Confirming the weak republic
November 30th, 2002
Malacañang has denied that plans are afoot to revamp the Arroyo Cabinet. Other sources say otherwise.
A report from a Manila newspaper quoted an unnamed source for the information.
The use of unnamed sources suggests that it was a deliberate leak, besides being bad journalism practice. But governments, especially Philippine ones, leak “information” to the media regularly as a way of testing public reaction to something being contemplated. Still other sources use the media leak as a way of putting certain issues on the national or government agenda in furtherance of their political and other purposes.
It’s a form of media manipulation with which the media are familiar, but with which they go along if they believe the story to be at least remotely credible, and big enough to boost tomorrow’s sales. It’s a game called mutual use for mutual benefit—in which, alas, the public ends up not knowing what to believe.
Presidential spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao knows about it. In his former lives Tiglao was not only a leftist (about which he has recently issued a timely reminder) but also a journalist. Thus his denial and explanation that someone must have fed the story to the newspaper that broke it to pressure Malacañang into replacing certain Cabinet secretaries, putting others in their posts and declaring others “ineffective.”
Can a newspaper do that? Community journalists may be getting killed at an average of three a year, but at least one Manila newspaper has enough power to make presidents dance to whatever tune it’s currently playing.
That particular newspaper has the frightening capacity to decide what ends up being discussed in Congress and Malacañang on the basis of its news reports, no matter that so many of these have turned out to be inaccurate.
In some instances, and in response to those very same reports, the Philippine government has been known to devise policy where there was none, or to alter policy where there was any. Philippine presidents have also been known to beat hasty retreats in fear of its front page more than its editorial pages, where the capacity to shape policy and influence public opinion should properly reside.
Which at first blush should make Tiglao’s claim that there is absolutely no plan to reshuffle Cabinet secretaries (“reshuffle” being the more accurate description of the supposed plan) reasonably credible.
At least one former senator, however, has confirmed that such a plan does exist, and that it was being discussed in Arroyo circles as early as three months ago. Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo, who with Tiglao appears to most enjoy Mrs. Arroyo’s confidence, told him then, said former senator Ernesto Herrera, that there would be a Cabinet revamp before 2003.
Romulo offered him the post of secretary of labor, said Herrera, but he declined because he preferred to remain in the private sector.
Read that to mean that Herrera doesn’t want to go down with the Arroyo ship in 2004, when he intends to run for the Senate. Read that to mean that Herrera thinks identification with the administration could be a kiss of death to his hibernating ambitions.
Herrera admitted publicly what everyone in the public opinion business has been saying privately in recent months: that Arroyo’s approval ratings, and with them her government’s, have been steadily slipping to a point where her election in 2004 has become an iffy possibility.
There are reasons enough for it. The country’s in a state only a millimeter short of calamity. Millions are unemployed, an army to which hundreds of thousands are added every month as businesses go under. The economy is in continuous free fall. Crime rules the streets and corruption the bureaucracy. The worst part is that there’s an infectious hopelessness evident in, among other indicators, the fact that Filipinos started putting up Christmas décor this year right after All Saints’ Day.
If they continue to decline, Mrs. Arroyo’s approval ratings suggest that her ship could sink in 2004, ending her hopes to be in Malacañang for a total of nine years. There are also those coup rumors, which at the very least suggest that there’s some restiveness, though not enough to fuel an actual coup attempt, among certain military sectors.
These are reasons enough to do something—or to appear to be doing something. Cabinet changes are among the easiest of ways available to Philippine presidents to convince the public that something’s being done without actually doing much of anything. Given the Arroyo administration’s supreme dependence on press agentry, this suggests that Mrs. Arroyo is, or was, at least contemplating such changes—though without alienating those in the Cabinet with political constituencies, or who represent parties or groups that can help the administration win in 2004.
Tiglao’s denial could thus be part of the usual tactic of governments of leaking plans to the media, confirming them if public reaction seems favorable, or denying them once the public reacts with either indifference or resistance.
The supposed plans would have shuffled Cabinet secretaries around in a game of musical chairs (or—in keeping with the early onset of the Christmas season—a game of Trip to Jerusalem). This secretary and that would be moved to this or that position, while the present occupants are moved to others to satisfy the public clamor for something to be done while allowing friends and allies to keep their jobs.
It would also relaunch the campaign for a strong republic which Mrs. Arroyo launched during her July State of the Nation Address. As campaigns go, the “strong republic” has gone the way of most others in terms of results, the only visible one being the further empowerment of the police and the military in dealing with protests and insurgency.
Can that campaign be revived through Cabinet changes? The connection between a cosmetic reshuffle and a strong republic is at the very least tenuous. The phrase “strong republic” is, in the first place, wrongly used. What the Arroyo government means by it is a strong government, or a strong state.
A strong government gets things done, is able to impose its will on the governed and, most important of all, exacts obedience from its own civilian and military bureaucracy. A strong state does not declare it state policy not to negotiate with terrorists only to have its generals colluding with the Abu Sayyaf, for example. Neither does such a state declare it a policy to stamp out corruption only for bureaucrats to overprice the construction of an airport.
Putting the right people in the right jobs could conceivably help develop state capacity to get things done, though not completely achieve it. But it is at least debatable if shuffling people around can even begin the process.
If Cabinet changes are or were ever in the works, Mrs. Arroyo’s refusal to displease friends and allies in the Cabinet for the sake of 2004 is in itself an indication of state weakness. Reshuffling the Cabinet won’t make for a “strong republic” but will instead demonstrate once more the fundamental weakness of the Philippine state, which lies in the inability and unwillingness of those in charge to transcend personal, familial, class and political interests.
(TODAY/ABS-CBNNEWS.COM, November 12, 2002)