MANILA - If the Philippines' current
political crisis was initially about the political
survival of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, it
has quickly turned into something much bigger.
While the fallout from a scandal last year
involving the president allegedly coercing
electoral officials could have been contained, a
confluence of events has since paved the way for a
standoff that
has
polarized domestic political forces. Arroyo's fate
is now almost incidental. Beneath the coup plots,
shadow plays and shifting alliances is the
protracted and unresolved class struggle for
power.
Democracy lite After the
fall of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Philippine
conservative ruling elites aided by the United
States moved quickly to reinstate the
pre-dictatorship political system that had under
Spanish colonial rule allowed them to entrench
their economic dominance over society.
Smarting from the lessons of Marcos'
dictatorship, and seeing that authoritarianism was
not necessarily the most effective way to maintain
their collective grip on power, the elite leaders
restored civil liberties, but restricted democracy
to mere electoral contests that - given the
ossified distribution of wealth and power in the
Philippines - remained structurally skewed in
their favor.
Dubbed variably as
"low-intensity democracy", "limited democracy" or
"polyarchy" by academics, the post-1986 consensus
became both the linchpin of stability and the
source of legitimacy for Philippine ruling elites.
Through elections, the elite factions were
able to manage competition among themselves while
eschewing outsiders who lacked the resources
required to challenge them at the ballot box.
Those who won the elections were able to command
obedience from the masses - not by force as in a
dictatorship, but by reminding them that they (the
leaders) were the people's choice.
Having
dominated the state through the electoral process,
the ruling elites have countered challenges to
their rule by successfully thwarting persistent
demands for a redistribution of power, wealth and
economic opportunities.
One rough measure
of the entrenched inequality: on the eve of the
first "people power" uprising in 1985, the top 10%
of the population took 37% of the total national
income; the lowest 20% garnered a mere 5%. Twenty
years later, judging by the latest available
official data, the top 10% still controls a
whooping 36% of the national pie, while the lowest
20% remains stuck at 5%.
Challenged
from outside, crumbling within Despite its
strengths, the post-1986 political system has been
inherently unstable. Over time, the masses became
less content with the economic results of
representative democracy.
Twenty years
after the people-power uprising, official polls
find that 57% of Filipinos still consider
themselves poor, slightly higher than the 55% who
felt poverty-pinched in 1983. As much as 20% of
the population is unemployed, and every day as
many as 2,000 Filipinos leave the country to work
abroad. Economic growth has clearly failed to
trickle down, the promises of globalization
notwithstanding.
This failure of
consecutive democratically elected governments to
deliver greater economic good - much more than
allegations of cheating and corruption - has
progressively eroded the legitimacy of the
political status quo. But even as the current
political system has led to an expansion of the
disfranchised and fueled resentment, it has
simultaneously extended political freedoms to the
middle class.
Those freedoms have
strengthened the movements calling for substantive
as opposed to "low-intensity" democracy. The
openness afforded by "democracy lite" has
ironically allowed for the rise of a vibrant
leftist movement. Despite its weakness and
fragmentation, it has not been quashed to the same
extent as those in neighboring Indonesia and
Thailand, where capitalists rule the roost.
Increasingly challenged from peripheral
political actors, political elites were also
increasingly challenged by divisions from within.
Historically, internal stability depended on
consensus in putting their collective elite
interests above the narrow interests of individual
factions. This, however, has recently not been the
case.
In January 2001, elite factions
displaced by Joseph Estrada's presidency seized on
widespread anger at alleged corruption inside his
government and rode to power on the wave of
another people-power-type uprising.
In an
alleged rigging of the 2004 elections - and by
being reckless enough to get caught speaking
privately with supposedly neutral election
officials - Arroyo won the ire of fellow elites.
The other elite factions, for their part, have
seized on the scandal and are now trying to knock
her from power. But by adamantly standing her
ground, Arroyo has further stretched the limits
and contradictions of the established political
order.
