Senator Francisco Tatad, the majority leader in the upper house of the Philippine legislature, is the leading proponent of Christian morality in public life. He is also the author of three books on the political challenges that face his country: Prospects of the Filipino, The Crisis of Our Times, and Making the System Work.

Under the Philippine system, each of the 24 members of the Senate is selected in a nationwide vote, to serve a six-year term. Senator Tatad is now serving his second term, and since senators are not allowed to serve three consecutive terms, his stay in that office will end in 2001.

On December 7, 1997, Senator Tatad reconstituted his old party, the Grand Alliance for Democracy, which had originally been founded in 1987 after the famous "People's Power" uprising that ousted Ferdinand Marcos. Newly renamed Gabay ng Bayan (The Nation's Guide), the party is composed primarily of young people, who now make up more than 65 percent of the electorate. On that same day he also formally announced his candidacy for the 1998 presidential election. In this interview, which took place just days before his formal announcement, Senator Tatad discusses the issues which he would raise if he did become a presidential candidate.

Gabay ng Bayan seeks to rebuild society on a strong moral and economic foundation by reforming the criminal justice system, improving the quality of welfare services, quality of service to the poor, upgrading investments in education and training, attracting more industrial capital, and stimulating domestic savings to encourage capital formation within the country. The party's economic goal--particularly relevant in light of the recent turmoil in the Asian financial market--is to protect the national economy from the instability that comes with reliance on international markets. At the same time Gabay ng Bayan promises to encourage the growth of small family firms, thus making the family both the principal agent and the principal beneficiary of economic growth.

Can you say a few words about your present position as Senate majority leader, your party platform, and about your immediate plans for the future?

Senator Francisco Tatad: I am now the Senate Majority Leader, chairman of the Committee on Rules, and member of all standing committees. As Majority Leader, my duty is to run the business of the Senate on the floor. We are now preparing for the May 11, 1998 presidential elections, and there are increasing suggestions that I stand as a presidential candidate. These are being seriously studied.

In the meantime I have been going around the country, talking to the young and the poor, and trying to build up a strong grassroots constituency.

What are the main challenges that confront Filipino society--a society which is at least 85 percent Catholic--as the presidential elections approach?

Tatad: Poverty is obviously the continuing challenge. But we must address it without sacrificing our Christian culture and turning the Gross Domestic Product into a demigod. As the only predominantly Catholic (and partly Islamic) country in Asia, we must utilize the strength of our culture to solve our most serious problems. We must not allow our problems to destroy our culture. The policies, programs, and laws of the state must show adequate support for our civic society, for our culture, for what we want to be.

The separation of Church and state, enshrined in our constitution, does not mean that state policies should be permitted to stunt the growth of our Catholic or Christian culture. To the contrary, it means strengthening our culture in order to produce better and more productive citizens.

As contemplated by the Constitution, "separation" simply means that the Church shall not administer the administrative, penal, or tax code and the like, and the state shall not interfere with the administration of the magisterium or the sacraments.

But since Church and state serve the same community, it is the right and duty of the Church to concern itself with the citizens paying correct taxes and doing their civic duties, just as it is the right and duty of the state to concern itself with having the citizens live moral and spiritual lives. But it is always good for the community that Church and state maintain their respective areas of special competence. It is extremely important that the next administration understand this principle correctly. Only then can it stand firmly in defense of our national culture, in the face of global forces trying to remake that culture or sweep it away completely--particularly on the issues of human life, marriage, and the family.

What do you mean by "global forces"?

Tatad: You know them better than I do. For many years now, the Philippine government has been acting as the chief implementer of the policies and programs of the United Nations, US Agency for International Development and all those allied institutions, including the International Planned Parenthood Federation, on the family, women, and youth. This is in spite of the fact that we have a pro-life constitution, and as I said, we are a predominantly Catholic country and the Church is quite active in forming Catholic consciences on the correct moral doctrine on these issues.

What are these global forces trying to achieve?

Tatad: They are trying to redefine everything we know--man, woman, marriage, the family, human society itself--in order to conform to a post-Christian anthropology which proposes a completely materialistic view of the world.

The pursuit of pleasure has replaced the pursuit of happiness, and the enjoyment of material and temporal pleasure has become the "real beatitude." They want life for themselves and for their kind only, not for others. For them the only reality is the Self, and the ultimate value is selfishness.

This we must continue to oppose. We need Church and state, laity and the clergy to be one in this. I am happy to say that in the Philippines, the laity and the clergy are working together in opposing it. This may be something unique in the world. In many international conferences I have attended, I have heard a number of laymen complain that they were not getting enough support from their bishops. This is truly sad.

