Philippines puts on a political
show By Donald Kirk
MANILA - In some countries, leaders of
coups face almost certain death or at least life
imprisonment if they fail to knock out the
governments they hate.
Not so in the
Philippines. In this weirdly expanding but deeply
troubled society, leaders of failed coups look
forward to a post-coup future of public acclaim -
and possibly election to high political office.
Two notorious coup plotters are among the
dozen winners - half of the Senate - in the most
recent election, and they are sure to
make
life difficult for President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo for the three remaining years of
her term.
Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan
finished 10th in race for the 12 Senate seats that
were up for grabs, enough to be proclaimed a
winner, just one step ahead of co-plotter navy
Lieutenant Antonio Trillanes.
Honasan, a
handsome, dashing former army officer and
Philippine Military Academy graduate, has
contributed almost nothing to the welfare of the
Filipino people since leading the Reform Armed
Forces Movement in the "people power" revolution
that helped topple Ferdinand Marcos in February
1986.
Honasan is best known, in fact, for
joining in a series of abortive attempts to
overthrow the woman who had joined the
people-power movement against Marcos. Corazon
Aquino somehow survived them all, serving a full
term as president.
Captured after a 1989
coup against Aquino in which dozens were killed
while US warplanes circled as reminders of
Washington's support for Aquino, Honasan escaped
by bribing the crew of a ship where he was held in
Manila harbor.
Did that stop him from full
exoneration - or at least a pardon - and
resuscitation as a national political figure? No
way. Pardoned by Aquino's successor, Fidel Ramos,
the general and West Point graduate who was the
real leader of the 1986 revolution, Honasan served
two undistinguished terms in the Philippine Senate
until 2004.
Even before stepping down from
the Senate, however, Honasan had been plotting
again to seize power. He was the inspiration
behind what came to be known as the Oakwood Mutiny
in which more than 300 junior officers, on July
27, 2003, holed up in defiance in the Oakwood
apartment tower in Makati, the big business hub of
Metro Manila.
The coup, if that's what it
was, was bloodless. The coup leaders said they
wanted to air grievances and complaints against
Arroyo, who they feared was about to impose
martial law.
The Oakwood Mutiny may only
have added to Honasan's luster - and certainly to
that of Trillanes - who would have remained an
unknown but for all the publicity surrounding this
daring young officer whose avowed aim was to
expose the corruption and venality that no one
denies is rife within the ruling establishment,
notably the armed forces.
The greatest
revelation, though, was the uncanny propensity of
the system to take care of its own for offenses
that would have ended their careers, if not their
lives, in just about any other country.
Honasan, released on bail in April over
the Oakwood Mutiny, ran for the Senate on the
promise that he would do so as an Independent, not
as a member of the "Genuine Opposition" to
Arroyo's rule. Trillanes, still detained, was
somehow eligible to run for the Senate - a
romantic figure with enough charisma to come in
11th in the count.
If the spectacle of two
coup plotters coasting into the Senate seems
bizarre, however, there may be a secondary
problem.
Arroyo's Team Unity candidates
won only two of the 12 races, while the
second-biggest vote-getter, Francis Escudero, led
two efforts to get Arroyo impeached. And he is not
likely to give up his bid to get her thrown out of
the presidency before her term expires. Arroyo's
people managed to do considerably better in the
Lower House, but her foes in the Senate are sure
to create problems when it comes to ramming
through legislation.
The political circus,
though, appears to most people you're likely to
encounter in Manila as a vast charade in which
families and clans compete for powerful positions
in contests that have little bearing on their
daily lives.
If the gross national product
is edging up, as reported, it's largely on the
strength of more than US$14 billion in remittances
poured into the country over the past year - the
earnings of about 8 million Filipinos, one-tenth
of the population, who now work overseas.
A mall culture flourishes in just about
every major city as extended families supported by
the earnings of overseas workers flock to consume
luxury products and fast food while more than half
the country still lives in shanty towns and
squatter huts.
"I don't know anything
about them," was the remark I heard most often
when asking shoppers about the candidates whose
pictures were splashed across the front pages of
the paper. "They are all corrupt."
At the
historic Solidaridad bookshop on Padre Faure
Street in downtown Manila, Francisco Sionil Jose,
publisher and author, offered an explanation for
the success of Genuine Opposition candidates -
along with that of two coup leaders who would like
nothing better than to take over the government in
a show of idealistic fervor.
"No matter
who wins, it will be the same," said Jose, who
runs the shop along with his wife. "It is a
protest against Gloria. When Filipinos get mad,
they don't care for the consequences."
Jose laughed at the success of Honasan and
Trillanes as symptomatic of the popular cynicism.
"He's a son of a bitch," he said of Honasan. "He
looks good on television." Honasan showed his
popularity in just a month of campaigning, he
noted, while Trillanes won votes without
campaigning at all.
They owe their
success, though, to considerably more than their
public image. Huge infusions of wealth from
critics aligned with Joseph "Erap" Estrada, the
former president whom Arroyo consigned to a loose
form of house arrest after she threw him out in
"People Power II", are assumed to slosh through
their campaign treasuries.
Jose doubts
whether Arroyo can regain the popularity she
seemed to have achieved during the campaign
against Estrada. "No matter what she does, her
people are against her," he said. "She has
committed too many mistakes."
On the Mall
of Asia, a grand expanse of glittering department
stores, shops, restaurants and theaters on
reclaimed land beside Manila Bay, a skating rink
has become one of the biggest attractions. Young
skaters lined up for hours on the ice at a cost of
more than US$7 apiece - still more to hire an
"assistant coach" needed to acquaint many of them
to the skills of ice-skating in the tropics.
"Who can afford any of this?" asked a
woman escorting a couple of excited young boys.
"Everyone here makes money from overseas. They've
come back from jobs outside the country, or
they're getting money from relatives. There is no
other way."
As for the elections, she
said, she hadn't been following the candidates at
all. "They are not important for us," she said.
"We have too much to worry about without thinking
about them."
Journalist Donald
Kirk is a frequent visitor to the Philippines
and is the author of the books Philippines in
Crisis: US Power Versus Local Revolt and
Looted: The Philippines after the Bases.
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