Miseducation
September 29th, 2002
Seventy-one percent of those aware of it favor the presence of US troops in the country, and would like to extend it. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s approval rating has surged to 28 percent from a low four percent only two months ago.
The first was the result of a survey by the polling firm Pulse Asia; the second, the result of another poll taken by its competitor, Social Weather Stations.
The first implies public approval of the Arroyo policy of closer Philippine-US military engagement. The second suggests that Mrs. Arroyo’s most recent initiatives—her bringing down electricity costs for the poor; the “defeat,” no matter how partial and possibly temporary it has been, of the bandit group Abu Sayyaf; and her decision to take a direct hand in dealing with the country’s crime problem—have done wonders for her popularity.
The majority can of course be wrong, sometimes disastrously. The majority, for example, supported martial law in 1972, just as the majority once believed the earth was flat. The majority can be wrong because it can be uninformed, and that is the case in the Philippines, which means that it needs information and education rather than encouragement for its mistaken notions.
Popularity, however, is the name of the game in governance and politics—in what passes for democracy in the country of our despair. Mrs. Arroyo wants to be, or wants to remain, popular for the sake of 2004, when the country goes to the polling booths to elect, among others, its next president for the next six years, till the end of the first decade of the 21st century.
This means that Mrs. Arroyo will continue with the restoration of the pre-1990 relations between the Philippines and the United States. It means more Philippine military “exercises” with United States troops. It means the signing of the Mutual Logistic and Support Agreement (MLSA) which would provide US troops “facilities” they can use so long as they’re here (which could be on a yearlong basis, year by year).
It means aligning the Philippines even more closely with US international policy. It might even mean, in the long-term, US troop or US airpower (which is more likely) engagement in AFP efforts at a military solution to insurgency and rebellion.
Those who approve of US troop presence and would even like to extend it of course couldn’t care less for these possibilities, of which in any case they are not aware. As in Olongapo and Angeles throughout the more than half-century presence of the US military bases, most Filipinos judged the American presence in terms of the dollars it brings, and the food it helps put on the table. (As then Olongapo mayor, now tourism secretary, Richard Gordon said in so many words in the late 1980s, you can’t eat principle but dollars you can spend.) In Basilan and Zamboanga there is also the added sense that the US presence has caused the Abu Sayyaf to back off and to be finally defeated.
Meanwhile, the tough-on-crime stance of Mrs. Arroyo has reaped her dividends as well. All the lawyers’ and human rights groups’ talk about the rights of the accused are going over the heads of a people frightened by crime, afraid to walk the streets, and fearful even in their homes. Sickened by their own fear, the majority of Filipinos are not surprisingly in favor of anything, including “salvaging” or public humiliation of suspected criminals, which they think will provide them relief from the kidnappings, the thefts, the robberies, the murders that occur daily in the Pearl of the Orient.
The result of the SWS survey will thus embolden Mrs. Arroyo to continue encouraging the abhorrent practice of parading “criminals” before the media, and therefore doing violence to the constitutional presumption of innocence. She is also likely to cheer on other, similarly unrepublican responses to crime, among them those popularized by Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, whose methods she in fact applauded during the high-profile anticrime summit she presided over a few weeks ago.
What about the public’s being educated for independence, respect for human rights, the possible cost of Philippine reengagement with US strategic aims? The Arroyo government isn’t about to talk about these things, first and last because, despite her own as well as her subalterns’ protests that she’s not really focused on the elections of 2004, she in fact is. For this particular President it means currying favor with the electorate as well as the traditional centers of power in Philippine society.
That is the perception in academia, among thinking practitioners in the media, among NGOs and anywhere else where thought has not fled in disgust over recent events. What’s worse, the belief is that as a result Mrs. Arroyo has been fashioning “policy” or what passes for policy, for the sake of popular appeal.
In a University of the Philippines symposium on Mrs. Arroyo’s proclamation of her determination to focus on “a strong republic,” for example, almost all the academics present agreed that this is indeed the case. In all probability, what she means by a strong republic is strongman or authoritarian rule. The suggestion was that Filipinos would welcome it, among other reasons because their feudal culture values strength in authority, and because they’re just too tired of waiting for “democracy” to fulfill its promises.
Outsiders may find this difficult to believe, some Filipinos having demonstrated at least twice that they’re willing to risk their very lives to express their will, but the unpleasant fact is that most of them—the poor and powerless who compose the base of the Philippine social pyramid—find authoritarian rule, or its less obvious expressions, attractive.
That’s what Mrs. Arroyo is banking on in orchestrating the hoopla that she’s tough on crime and insurgency, that she’s a mailed fist and God’s scourge on the syndicates and the NPA—that the majority, perhaps even the vast majority, of Filipinos wants tough talk and tough action, even if be at the expense of those rights (the presumption of innocence, the right to peaceable assembly) the Constitution guarantees in such painstaking detail.
In short: we have a President who’s going to run again in 2004, and she’s tailoring state policy and adopting a style of governance likely to be popular, and which therefore she believes will make her election in 2004 at least likely if not certain.
This was not supposed to be. By limiting Philippine presidents to one six-year term without reelection, the drafters of the 1987 Constitution wanted to precisely avoid what’s happening now, and had hoped that anyone elected to the presidency henceforth would focus only on developing and implementing wise policies without pandering to the worst instincts of, let’s face it, a largely uninformed electorate.
One of the academics present in the UP forum suggested that among the more worthy constitutional amendments that may be proposed would be a provision to the effect that anyone who has served as President may not be elected or reelected. Such a provision would ban a vice president, who for some reason succeeds a sitting president, from running for the office fate has thrust upon him or her, as well as past presidents (like Fidel Ramos) who just might be entertaining thoughts of returning to power.
One participant in the forum later commented privately that the presidency of Mrs. Arroyo has so far been instructive in at least demonstrating, among others, the defects in the constitutional ban on the reelection of presidents.
That is, however, small consolation. On other matters, and for the vast majority of the population, it hasn’t been. Far from educating the populace both by example as well as by developing sound policies, explaining them to the people, and encouraging discussion on the values of independence, autonomy, human rights and even plain civility, the Arroyo government, by pandering to the worst instincts of the poor and powerless, is in effect teaching its constituency that dependence pays and human rights don’t matter.
In this it is not unique among Philippine governments. But can a government educate a people in the values that do matter, provide them meaningful information, and instruct them in the simple responsibilities of civic consciousness? It can, provided that its leaders are themselves educated in those values, and what’s even more important, if they view the inculcation of those values as far more important than staying in power.
(ABS-CBNNEWS.COM/TODAY, August 16, 2002)