The democracy we made our own

I remember the 1992 national elections with more than passing interest. Senator Santanina Rasul of Sulu was seeking reelection. Running alongside her was Sanchez Ampang Ali, a Muslim democratic leader and political reform advocate then in his mid-30s.

They were hardly alone. Other Muslim Filipinos sought Senate seats under competing political banners, among them incumbent Senator Mamintal Tamano of Lanao del Sur. Rasul won. Tamano and Ali did not.

What seemed unremarkable then has become more interesting with time. These candidates were not confined to one political party or expected to seek the mandate of Muslims alone. They submitted themselves to the same nationwide electorate as everyone else.

And I do not remember their faith becoming a prominent argument against their candidacies. Perhaps there were prejudices I was too young to recognize. But their participation seemed part of the ordinary business of democracy.

I once heard a Muslim democrat speak of a distinction between Western democracy and the kind practiced in the East, particularly in the Philippines. I cannot claim to have grasped all he meant. An election in Michigan, more than three decades later, brought the observation back to mind.

On 3 November, Abdul El-Sayed, an American physician and former public health official, defeated Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race, becoming the first Muslim elected to the United States Senate.

The contest concerned health care, living costs, and foreign policy. It also brought questions about El-Sayed’s faith and loyalty into political argument. Those are not the same questions. His record and proposals deserved scrutiny, as did his opponent’s. Religious identity alone establishes neither a candidate’s competence nor his allegiance.

Here at home, Muslim Filipinos have continued to enter public life at every level. In 2022, Robin Padilla won a Senate seat, while Faisal Mangondato sought the presidency under the Katipunan ng Kamalayang Kayumanggi. Some candidates succeeded, others did not.

The right to participate was never supposed to depend on the outcome. That is easy to forget when we speak of representation only in terms of those who win. A defeated candidate also belongs to the democratic story, having asked fellow citizens for their trust and accepted their answer.

That principle also found expression in party politics. The United Muslim Democrats of the Philippines joined the National Union of Christian Democrats and Partido Lakas ng Tao in the coalition that became Lakas-NUCD-UMDP. Different traditions could find a common political home, however imperfect their arrangements.

It did not mean that religion ceased to matter, or that political alliances were free from calculation. But the arrangement suggested that citizenship could provide a meeting place for convictions that remained distinct.

Our Constitution declares the separation of Church and State inviolable and rejects religious tests for civil or political rights. The American Constitution likewise forbids religious tests for federal office. But written guarantees cannot, by themselves, determine how people treat one another in an election. That is learned, tested, and sometimes forgotten in ordinary political life.

Nor did our democratic story begin with the Americans. Filipinos had proclaimed a republic and adopted a constitution at Malolos before colonial rule reshaped our political institutions. Over the generations, we made those institutions part of our own contested national life.

None of this makes the Philippines free of religious prejudice. Mindanao’s history alone should caution us against such a conclusion. Nor can Michigan speak for every American voter.

The comparison is an invitation to observe, not a competition for democratic virtue. An election can reveal both the freedoms a nation protects and the uneasiness with which some of its citizens regard those freedoms when exercised by others.

Perhaps democracy becomes truly our own not merely when elections are held and winners proclaimed, but when the presence of people unlike ourselves in those contests no longer requires an explanation.