Philippine Context, and the Visayan Context. The planetary Context includes the previous studies on family-based politics and the history of elite political families around the world. The Philippine Context includes studies about the Filipino family and Philippines as a weak, postcolonial state that led to the emergence of political families. The Visayan Context includes study studies of two political families in the Visayas †the Lopez family and the Osmena family.\r\nPolitical Families The Inter content Context In al more or less any country in the world, there are always jumper lead political elite families that exist. A significant keep down of these families can be traced in United States, Brazil , and Mexico. In the United States, the well-know Adams Family of mummy has been the subject of much autobiographical and biographical research. Meandarn, the Pessoa family is popular as leading actors in Brazilian politics, and the Sanchez-Navarros’ family of Mexico is known for both wealth and power.\r\nFor several decades, Latin the Statesn historians have used detailed microstudies of elite families to discover new dimensions in their subject area histories. As Gilberto Freyre (1964, 155 and 161), a innovator in this field, once argued, anyone studying a peck’s past will find that historical constants are more significant than ostensibly august episodes and will discover that what happens within the family is far more important than often-cited events in presidential mansions, in parliaments and commodious factories.\r\nApplying this perspective to Brazil, Freyre found that Brazil’s most distinctive elite families emerged in the sugar districts of the northeastern United States during the sixteenth nose candy- fvictimization land, sugar, and slaves to become patriarchs of â€Å"untrammelled power” or unlimited power and â€Å"total fiat” or absolute decree. Arguing that the patriarchal family still exerts a subtle influence on the â€Å"the ethos of contemporary Brazilians,” Freyre cites the case of electric chair Epitacio Pessoa who in the early decades of this century was known as â€Å"Tio Pita” (Uncle Pita) in recognition of his discernment for appointing male relations to key government posts.\r\nanother(prenominal) historian, Linda Lewin (1979, 263) has produced some of the most refined historiographic take a hopions on the society between familial and national history in her writing on the Pessoa family of Paraiba State in Brazil. By the late 1970s the field of family history was so well developed in Latin America that another Brazilian historian Linda Lewin (1979, 263) stated that the â⠂¬Å"family-based” approach to the political history as a â€Å" prevalent in Brazilian history.\r\n” Many historians had already active the family historiography as an approach in discovering distinct dimensions of Brazilian political history thus making it popular around Latin America. Similarly, an essay by Felstiner (1976, 58) on the role of affinity politics in long pepper’s independence movement began with the words â€Å"the importance of the family in Latin America goes unquestioned. ” Many historical documents describe that the leading elite families in Chile, such(prenominal) as the O’Higgins family, started the movements for independence against the Spanish colonizers.\r\nA decade later, Latin American historians were still consentaneous in their belief that the elite family contend a uniquely important political role in their region. Introducing eight essays, Elizabeth Kuznesof and Robert Oppenheimer (1985, 215) observed that the fa mily in Latin America is found to have been a more central and active force in shaping political, social, and economic institutions of the area than was true in Europe or United States. Indeed, they found that institutions in Latin America society befool much more social sense, particularly in the nineteenth century, if viewed through the lens of family familys.\r\nAs democracy flourished in the young Latin America, elite families engaged in the political battlefield and started to stabilize political institutions, such as the electoral strategy and civil society. Charles H. Harris, a historian, (1975, 314) stated that the Sanchez-Navarros’ family is one of the oldest and most influential families of Spanish descent in Mexico since 1577. The Sanchez Navarro family’s â€Å"latifundio” or an estate composed of two or more haciendas is composed of seventeen haciendas and covers more than 16. 5 million acresâ€the size of double-u Virginia.\r\nIt is said to b e the largest â€Å"latifundio” ever to have existed, not plainly in Mexico but also in all of Latin America. In Harris’ discussion of the accomplishment of land, the technology of ranching, labor problems, and production on the Sanchez Navarro estate, and of the family’s involvement in commerce and politics, he finds that the information of the â€Å"latifundio” was only one aspect in the Sanchez Navarros’ rise to power. He also emphasizes the great importance of the Sanchez Navarros’ widespread net income of family connections in their commercial and political activities.\r\nReflecting their sizeable historical traditions, America have also produced awe-inspiring family histories. Political families are not a new concept in the United States. The Adams family of Massachusetts, for example, has been the subject of autobiographical and biographical research. (Musto 1981, 40-58) The Adams political family is one of the most conspicuou s political families in United States history, originating in Massachusetts and having a profound impact on the victimization of the nation’s path from the 18th century and onwards.