Rolo Tomassi, Keyser Soze, and Kennedy’s Real Killer

A reformer struggles against the status quo. The status quo involves a complicated network of policies, Government agencies, social actors, dominant players, regulators, media, informal rules, formal and informal alliances of forces that benefit from the way things are - and what to keep things that way.

Sometimes its easy to see how these networks protect themselves - like when they publish a position paper in national dailies.  Sometimes they advance their interests in subtle but still public ways - for example, by sponsoring a politician’s “public service message”. Then there are times when act in ways that are not noticed by the general public, but obvious to experienced political observers. Reformists train themselves to see these subtle, informal methods.

Most of us will not make much of these events, but some reformists would view these as attempts of entrenched networks to protect themselves:

• One fine day certain columnists, radio commentators and media personalities would just happen to say the same things in defense of a powerful business group;
• A legislator’s committee report contains the same statements found in a dominant company’s position paper. And these statements are not quoted as references, but stated as part of the legislator’s findings and recommendation;
• Intelligence officers find a rifle near where a President had been shot. Later, enforcers find a picture of the same rifle, being held by a former Marine who had defected to Russia, then returned to the US;  
• An alleged terrorist is named a suspect by intelligence officers. His passport is found, intact, in the debris of two fallen skyscrapers.

When things like these happen, some of us could be forgiven for thinking that there must be a secret, elite and powerful group pulling strings in our society. And there must be a single Master Mind directing this group. 

It’s exciting to think like this because we like mystery and suspense. For a long time they did not show us the face of Specter’s Number 1. They only showed us Ernst Stavro Blofeld’s hands - and his cat.

But we also want to put a face - or at least a name - to these unknown, powerful forces. In the movie “L.A. Confidential”, a character named Ed Exley thinks his father’s killer had managed to elude the law by remaining anonymous. To keep his resolve in finding this murderer, Exley gives him a name - Rolo Tomassi. 

It’s very tempting to believe that there is a Rolo Tomassi behind existing power structures because it suggests a simple, direct strategy to achieve development. Just take down the Kingpin and his minions. With the monster’s head chopped off, existing unfair and extractive structures would fall down, reform would be achieved, the world made a better place. 

That’s how it works in a video games, right? In the final stage, you take down the Boss Unit to rescue the Princess.

This strategy to achieve reform would be much simpler than working out a Theory of Change, building a team, forming coalitions, and taking political action to push for a technically sensible reform. 

Unfortunately, life and development reform don’t work like video games. For one, there is no single Boss Unit in economics or politics. Or at least we’re not sure if there is. As “The Usual Suspects” asks about a reputed, ultimate-evil criminal boss named Keyser Soze: Does he exist? And if he does, who is he?

True, there are larger-than-life personalities leading big businesses and/or political forces. They are heavily invested in the existing economic and power structure. They all have the means, the opportunity and the motive to manipulate conditions and events.  

But they are also competing against each other. Chances are they all have Donald Trump egos. Could they even stay in the same room long enough to agree on something, let alone pick a Leader?

Another theory says it’s neither Rolo Tomassi nor Keyser Soze who are calling the shots.  Instead, it’s really social, economic and political forces and trends that bring about significant events. And these forces are beyond the influence of any single person.

Consider the traffic in our roads. It can’t all be because of a single evil master criminal bent on creating  congestion. It’s easier to explain traffic conditions as the result of increasing purchasing power (more people can buy motor vehicles now), limited infrastructure expansion, and the usual government project management practices.

Likewise, it was a complex set of conditions brought on by a combination of the Cold War, Kennedy’s fight against organized crime, the Dallas heat that led to the unfortunate event in Dealey Plaza. Not a Master Mind who used Lee Harvey Oswald as a puppet-cum-fall guy.

Also according to this theory, Filipino people’s vigilance against government corruption synergized with our heightened level of social organization and SMS technology resulted in the Second EDSA Revolution. Not a bunch of Makati oligarchs.

This theory suggests that development reform is manageable and can be approached in a systematic and logical way. Instead of looking in the shadows for mysterious forces manipulating society, a reformist can instead seek to discern and understand prevailing institutional arrangements, power structures, formal and informal rules, and relations that sustain the status quo.  (My political scientist friends assure me, “mysterious forces” and “institutional arrangements” are different things.) 

The reformist might even learn to use these institutional arrangements against the status quo. He can move within the spaces created by constant competition among the elites to push for changes. These changes would hopefully lead to desirable social outcomes.

In short, instead of being paranoid, development reformists can go about their advocacies in a more rational, logical way.  What a relief, huh.

Still, some ideas keep coming back, like the post-credit scenes of some horror movies. 

Ideas like: if Development Entrepreneurs are the Jedis fighting for a stronger Republic, doesn’t that mean there are also Sith Lords out there, seeking to maintain the status quo or to strengthen their control? 

And then there’s something Charles Baudelaire wrote in his short story “The Generous Gambler”. This was paraphrased by Verbal Kint, another character from “The Usual Suspects”: “The finest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he does not exist”.