In our country every layman or lay organization that tries to do anything to advance any Catholic cause can always count on his bishop to support what he or his organization is doing. The episcopacy is always there to guide and help. There is no inhibition even when these lay people are holding active positions in government. For it is above all consistent with democratic principles to expect Catholic laymen to act according to their Catholic principles on all issues.

Perhaps this experience is unique. But it can be replicated in other countries, provided the various groups are willing to understand the specificity of their respective roles and functions, in order to preserve the "separation" while ensuring convergence in action. This is consistent with the new spirit in the world. If there is to be a new politics, or if politics is to be renewed, it must be people-centered; it must be rooted in what people are. And religion is one of the basic roots of civil society.

Do you believe that the Philippines might be in a position to lead the way toward a new global consensus regarding issues such as sustainable development, programs centered on the people, and change initiated at the grassroots? No one has been able to form such a consensus, and to do so would benefit other countries--especially Catholic countries--which have compromised themselves because they have not yet formed the proper discernment.

Tatad: That is an interesting proposal and a very attractive one. Given the appropriate political opportunity and the power, I would certainly make a very earnest effort to take the appropriate steps leading to such a national discernment. Perhaps precisely because we should like to operate government according to the legitimate and objective moral principles which have been discarded by the most secular systems, and because we should like to do so without in any way trying to install or imitate a theocratic system, we would be in a better position than others to attempt such a discernment.

Why is it that in many countries there is inadequate awareness of the philosophy that is implied in the political agenda put forward by these "global forces," and the resulting strategies?

Tatad: Probably the global propaganda is succeeding more in other countries than in ours. In our case, we try to devote as much time and effort as possible to this issue. Consequently we have been able to keep track of the shifts in strategy and the evolution of the message directed at us.

For instance, I was probably one of the very first people to gain access to, and to reveal the contents of, the infamous National Security Study Memorandum 200, which contains the US population-control program for the developing world. While lay people continue to depend on the clergy for moral guidance, they try to acquire as much technical knowledge as possible on the issues, so that they could in return help educate the clergy on the technical details.

But the hierarchy seems to still be waiting for the laity to take a leadership role, speaking out against government policies that go against the Catholic faith.

Tatad: This has been true until now. But this is changing. Over the last few years, I have been virtually the only voice in Congress speaking out against policies and programs directed against the family, women, youth, and human life. But this is slowly changing. Outside of Congress, more and more lay organizations are also speaking out. But of course there is a tougher battle to be fought as far as the secular media are concerned.

What would need to be done to correct the situation?

Tatad: We must educate the people and their leaders. The political parties must get involved; the intellectual community must get involved; the professional and civic organizations and the non-governmental organizations must get involved. We must transform government by electing to the most important positions leaders who understand these issues as central to the continued vigor and prosperity of the society, and are prepared to stake their political fortunes on the correct position.

Would you say then that the present challenge for the laity is education and leadership?

Tatad: Yes.

And information?

Tatad: Yes. But information is coming in through the Internet, computers, the telephone, and television, with so many channels available to anyone anywhere in the world. So this means an indiscriminate flow of information. We need accurate, scientific, morally grounded information to educate our people. For this, we need to make appropriate arrangements to block out the most invasive and harmful propaganda, as other governments are trying to do.

Parallel to this, we will need to reform our educational system to free it from the influence of the UN agenda which has surreptitiously inserted into our system sex education and related programs that are harmful to our civil society. Of course, it should not be enough to simply displace such harmful programs from our system; we must preempt them or replace them with something of our own.

This will be an item on your platform?

Tatad: It will be. It is.

How do you explain the fact that in this country, where you have such good people, the government is not really representative of their convictions and needs?

Tatad: The political system is young and not quite mature. The party system, for instance, is not at all developed, so one party is just like any other, without any difference except in the name and style of their leaders. They are different singers singing the same song.

Moreover, there is very little unity of life. Good men are supposed to be good while attending church services, but politics is supposed to be something else, and politicians are supposed to act accordingly. Even among these very good men, there is not enough understanding of public morality. That is why people were shocked when I began speaking of the human life and family issues as important political issues, and more people were shocked when, recently, I started saying that there should be a minimum moral qualification for those seeking high office, notably the presidency.

Why?

Tatad: Well, they have an unhappy and unfortunate notion that Philippine society is a "macho" society in which having a mistress or two in addition to occasional affairs is nothing but proof of one's "machismo." The adulterous life of a politician is not supposed to be an electoral issue, even if the Ten Commandments and the penal laws of the country forbid adultery, and even if in reality politicians with multiple households have invariably ended up having so many more people peddling corrupt influence in government. It is part of the derangement of the political system which I am trying to correct--single-handedly it seems to me sometimes.

But to my pleasant surprise and satisfaction, the reactions to my recent statements on public morality have exceeded my wildest expectations. In rural Mindanao, for instance, where we distributed a questionnaire to gauge the reaction of the people, especially the poor, on the morality issue, the lowest level of agreement, out of five questions asked, was 87.7 percent, while the highest level of agreement was 95.5 percent.

