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MANILA - Now let's put our hands together and pray.

This is exactly what the top stars in the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did recently at the 23rd National Prayer Breakfast in a Manila hotel. Everybody was there, from cabinet ministers to Supreme Court justices, from former president Fidel
Gallery 1



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EDITORIAL
Philippines: More pain, no gain
Ramos to Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales - all praying for courage and faith to lead the nation as the Philippines faces an abysmal fiscal crisis.

The crisis is triggered by a P200 billion (US$3.5 billion) budget deficit and a P3 trillion ($53.2 billion) public-sector debt. The budget crisis gets even more serious because of the ballooning foreign debt. According to the Freedom from Debt Coalition, total Philippine debt, public and private, domestic and foreign, is now $96 billion - and counting. More than 31% of the 2004 national budget bleeds to service the debt. Many an economist warns that the Philippines could soon face a crisis of Argentine proportions.

Just so the message was clear, American motivational speaker John Maxwell also lent a hand to the National Prayer Breakfast. Maxwell called on all Filipinos to support Arroyo, asking that she be "the servant of all Filipinos". Compounding the mood of non-separation of Church and state - which would have pleased many a member of the Christian Right in the United States - Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo even implored the Lord to help Arroyo bear the cross of leading the Philippines out of a number of appalling poverty statistics: "Bless her, O Lord, and give her the courage to carry on."

There's only one problem. The Lord does not seem to be listening.

Have mercy
In the 1950s, the Philippines was the most dynamic economy in Asia - hailed by the World Bank as a future powerhouse. Half a century later the country is, in the words of Rommel Banlaoi, a political-science professor at the National Defense College, "the sick man of Asia".

The numbers are extremely alarming. Let's start with the demographic bomb. The Philippines is already the 12th-most-populous country in the world: 84 million by the end of 2004, and counting. At an annual growth rate of 2.36%, the population will have doubled by 2033 and may reach 200 million by 2042. The growth rate is extremely high compared with other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries such as Indonesia (1.6%) and Thailand (1.3%). Thailand and the Philippines had the same population size in 1965. Twenty years later, Thailand was at 52 million and the Philippines at 55 million. In 2004, Thailand's population stands at 64 million while the Philippines is approaching 84 million. Sheila Coronel, executive director of the remarkable Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, says "we'll have to endure nine years of Arroyo without a population policy. She's a devout Catholic. She won't budge. A partial solution would be the private sector taking over the distribution of contraceptives."

This is a young population - 50% under 21 years old - and it's facing myriad very serious shortages. According to Congressman Gilbert Remulla, the latest data reveal that in 2003 there was only one government doctor for every 28,493 people; one government nurse for every 16,986 people; one government midwife for every 5,193 people; and only one rural health-care unit for every 29,746 people. The Philippines needs 9,000 additional teachers per year just to cope with the arrival of new students.

The missing doctors, nurses and teachers are part of the vast legions of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) - something that leads former senator and vice-presidential candidate Loren Legarda to cry over the international image of Filipinos as "the groveling nomads of the world". Up to 8 million Filipinos are OFWs. Of those, about 2.5 million are permanent foreign residents; but the majority are registered (42%) or illegal (58%) overseas workers, at least 50% of them women. Without OFWs, the Philippines would already have hit rock bottom: they are sending about $8 billion back home per year, and counting. Unofficially, the total amount of remittances may be 50% higher, or more.

Incredible as it may seem in booming East Asia, the Philippines' average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is actually shrinking. It peaked at $1,180 in 1996 (before the Asian financial crisis), stood at $998 in 1999 and was at $953 in 2003. Compare this with Thailand: from $1,876 in 1999 to $2,322 in 2003. Last year, at least 27 million Filipinos - one-third of the population - were living with well under $1 a day, too poor to sustain their basic food and shelter needs. Today these poorest of the poor may be closer to 40% of the total population. According to a 2002 National Statistics Office report, during that year 3.4 million Filipinos were unemployed and 4.6 million underemployed. Today it is widely assumed, unofficially, that there are at least 10 million unemployed or underemployed Filipinos. The national debt is hovering around 85% of GDP. And with the price of oil on the rise, poverty in the Philippines is expected to worsen.

Gloria in excelsis
So what is Arroyo doing about this unmitigated disaster? The buzzword in Manila - from the Malacanang presidential palace to state-run companies - is "austerity". For many Filipinos - smiling, lovely, very perceptive - it's just panic: Aquilino Pimentel Jr, the minority leader in the Senate, agrees. For the absolute majority of an impoverished population, the whole thing means more sacrifice: Arroyo, via press secretary Ignacio Bunye, hinted there will be no wage increases until the economy is "nursed back to good health". Acid commentator Adrian Cristobal, a former press secretary to mega-dictator Ferdinand Marcos and currently a columnist in the Manila Bulletin, says that "if anyone is in panic, it's the people who have to live with rising prices for everything while salaries stay the same". But still everyone wants to help. "Their only condition is that since the crisis has to do with the foreign debt [more than P5 trillion], they want the IMF [International Monetary Fund], the World Bank and other foreign banks to receive their contributions directly," Cristobal says.

Press secretary Bunye - who did not reply to an Asia Times Online request for an interview - actually told workers demanding a modest wage increase they should be grateful they still had jobs. Cristobal once again hit the right note: "Shouldn't Mr Bunye be also grateful that his fellow countrymen are grateful? It took 330 years for them to be ungrateful to the Spaniards." The Philippines, as is well known, spent more than three centuries as a Spanish colony before its half-century under the Pentagon/Hollywood axis.

Arroyo, always sporting a Philippine terno (women's business suit), tries to look as though she does mean business. Her current mantra is Administrative Order No 103, which spells out a torrent of cost-cutting measures, including no foreign and local travel, no overtime pay and a ban on benefits for top executives in state-run corporations and agencies. