200 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy, Second Edition over the country's political system, hence, the elective positions and government bureaucracy. The election is an instrument used by the political elites to control public ofce – with all the resources under their command – and as a means for assuring the masses or electorate that they are integrated within their “tutelage.”21 The only role that the election process and the body that administers it plays is to act as mediator for intra-elite rivalry and to provide the semblance of voter participation in a public exercise that intrinsically favors the elites who manipulate the process through vote buying and intimidation, resources, fraud, violence, media, and other means. Under these circumstances where the voter not to mention genuine election watchdogs have limited power, election provides the “legitimacy” that enables the elites to remain in power and sets the terms of a hierarchical arrangement between them and the people. The people have neither power nor effective participation to make the election democratic, a level playing eld where non-dynastic but otherwise competent candidates can be chosen, and redistribute government representation from narrow political interests to the broader public. In the rst place, the current elite-centered social and economic structures whereby the oligarchs enjoy electoral advantages already guarantee their continuing class domination over the Filipino masses. Where the political system is monopolized by a few families along with its institutions like elective positions from the presidency to the municipality as well as the legislative bodies and bureaucracies the governing powers are effectively wielded by the political elite. Because it exclusively serves the narrow interests of the elite, the state is devoid of the inclusiveness that ensures broad and effective participation of the majority of stakeholders, public trust, and other elements. The state is stuck in the time warp of an oligarchic and backward system that is unable to institute reforms designed to make the political system more representative and the economic structure more distributive and progressive. Meantime, with all its resources diminishing, plundered, and more and more concentrated in the governing elite the state retrogresses and weakens. The statistical indications of mass poverty, unemployment, exodus of brains going abroad and the sheer inability of governing agencies to address urgent problems such as trafc management expose the inability of the elite-centered state to deliver effective leadership much less design policies and programs that transcend class or minority interests and effectively address the broader, democratic interests of the people at all times. Clearly, political families are not the archetype of democracy and accountability not only because of their centralization of power but also because their hegemony promotes social inequities, bureaucratic corruption, and plunder of state resources. They oppose real reforms like the enactment of an anti-dynasty law or measures that promote the democratic rights of the poor like minimum wages, land redistribution, and lower tax or even enhancing the Party-list system to protect it from subversion by elite politicians.