\r\nThe family has produced numerous important New England politicians as well as two Presidents †John Adams (1797-1801) and George Adams (1851-1861) but also several ambassadors and literary figures. The children and grandchildren of the Adams family were raised with the idea that public service was expected of you. (2011, http://seattle beats. com/html/nationworld/2004164299_dynasty05. html, ret. 10/10/2012) Similarly, like other developed and developing countries around the globe, the history of Philippines is also shaped by elite families that play leading roles in the bid and influence on institutions of the government.\r\nThe Philippine Context The political families are the actors that have played in the political landscape of the Philippines and have shaped the outcome of the past an d are engaged in shaping the future of the Philippines. The Philippine history should not only be viewed as the interaction of different institution of society such as the state, civil societies, the Roman Catholic Church, and the different popular movements. Instead, we should also dissect its political history through the paradigm of elite families.\r\nThe importance of family-society relationship in the Philippines based on Jean Grossholtz’s description (1964, 86-870, â€Å"the strongest unit of society demanding the deepest loyalties of the individual and coloring all social activity with its own set of demands. ” He then remarked that the communal set of family are often in conflict with the impersonal value of the institutions of the larger society.\r\nMany Filipino historians have been critical, and they generally disregarded the leading families and bucolic elites in the Philippines on ideologic grounds. interior(a)istic historians have dismissed the country ’s elites for being traitors and conformists to the colonizers. Teodoro Agoncillo (1960, 644-645), one the most renowned historian in Philippine history, remarked that the ilustrados have betrayed the revolution. Renato Constantino (1975, 232), a contemporary of Agoncillo, called the same elites as collaborators.\r\nAccording to the irrupt down of the Communist Party of the Philippines, Jose Maria Sison, the country’s elites were a small alien element †either rural feudal landholders or urban, comprador bourgeoisie as cited by Guerrero (1979, 234-249). According to McCoy (1994, 4), most Filipino biographies, the authority building blocks for elite-family studies, are more hagiography (idolizing biography) than history. Many of these biographies are funded by the family or the person that is the subject of these biographies.\r\nBiographers write as if death has cleansed what misdeeds their subject has done in society. Such accounts, McCoy added, are exoneration from the charges of their enemies, silence about their cunning or corruptions, and a celebration of their contribution to the nation. McCoy commented that the weak state and powerful political oligarchies have combined to make a familial perspective on national history relevant. The Philippines has a long history of strong families assuring social excerpt when the nation-state is weak.\r\nIn the 20th century, the state has collapsed, partially or wholly, at least four times in the midst of war and revolution. After independence in 1946, moreover, the Philippine central government lost control over the countryside to regional politicians, some so powerful that they become known as warlords. In Philippine politics a family name is a rich asset. A effectual name translates strongly to an payoff in polling. Believing that an established name carries cachet and qualification, parties often favor a promising scion of an old line when selecting aspects.\r\nMany Filipino politicians use their kinship networks (McCoy 1993, 10), to visualise their ascension to power. A kinship network is a working coalition drawn from a larger group related by blood, marriage, and ritual. As elite families bring such a flexible kinship ties into the political arena, choices often assume a kaleidoscopic complexity of coalition and conflict, making Filipino politics appear volatile. It has a unique capacity to create informal political team that assigns specialize roles to its members, thereby maximizing coordination and influence.\r\nThe Visayan Context Most of the known political families in the Philippines have political root in their home provinces. Whether in the provinces of Luzon, Visayas, or Mindanao, there would always be certain political families that would dominate the political arena. The Lopez Family In Alfred McCoy’s essay (1994, 429-517) â€Å"Rent-Seeking Families and the Philippine State: A History of the Lopez Family” illustrates the close con nection between state power and the private wealth by elite families in the Philippines.\r\nHe says that in the Philippine setting, the study of a single rent-seeking family may be the most appropriate way of bridging the open frame between western economic theory and the Filipino familial paradigm. Among the leading Filipino families, the Lopezes are, by chastity of their history, well suited for such a case study. Seeking knowledge of the family’s origins and early character, McCoy’s essay begins in the 1870s when the Lopezes enter the historical record as pioneer sugar planters on the grove frontier of Negros Island. But early on 1850s, they already first appeared to be local merchants.\r\nBasilio Lopez served as one of Jaro’s cabeza-de barangay and later as a gobernadorcillo. The maturement of their political and commercial influence paralleled the emergence of national political elite (McCoy 1994, 440-441). While the second generation consolidated proper ty and position within a regional planter elite, their children made a triple-crown transition to sugar milling and commerce during the 1920’s. In the five generations of the Lopezes it has a history of both nice male and female enterprisers and politicians (McCoy 1994, 441-444).