The Old Order Persists Despite Philippine Change

MANILA —  Three years ago, “people power” toppled the Marcos dynasty and swept the wife of a martyred senator into power.

Since then the Philippines has undergone much change, but in significant ways it has not changed at all. At the helm of a nation with chronic political instability and endemic poverty, President Corazon Aquino is like Alice in Wonderland, running hard to stay in the same place.

For a country in such dire need of purposeful leadership, Aquino has offered precious little by way of direction or guiding vision. As Filipino journalist Amando Doronila once described her, Aquino is a “transitional leader” born out of historical circumstances, whose long-term agenda remains unclear or unfocused.

After surviving several coup attempts, the Aquino government has found relative political stability, buoyed by an upbeat economy. But the underlying problems that can lead to the country’s undoing--economic inequalities, urban-rural disparities, uncontrolled population growth, environmental degradation--remain untouched. Exuberant hopes raised three years ago have long since evaporated into cynicism over the prospects for genuine change in Philippine society during her tenure.

True, there are real Aquino achievements. If she has an agenda at all, commented former labor minister Blas Ople, “she might equate it to the restoration of democracy in the country.” The nation she inherited was prostrate after nearly 20 years of systematic looting by Ferdinand E. Marcos, his wife and their cronies. Aquino helped rebuild democratic institutions destroyed by the Marcoses. A new constitution was put in place and, after elections, a new Congress. Aquino helped rebuild confidence in a country whose battered economy in the Marcos years fell two decades behind its Southeast Asian neighbors.

But the Aquino government, immediate tasks accomplished, soon lost momentum on its reformist policies. When it buckled down to work, it returned to the practice of Philippine-style democracy with a vengeance.

The elections for congressional and local seats in 1987-88 signaled the return of oligarchic rule with all its attendant trappings--dirty politicking, warlords, private armies. To make up for diminishing support among the urban middle class, Aquino’s own political party, led by her relatives, sought alliances with political kingpins in the countryside. Even now her party continues to accommodate Marcos’ old supporters in the run-up for the 1992 presidential elections.

With oligarchies firmly entrenched in power politics, much time and energy have been spent in preserving the status quo. Congress’ first major task--to thrash out the details of Aquino’s sweeping land-reform program--became a melodramatic showdown between a handful of idealistic lawmakers and the dominant landowners in the lower house. Aquino’s own brother, Jose Cojuangco Jr., campaigned successfully for a diluted land-reform act that, with all its loopholes, could leave feudal land tenancy largely unchanged.

The president missed an opportunity as she first took office, when she still had the undiluted powers that Marcos had taken as president, to demand redistribution of land owned by many members of Congress. Land-reform advocates, including the Roman Catholic Church, believe that would have been Aquino’s most effective means of curing economic conditions that lead to political unrest and growth of communist-led insurgency.

“If you’re looking for moral courage and self-abnegation in the presidency, the concrete evidence would have been the redistribution of Hacienda Luisita (the Cojuangcos’ vast sugar landholdings in the central Luzon),” observed a Filipino critic.

Many other administrative initiatives have been sidetracked by a daily Punch-and-Judy show in Congress, renowned for political grandstanding and little achievement. Where Aquino has put forth proposals for rural development and livelihood, they seem piecemeal efforts without a central agenda.

Aquino’s administration has also been admonished by international groups and foreign governments for a sorry record on human rights. The government has institutionalized anti-communist vigilante groups, which have been blamed for slayings of alleged left-wing activists or suspected communist sympathizers.

A return to democracy has also seen runaway graft and corruption on almost all levels of Philippine society. While Aquino herself remains untainted, her relatives and associates have been the target of corruption charges. The presidential commission entrusted with the recovery of Marcos’ ill-gotten wealth has been mired in corruption, incompetence and internecine rivalry. Thus far, no senior official or major personality has been prosecuted. Of the billions stolen by Marcos, only a fraction has been recovered.

There are signs of lawlessness everywhere. Possession of high-powered firearms has become a status symbol among the rich.

While the threat from right-wing forces appears to have dissipated since the last major coup attempt on Aug. 27, 1987, the charismatic leader of the coup, Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan, is still at large. Aquino has reached a modus vivendi with the military by removing liberals from her Cabinet, but the military remains divided.

The communist-led guerrilla movement, after growing dramatically during Marcos’ time, has suffered setbacks in the face of a popularly elected government. The arrests last year of top leaders of the Communist Party and New People’s Army threw the movement into further disarray, although security lapses resulted in the escape from prison of a ranking NPA official considered its top military strategist.

A robust economy also contributes to diminished middle-class support for the insurgency. However, the consumer-led economic boom is illusory. It touches barely half of the country’s 59 million people who live below the poverty line. Government planners warn that annual growth, which stood at 6.7% in 1988, cannot be sustained unless needed reforms take place. There is little consensus on how best to deal with the troublesome $28-billion foreign-debt burden, the most crippling factor hanging over the economy.

Although unemployment rates have declined, the government has done little to reduce the 2.4% population growth rate, one of the highest in Asia. Environmental protection programs have had negligible impact on widespread pollution and despoliation.

For all her inability to provide strong leadership and inculcate any sense of nationhood, Aquino still seems the only one who can hold the nation together--at least for now. But her time is running out. Aquino has repeatedly said she will not run again in 1992 when her term ends, although she may be persuaded to do so. As she took the presidency in 1986, her mandate was for change. In 1992, the mandate should be the same, for whoever faces the challenge of maintaining the country’s fragile democracy.