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The Asian side of the world - II

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Jean-François Sabouret

Part Two. National challenges and strategies

The Philippines: a never-ending democratic transition

Dominique Caouette

Texte intégral

1April 2012

2On 25 February 2012, President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, son of former president Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco Aquino and of the assassinated senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino II who was killed under the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, opened commemorative ceremonies for the EDSA people’s revolt. EDSA is the acronym for a wide artery of the capital, the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, where over 1 million people mobilized in February 1986 to force the departure of the dictator Marcos. The EDSA uprising, which preceded the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the more recent Arab Spring wave of protests, is still remembered as the symbol of a determined, militant citizenship, ready to defy the tanks and to offer flowers to soldiers. Nonetheless, 26 years later, have the Philippines really changed?

3Aquino, who was elected in May 2010 with a strong mandate, has officially been in power since 30 June. Since then, he has steered the country like a captain in a dense, omnipresent fog. His ascension to power and his inaugural speech, pronounced in Filipino rather than in English to the pleasure of most of his citizens, was taken as a signal that the long democratic transition that had started in 1986 might reach completion of. But, two and a half years later, he has yet to put in place a genuine governance programme that would allow implementation of the necessary social, political and economic reforms, starting with the public administration.

4The Filipino State is fragile, if not to say in a bad shape. The economic inequalities between rich and poor are among the greatest in South-East Asia. Transparency International ranked the Philippines 117th out of 159 countries on its corruption perception index in 2005. The situation worsened in 2009, when 58 people, including 32 journalists, were killed in broad daylight in a political massacre before imminent national elections in May 2010. The killings took place close to Ampatuan, a small town in the province of Maguindanao on Mindanao Island. The massacre shook the entire country and the world of international journalism. On 23 November, a convoy of journalists, lawyers and human rights activists, as well as the sister and wife of a candidate for governor who wanted to challenge the absolute control exercised by the Ampatuan family clan were heading for the local office of the Electoral Commission to register the opposition candidate, when they were intercepted by a hooded, armed militia. These paramilitary soldiers executed the entire convoy and even passers-by. This was the worst massacre in the history of journalism and led Reporters Without Borders to name the Philippines as the most dangerous place in the world to exercise the profession of journalism, more dangerous than Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Philippines: a neo-patrimonial state

5How should we view the Filipino political regime? A heuristic way to describe the Filipino State is as a neo-patrimonial regime, in which an oligarchy constituted of large landed families dominates and controls most of the political sphere. This economic elite largely overlaps with the political elite. Supported by a failing political system that allows the dominant class to keep power, the oligarchy has been able to ally with and manipulate the politicized, personalized bureaucracy. In such a State, the objective of political power is not the common good of the population but the private interests of the landed oligarchy. Although the Spanish colonization created this oligarchy, the American era (1899-1947) allowed it to consolidate. After independence, the important landowners kept their privileges until the Marcos dictatorship, when the dictator presided over the creation of an oligarchic super-clique, placing his relatives and partners in powerful positions. The Marcos cacique regime clearly illustrates predatory patrimonial governance: looting of the State and of the State treasury was discretionary and oriented to support the private patronage network.

6Marcos was deposed in 1986 after the EDSA popular upheaval. The uprising was organized to support a military mutiny that opposed the presidential election fraud organized by the ageing dictator, who had taken the risk of organizing elections. A new sense of hope was experienced throughout the country with the coming to power of Corazon Aquino, widow of the opposition leader Benigno Aquino, murdered in 1983. But the hope didn’t last long. Strong pressure was rapidly exercised on Aquino, who restored the oligarchy’s privileges after failing to implement reforms.

7Walden Bello, a left-wing intellectual who is a former political dissident and today a member of the Filipino Congress, describes the Philippines after EDSA as a two-faced system. On the one hand, it is a democratic organization in the formal sense: it has elections and equality in voting. On the other hand, it is excessively expensive and maintains the socio-economic order, allowing the elite to change seats periodically. Within this system, the Filipino population is manipulated and sidelined by struggles between and within elite factions. Therefore, it is not surprising that the various regimes that followed the EDSA revolt have not been able to bring the promised prosperity, reduce inequalities or stop the massive Filipino exodus. About 10 million people, or 10% of the population, live outside the country, and 3,000 Filipinos leave the country every day.

8Ironically, there is a lot of media coverage of the shy, non-charismatic “Nonoy” Aquino, not with regard to his programmes and projects but about his love affairs and his passion for weapons and sports cars. This reality has a reason: it is still difficult to find any Government efforts or programmes to clean up the public administration, remove the omnipresent corruption and to budge it from its inertia. Many have reported, however, that the nominations to several key positions are promising, notably for social affairs, the interior, the poverty control agency and the human rights commission. Furthermore, two peace negotiations have been launched, with the Maoist-inspired armed revolutionary movement led by the Filipino Communist Party and with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on Mindanao Island. Aquino has also established several initiatives, like the truth commission, to shed light on the financial scandals and abuses of power of former officials, in particular Aquino’s predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (2001-2010).

9Luckily for the new administration, the economy is prospering, not due to a fair, exhaustive development strategy but because the Philippines, like many other countries in the region, is being carried by the large wave of growth crossing Asia. Also, the Filipino diaspora and, most of all, the 10 million migrant workers continue to send back massive amounts of foreign currency to the country, with a record set in 2010 at over US$ 21 billion. The three economic sectors in the country that contribute to an annual growth of over 5% are natural resources, particularly mining, agriculture and the service sector, consisting essentially of the multiple call centres of the large transnational companies that are mushrooming all over the archipelago. The Philippines are gradually taking over India’s title of the world’s call-centre capital due to the fact that the country has a qualified work force with good knowledge of English and of western culture, particularly American culture.

10While the popular revolt in February 1986 was festive and was seen as a collective liberation, the atmosphere 26 years later is more wary. Benigno Aquino’s mandate for his second year seems to continue his predecessors’ policies rather than introduce change. The population is still waiting for the promised reforms and Government programmes to reduce chronic poverty, hunger, arbitrary tribunals and the endemic corruption. The Philippines are a good illustration of the difficulties and contradictions inherent to unachieved democracy grafted onto an oligarchic structure of power. It is not only a suspicious electoralism and a failing democracy subject to sudden, unpredictable crises but the continuity with the past that is the most shocking feature in respect of the nature of the political struggles of the past two decades.

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