The more things change…
May 29th, 2004
The more things change—the more they become worse.
Those who insist that the May 10 elections were different from past Philippine exercises are wrong. That latest episode in the Philippine saga of futility did have certain unique characteristics, no things being ever exactly alike. But they were the same in substance, and the worst we’ve ever witnessed since 1969.
Philippine elections have always been the monopoly of the Philippine elite, whose political parties are basically committed to the same policies of governance. Those “parties” have differed from each other only in name, and in the personalities that dominated them.
Naturally those parties don’t have platforms, or at least any discernible difference between them in terms of principle, vision, programs, etc. To expect platforms from these formations is not only futile. It also as pathetic as trying to roll back a tsunami—or, as certain ex-activists have discovered, as hopeless as trying to educate a certain high school dropout. Because they have no platforms, the people in these “parties” do not adopt policies once in power; they merely continue them.
Those policies have been in place for fifty years. They have faithfully followed the demands of the finance agencies and other instrumentalities of US interests through which the neo-colonial status of the Philippines is perpetuated. Those policies have also served to keep intact the dominant economic and social relations, such as the feudal system of land tenancy, despite tremendous pressures to address the poverty that is their consequence.
Because these policies have been in force no matter what the regime, Philippine elections have been waged over who will wield power for the sake of personal and familial interests, rather than over the adoption of alternative policies and the programs of government they will require.
Because the economic spoils of political power can be as gargantuan as was true in the case of Ferdinand Marcos, whose illegally acquired assets run into billions of dollars, the contention for political power among the elite is often fierce. From the very first post-“independence” elections in 1947, the contest for power in this country has thus been “marred”—though these conditions actually define it– by violence, fraud and the corruption of the electorate.
All Philippine elections since have been similarly flawed, giving rise to such descriptions of the process as “the politics of money,” “patronage politics,” the pre-eminence of “guns, goons and gold,” and more recently, “traditional (trapo) politics.”
However, two of these exercises in elite musical chairs were particularly low points. One the country has just gone through. The other was the “reelection” of Ferdinand Marcos to a second term in 1969, which was characterized by large-scale vote-buying, systematic fraud through the corruption of the supposedly independent Commission on Elections, collusion between the among the ruling group and other election officials, and wide-spread violence among warring political dynasties including those allied with Marcos.
The democratic façade with which Philippine elections cloaked elite rule had become a hindrance to Marcos’ remaining in power beyond 1973, given his being barred from more than two presidential terms by the 1937 Constitution. Marcos also faced increasing resistance to his monopoly over political power from those elite factions, represented primarily by the Lopezes, whose assets he wanted to get his hands on.
More critically, however, mass resistance to regime violence, corruption and subservience to US interests was growing after 1969. Marcos’ remaining in power beyond 1973, which he had sought to assure through constitutional amendments, was being thwarted by the confluence of interests between the elite factions he had alienated, and the people’s organizations that were demanding economic and political reforms.
The professionals, workers and peasants, urban poor and indigenous communities who had been denied a voice in their own governance in the three decades after “independence” were taking to the streets, while the anti-Marcos elite fought him in the Securities and Exchange Commission, in the corporations, and in the media.
(This confluence Marcos labeled the “leftist-rightist conspiracy.” As if to re-establish their links to the initial success of that dictatorship, it’s a phrase recently revived by the Arroyo government’s police and military conspiracy theorists in explaining why so many groups are crying fraud over May 10. Apparently, not only can’t they be original; they can’t imagine either that various groups could arrive at the same conclusion without necessarily talking, let alone conspiring, with each other.)
As the biggest and most powerful bureaucrat of them all, Marcos succeeded in keeping himself in power and in suppressing the demand for democratization and social revolution only temporarily, and he was overthrown in 1986.
Conditions in the aftermath of People Power 1 made it possible for progressives to participate in the making of the 1987 Constitution. Because of their efforts, that Constitution includes attempts not only to create a multi-party system, but also to prevent the return of authoritarian rule, among other progressive and nationalist provisions.
But despite the efforts to encourage democratic representation, the very first elections held under the auspices of the new Constitution, those of 1987, were characterized by the return of traditional politics and of many of its expert practitioners from the power elite.
This was inevitable under the circumstances. EDSA 1 was a “revolution” limited only to the ouster of Marcos and his cohorts. It lacked the social base that would have permitted the vast majority to seek power, since the social relations dominant in Philippine society remained untouched.
In the elections that followed the Aquino transitional presidency as in those held before the martial law period, there was the same use of money and influence, and even terrorism, by the political families including Marcos’ associates.
During the Ramos presidency these families gained added strength, to the extent of permitting the return to the country of the Marcoses themselves. This led to the election of Marcos’ heirs to Congress and to other positions including governorships, even as his former associates regained their economic power and political influence through political parties supposedly established in furtherance of the multi-party system sanctioned by the 1987 Constitution.
The implementation of the party list system after 1996 did mean the eventual election to Congress of program-based parties. But that process invites qualified exceptions. Even the traditional parties and sectors (for example, business and religious groups) that cannot be characterized as under-represented have managed, together with pseudo-progressive groups, to send their representatives to Congress through the system.
This is the context in which the May 10 elections occurred. Despite near-universal hopes for change and efforts by progressives to make it possible through their participation in the parliamentary struggle to further political reform, May 10 could mark the completion of the process of restoration—which had accelerated beginning 1992– of the very same politics that had ruled it since the end of the country’s status as a formal colony and the beginning of its neo-colonial captivity in 1946.
The paradox is that the most obvious difference May 10 had from past elections since 1992 in the end made it no different from elections since 1947–and made it even worse.
What made the May 10 elections different was primarily the existence of a situation the 1987 Constitution had sought to prevent. Running for a full term was an incumbent president, which made her use of government resources and her other powers inevitable. The consequence of this factor among other factors was the triumph of money, of alliances of convenience, the use of public funds for private ends, the partisanship of key segments of the bureaucracy including the police and the military, and over-all, the decline of the political system to its lowest point since 1969.
The astounding success of the Arroyo campaign strategy of winning over everyone and using everything thus demonstrated not only her mastery of the arts of traditional politics. It has also doomed all hopes for reform, since in Philippine politics, nothing succeeds as well as the worst practice.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com)