As a consequence, I have been swamped with petitions and messages asking me to stand for the presidency. Of the twenty or so politicians who have already announced their presidential bid, no one has been pushed by anything like this; I am the only one, it appears, who is getting this kind of pressure from below. And this is all because I have raised the issue of public morality.

Are you saying that, out of the twenty candidates, you are the only one that has been asked to present himself as a candidate--the others being self-appointed?

Tatad: In a way. There are now twenty individuals who have announced themselves as aspirants for the presidency. They are, strictly speaking, seeking the nomination of their respective parties. They have nominated themselves; they have not been nominated by anybody. Unfortunately many of them are acting as though they were already "candidates."

It says a lot about the Philippines that the only presidential aspirant who appears to be really wanted is the one who has a moral platform.

Tatad: What it says to me is that we have for a long time underestimated the masses. For a very long time our so-called educated classes were saying the masses did not care about the morality of their leaders, as evidenced by the election of Vice President Joseph Estrada, a former movie actor with several households. Well, their reaction to the issue I have raised says the very opposite. They do care, and if they had voted for Estrada as vice president, they are not likely to vote for him again as president. For while they know him to have been a movie star and they admire movie stars and former movie stars, they probably did not know he had so many mistresses. Now they know and they know he would be an embarrassment in the presidency. It is not the masses but the so-called educated people--those who maintain permissive lifestyles--who did not want to discuss public morality as a political issue, for obvious reasons. But now that I have raised it, the masses are happy to see that it is being discussed openly in the campaign.

I suppose as the Senate majority leader, you are already a national figure.

Tatad: I had the benefit of starting young. At 29 I became a member of the Cabinet, the youngest Cabinet appointee in our post-war history. This was during the Marcos years. I stayed there for ten years, but resigned in 1980, six years before Marcos fell, to join the opposition. In between political jobs, I wrote columns, edited and published a newspaper. I have also written a couple of books. I have won one regional election, and two national elections, and since 1992 I have been in the Senate. I believe, however, that if our people know me, it is because I have fought for causes which every other politician has sought and seeks to avoid.

If you were to run for the presidency, what new elements would you bring to your platform that differ from what people already know from you?

Tatad: Well, we will have to restate many things in order to underline what is old and what is new.

We have to rebuild the country morally before we can hope to build it physically, economically, socially, and politically. We have to reaffirm our willingness to be part of the global society, but we must equip our own people with the appropriate knowledge and tactics to survive the competition in such an environment. We want to build our economy in such a way that while the private enterprise creates the wealth, the government will be on hand to create the safety nets. We want to see the missing middle class reemerge through the intervention of small and medium enterprises rather than large conglomerates, and we want to see the family become the principal agent and recipient of development. We want to maintain full employment as an economic objective, but we want to see more and more families engaged in entrepreneurship and participating in the ownership of firms.

Why the family? Because the family is the basic unit of society, and a strong society is possible only with strong families Socialism, which has collapsed, subordinates the individual to the state. Liberalism, which has produced such exuberant theories as "the end of history," puts the individual on top of the state. Both leave the family out. We want to correct this serious mistake.

When you say that you want to restore a moral order in this country, are you thinking primarily of the government?

Tatad: Both government and society. I believe that a corrupt society will inevitably produce a corrupt government; it is not usually government that corrupts the society. Corruption begins in society, because the raw materials that enter government first appear in society before they enter government. But it is possible for someone to use the power of government to reform not only government, but also society. A breakdown of law and order usually begins as a breakdown of morality, then it cascades within the environment and appears ultimately as a breakdown of law and order everywhere. A government that takes the law seriously, and decides to enforce all the laws ,will be a boon to society.

To implement this sort of reform, you would need to fight certain habits adopted by an earlier generation of Filipinos as a reaction against colonial rulers.

Tatad: Yes, we must teach ourselves the new meaning of obedience to the law. During our long years of colonization, our fathers carried out a kind of uninterrupted rebellion simply by trying to outsmart the law whenever they could. They did not have to openly rebel, even though there were 333 revolts against the Spanish authorities in 333 years. All they did was not to do what the authorities wanted them to do. The new morality must teach our people the true meaning of the law as an ordinance of reason promulgated by those in authority for the common good. They must see that the law is not for the good of those in authority but for the good of all. But this would require a real leader who will--in the words of Bagehot--"teach the nation what it does not know." Someone like Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew who would teach his people not only the meaning of the law, but how to live in a flat, how to "green and clean" the city, and how to tap private resources when the government does not have any.

Marguerite A. Peeters is the Director of Interactive Information Services, a Brussels-based organization dedicated to providing coverage of the current debate taking place in international organizations.