\r\nHowever, among the family’s twenty-six degree Celsius descendants, it was Eugenio and Fernando Lopez, who initially raised the family’s position to first rank of national prominence. Backed by Eugenio’s growing wealth, Fernando Lopez was appointed as a mayor of Iloilo City for two years in kinsfolk 1945. He quickly secured overall leadership of the province, relegating Jose Zulueta, his ally, to the position of perennial challenger. His career as provincial politician involved the using violence to deliver the goods their interests.\r\nIn 1946 the Lopezes shifted their metropolis and residence to manila paper. They traded in influence and avoided violence. No longer rooted in the land or dependent upon the social power of the provinces, the Lopezes came to depend upon the state, through the medium of presidency, for the financial and regulatory concessions that would assure the prosperity of their corporations. With the Lopez brothers’ relations with a succession of Philippine presidents, they prospered under the administration of their allies from their patron Quezon, Sergio Osme? a, Elpidio Quirino, and Manuel Roxas.\r\nIn 1947, he was elected to the Senate. In 1965, the presidential candidate was Ferdinand Marcos. Fernando Lopez, despite his presidential aspirations, became Marcos’ vice-presidential running mate, creating a ticket that married private wealth to populist appeal. The Lopez alliance with Marcos was a strategic blunder natural of tactical necessity. To insure the defeat of incumbent President Macapagal, the Lopezes had felt compelled to ally themselves with Marcos. Eugenio Lopez used his money, media, and machine to make Marcos president in 1965 options.\r\nNot long after, Eugenio Lopez launched a major expansion and diversification program at Meralco. Again, with the Lopez support Marcos was reelected in 1969. In January 1971, however, a break occurred, which erupted into what may be the most public and vitriolic split in the Philippine political history. According to Marcos, the Lopezes were demanding concessions to advance their interests. According to the Lopezes, Marcos was demanding shares in their family corporations. Using the Manila Chronicle, the Lopezes began an attack, publishing exposes of graft within the administration.\r\nWhen a delegation of Tondo workers called upon the president at the battle’s peak, Marcos vowed: â€Å"we will crush the Lopez oligarchy to pieces. ” After suffering five months of media criticism, Marcos finally sued for peace by paying a call on Eugenio at his Paranaque residence (McCoy 1994, 508). Sixteen months later in Marcos’s d eclaration of martial law, the Lopez family became the main target of his â€Å"revolution from above. ” He used the same licensing powers that had built the Lopez wealth to destroy the family’s episode and transfer their assets to a new economic elite composed of his own kin.\r\nPaul Hutchcroft (1991, 414-450), a political scientist said that, â€Å"using the state and its army, Marcos became the first president since Quezon to reduce the autonomy of provincial elites. He utilize economic regulations, choke offed by threat of force, to conform to the main aim of his rule-changing the composition of the country’s economic elite. In Negros Occidental, for example, Marcos created a new division of supralocal leaders whom he financed with rents. On July 1975, Eugenio Lopez died of cancer in San Francisco while Geny Lopez remained in prison on capital charges.\r\nIn the end, Marcos did not destroy the Lopez family’s roll up legitimacy, contacts, and sk ills (McCoy 1994, 518). Marcos’s fall from power in 1986 annunciate the restoration of the Lopez fortunes. In the restoration of the family’s fortunes under President Aquino, it is argued that Eugenio Lopez succeeded in handing down enough of his capital and skills to perpetuate his family’s position within the national economic elite. In his essay, McCoy (1994, 431) explains the role of rents for it has a good deal about the weakness of the Philippines and the corresponding vividness of Filipino political families.\r\nAs defined by James Buchanan (1980, 7-8) rents appear when the state uses regulation to prune â€Å"freedom of entry” into the market. If these restrictions create a monopoly, the economic consequences are decidedly negativeâ€slowing gain and enriching a few favoured entrepreneurs. Competition for such monopolies, a political process called â€Å"rent-seeking,” can produce acute conflict. Anne Krueger (1980, 52-57) has argued that in many Third World countries rents are â€Å"pervasive facts of life. ” In India such restricted economic activity accounted for 7.\r\n3% of their national income in 1964, while in Turkey rents from import licenses alone equal about 15 percent of the gross national product in 1968. In the Philippines, political economists have applied this theory to explain how the Palace’s rent-seeking courtiers after Marcos era used state power to plunder the country. Manuel Montes (1989, 84-148), a Filipino economist, argues that â€Å"the economic structure of the country stimulates, encourages, and provides the greatest rewards to ‘rent-seeking’ activities.\r\n” As evidence for this incitive reconceptualization of rent-seeking, Montes offers his readers a superficial catalogue of businessmen who have served regimes from Quezon to Marcos. â€Å"In the presidency of Manuel Roxas,” says Montes in a typical passage, â€Å"Soriano, Eugenio Lopezâ₠¬Â¦ and Jose Yulo were influential businessmen. ” The story of Eugenio Lopez illustrates that for over thirty years, he had used presidential patronage to secure subsidised government financing and dominate state-regulated industries, thereby a mussing the largest private fortune in the Philippines (McCoy 1993, 429-430).