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The Impending Crisis in the Philippines
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11757 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1987 |
2,547 Words |
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Ray S. Cline
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A little over one year ago, Ferdinand Marcos with his governing entourage was maneuvered into leaving the presidential palace in Manila and going into exile in Hawaii. Corazon Aquino, his popular opponent in the patently fraudulent February 1986 elections, became undisputed president. The multiple disasters that struck the Philippines in the 1980s had thoroughly discredited the aging dictator. Unfortunately, events in the Philippines since the elections have proved to be beyond Aquino's competence to significantly change for the better.
Despite the constitutional plebiscite on February 3, 1987, that confirmed Aquino in office for another six years, political violence, Communist Party-sponsored guerrilla insurgency on a massive scale, and economic stagnation still cloud the future. "Cory," as the nickname-addicted Filipinos call their new leader, is in increasing danger of becoming the Jimmy Carter of the Philippines. If she cannot build a more effective government than she has to date, the Philippines may become the odd man out of the otherwise dynamic West Pacific region.
The trouble is Aquino is more public-relations image than political reality, especially in her own country. The majority of the Filipino people are desperately poor and stricken by widespread unemployment. They know they are likely to stay that way so long as public order is constantly being shattered by armed terror attacks by the revolutionary New People's Army (NPA) or local police and military detachments. Business activity cannot pick up in the 20 percent of the countryside dominated by the NPA. All the glamor of "people power" simply did not improve public order, economic welfare, or business dynamism in the first 12 months.
Will a wordy and complex constitution focused on "human rights" make thing better? It is not clear exactly how the constitution can improve the situation. This document was drafted by a left-wing social reform group handpicked by Aquino and was presented to the populace on a take it or leave it basis.
After a year of political drift and no constitutional legitimacy, it was inevitable that voters would opt for an attempt to return to orderly government. Aquino's advisers added as a temporary clause in the constitution the provision that she and Vice President Salvador Laurel, who has little real political power, would retain office for six years, until June 30, 1992. No elections, no other options, no alternative political choices were offered. Naturally, voters tried to signal they do not want the anarchy and further drift that would have followed rejection of the constitution.
Can Aquino govern?
Aquino has been confirmed in office after a long period of chaotic rule by revolutionary government edict. But can she govern? The story of 1986 is not very reassuring.
Any opposition figure probably would have been chosen in preference to Marcos, and that is why he so blatantly cheated in the February 7, 1986, election, which he capriciously called to show he still had control of the country. Aquino became the folk legend around which all critics of Marcos rallied because she was the widow of the martyred "Ninoy" Aquino, murdered in Manila in 1983 as he returned to try to organize a political challenge to
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