The divided front The
post-1986 political consensus is now under
unprecedented strain. Weakened by internal
wranglings, the once-united front of the ruling
elites is quickly crumbling. With very little
economic progress to show for the past two
decades, the government is finding it difficult to
exact consent from the middle and lower classes.
It is in this larger context that the current
political crisis is unfolding.
Beneath the
confusing web of coalitions and alliances among
powerful families, politicians, military factions,
religious groups and civil-society organizations,
the fundamental political division in the
Philippines today remains that between those who
want to preserve their position of dominance in
society and those who want to dislodge them.
Overlaid on this polarization is the divergence
between those who want to salvage the post-1986
system and those who want to dismantle it.
The problem for the preservationist camp,
however, is that its proposed solutions to the
current crisis have all been dead ends.
To
deflect calls for her ouster, Arroyo has been
pushing for constitutional revisions that, among
other recommendations, would change the government
from a presidential to a parliamentary system,
which critics argue could be even more easily
manipulated by the elites. The ruling class has
been concerned by the power that direct
presidential elections gives to the masses, as
demonstrated by the election of Estrada - who,
while a member of the ruling class himself,
appealed to the poor by stoking their class
resentments and notably was not anointed by
traditional elites.
The constitutional
solution Arroyo proposes has not gained political
traction, however, and is unlikely to overcome
formidable opposition. Faced with threats both
from other elite factions and from the left,
Arroyo has resorted to authoritarian measures,
further undermining the post-1986 system of
"limited democracy". The reimposition of what
amounts to martial law by the recent declaration
of a "state of emergency" and other authoritarian
proclamations signals the willingness of Arroyo's
government to resort to force when all else fails.
The anti-Arroyo factions that also strive
to salvage the current political order have
likewise only shot blanks. Drawing its
constituency from rightists and centrists, and
those leaning center-left, this motley political
grouping is represented by the Aquinos, the
Catholic hierarchy, and the business class, as
well as social liberals and democrats.
Most of them have come together under the
banner of the so-called Black and White Movement.
At first, they pushed for strict adherence to the
constitutional order and initially called for the
succession of Vice President Noli de Castro to the
presidency. But this has since been abandoned
because de Castro still supports Arroyo, and even
people from within their ranks see him as too
lightweight to safeguard their interests
competently.
They later supported last
year's impeachment proceedings against the
president. After that move was blocked by
pro-Arroyo legislators, who still dominate
Congress, some of them have started pushing for
special elections - in short, a continuation of
the post-1986 system of electoral democracy,
although without Arroyo at the helm.
In
transition On the other side of this jagged
divide are those who seek to dismantle the system
altogether. Though they have different
motivations, tactics and political alternatives,
they have come around to a common conclusion:
their solutions would require an
extra-constitutional intervention and would not be
bound by the parameters of the post-1986 political
system.
On one end of this spectrum are
those who feel that so-called "limited democracy"
cannot be relied on to preserve order; its
openness has only been exploited by so-called
"communists" and by corrupt elites. This camp
includes rightist civilian and military factions
who want to establish a military or
civilian-military junta, as well as factions
inside the Arroyo government who are advocating
repressive measures beyond those formally allowed
under so-called "low-intensity" democracy.
Another point on this continuum is the
tactical alliance among elite anti-Arroyo
opposition groups, most of them right-wing groups
linked to Estrada, but also including well-known
personalities with leftist backgrounds, some
associated with the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP). Grouped under the Solidarity
Movement, they are calling for a "transitional
council" that will be composed of opposition
politicians and some leaders of the party.
The politicians apparently see this as a
way to regain power and restore elite democracy
under their command. The CPP, for its part,
presumably sees this as a chance to infiltrate the
highest echelons of the state, even as it
continues to implement its military strategy of
encircling cities from the countryside and seizing
power through armed insurrection.