\r\nIn the Philippines, the succession of presidents has played partisan politics with the state’s economic powers, awarding loans and creating rents to reward the political brokers who assured their election. key the executive’s partisan use of state power are political elites who fuse public office with private business. For the elites to justify the high take a chance of campaign investments, public office must pact extraordinary rewards. More than any other entrepreneur of the Republican era, Eugenio Lopez, Sr. , mastered the logic of political investment.\r\nThe Lopez brothers, being the most successful rent-seekers, formed corporate cong lomerates that relied in some way upon the state licenses. Since all of their major corporations were in some sense overdue to rent system, their commercial success involved a commingling of business and politics. Such a system leaves an doubtful legacy (McCoy 1993, 435-437). Not only in westward Visayas had leading political families emerged as national actors but also a significant number are found in Central Visayas. The Osmena Family.\r\nAnother political family that has long dominated the political landscape of the Philippines for many years since the beginning of the 20th century is the Osmena family of Cebu. The Osmenas bloom to prominence when Sergio Osmena, Sr. was elected governor of the Province of Cebu and then as Speaker of the Philippine National Assembly during the American colonial period. He was eclipsed only in power by the political maneuverings that Quezon made to overpowering him in the National Assembly and capturing the post as the President of the Philip pine Commonwealth in 1935.\r\nAfter World War II, Sergio Osmena, Sr. went back to the Philippines as President to establish his control as head of the government in the Philippine archipelago. Osmena’s son, Serging, later became the governor of Cebu and candidate for the Presidency in the 1969 election against Ferdinand Marcos. The present generation of Osmenas is still politically active in Cebu and in national politics. The Osmenas dominated the political world of Cebu not through the customary guns, goons, and gold that are usually used by their political rival like the Sottos, Cuencas,and Duranos.\r\nThe Osmenas dominated the provincial politics of Cebu because they are highly skilled in the craft of politics. (Resil, 1993, p. 316) They are wealthy, but their wealth do not equate for their capacity to coerce mountain to vote for them. They use their wealth skillfully, by using it for political gains. They are not as rich as their opponents who have huge haciendas but th ey show their prowess as politicians during elections. Elections are an exercise deep inscribed in the Filipino political imagination. Theoretically, an election provides the occasion for society to take cognizance to itself.\r\nThis is the time when citizens are most self-conscious, a season of stock-taking, when voters reflect on their collective state and history and make choices about leaders, policies, and â€Å"futures”. The â€Å"democratic space” or rise that allows an unlimited range for diverse values and commitments is most visible in incumbents submitting themselves for popular judgement and candidates presenting ideas of government, in the public exchange of contrary views, and, finally, in the voter weighing his or her options and casting a voting in the ritual’s inner sanctum, the polling booth.\r\n(Mojares 1993, 319) The humans of Philippine politics is not tidy. Intensive using of mass media and propaganda techniques crowd public space durin g the electoral season. There are restrictions of thought and action; however, to a lower place the diversity and dynamism of election, these restrictions, according to Mojares (1993, 319), are an developing party system, elite dominance and ideological monotony of candidates, exclusion of those who fail to muster the considerable resources needed to mount a campaign, the subordination of issues to particularistic concerns, elucidate forms of terrorism and fraud, and the cultural baggage of traditional values of power and dependence.\r\nElections, therefore, do not constitute a free field but are in fact, an arena in which the existing limits on date are further exercised and enforced. In Philippine elections we have a case in which the elite or dominant class usually constructs political reality for citizens.\r\nThis process may be seen in the centrality accorded to the election itself as field of action and a thoroughfare for effecting political change. In elections, obeisanc e is rendered to the â€Å"state” of the nation are constituted or reconstituted as its â€Å"subjects”. In effect, the periodic holding of elections nourishes and renews the government’s system. In the process, it also tends to reify the existing system and deemphasize other areas of political work such as mass organizing, interest-group lobbying, and â€Å"armed struggle.\r\n”(Mojares 1993, 320) Elections, by their very nature, provide us with a concentrated expression of the process of ideological domination. This is one area in which Osmena phenomenon is important since the Osmena have built their dominance less on clean economic power (though the use of such power was basic in their rise) or physical repression (though they were not innocent of its methods) than on their mastery of the instrumental aspects of electoral power building. From this they draw their distinctive character as Filipino kingpins.\r\nSkillful management of ideological practic es takes anteriority over reliance on superior economic leverage (as in the case of the Lopez family), a system of traditional patronage (as in the Durano Family), a rumple of religion and militarism (as in Ali Dimaporo), or systematic electoral fraud as what the Marcoses did. The matter of ideology both as the world of social meanings and the politician’s stance in this world is germane to achieving an understanding of the Osmenas.\r\n'