Another
section under the left's banner is the Laban ng
Masa (Fight of the Masses) coalition. They are
calling for a "transitional revolutionary
government" (TRG) - without conservative elite
forces represented in the leadership. This
umbrella coalition brings together a diverse group
of leftist political forces: Leninists together
with autonomous social movements and
non-governmental organizations, Maoists together
with left-party formations that do not see the
seizure of the state as the priority, socialists,
left-liberals, greens, and others.
Most of
the political blocs included here broke away from
the CPP in the 1990s, and the coalition is the
highest level of tactical and political unity they
have achieved since then.
According to the
coalition, the TRG's wild aim is to institute
economic and political changes that have so far
been resisted by the elites, such as land reform
and the reversal of neo-liberal economic policies
such as privatization and free trade and
"structures of popular empowerment". Elections
will then resume once their conditions are met,
including the suspension of the constitution and
the ones mentioned above. The TRG concept has been
met with trepidation in the haciendas, in the
business district, and at the US Embassy in
Manila.
'American approval' As
different groups and factions scramble for power,
the US Embassy has become a very popular
destination. "What everyone is trying to do,"
confided one of the cabinet secretaries who
recently resigned and joined the anti-Arroyo
movement, "is to get American approval." Even the
government has no illusions as to what the embassy
can do: "If the Americans decide to drop support
of the Philippine president, it crumbles," the
president's former chief of staff, Rigoberto
Tiglao, has acknowledged. [1]
That has
been borne out historically. The Philippines was a
US colony until 1946, but even thereafter
Washington regularly intervened politically by
financing preferred candidates and groups,
conducting widespread covert operations, and
helping to stage-manage elections.
In
1950, a US National Security Council document
stated that among the United States' goals in the
country was the maintenance of "an effective
government which will preserve and strengthen the
pro-US orientation". In 1972, the US supported the
declaration of martial law because, as a US Senate
report put it, "Military bases and a familiar
government in the Philippines are more important
than the preservation of democratic institutions."
When Marcos finally became more of a
political liability than an asset to the US,
Washington immediately transferred its support to
the anti-Marcos elite factions, attempted to unify
them, and ensured that they would call the shots
in the anti-dictatorship movement.
All
these were critical strategies to guarantee that
the outcome of people power would not be inimical
to US interests. How exactly the US is playing its
hand during the current crisis may not be known
for years to come. Since the crisis began,
however, US officials have repeatedly stated that
they would oppose another "people power" incident.
Tired but wiser Unless Arroyo
voluntarily resigns or goes along with
counter-elite plots to preserve the current
political order, another people-power-type
uprising is still what most of the groups seeking
the president's ouster are leveraging to force a
political transition. Whether the outcome of
another popular uprising will be special
elections, a transitional council or a
transitional revolutionary government is still
unclear. Until now the two critical elements for
past successful uprisings are still apparently
missing: the support of the military and hundreds
of thousands of people on the streets.
In
the military, cracks are showing. The government
may have foiled recent coup movements by some
military factions, but it has not put an end to
the restiveness inside the barracks.
And
the fissures in society are increasingly being
reflected in the chain of command. A nationalist,
and some say progressive, bloc composed mostly of
junior officers, is reported to be emerging. But
as outside the barracks, the military is divided
between those who are committed to defending the
existing political order and those who want to
reconstruct it. The question is, who will strike
first and who will remain standing?
So
far, the only political force that has been able
to fill the streets on a sustained basis, though
on a limited scale, is the organized left. Some
analysts attribute the general public's refusal to
join them to a so-called "people power fatigue",
and view this as implicit approval of Arroyo and
the existing political system.
The other
explanation, however, is that the people are not
tired, only wiser: having seen how the previous
uprisings only led to the replacement of one elite
faction with another, and witnessing no real
change in their economic well-being, they may be
loath to support another merry-go-round at the
top. But if the right combination of factions and
personalities were to coalesce, for better or
worse, another popular uprising is not
inconceivable.
Note 1.
Raymond Bonner and Carlos H Conde, "In Manila, US
drawn into fight". New York Times, July 23, 2005.
Herbert Docena is with Focus on
the Global South, a research and advocacy
organization.
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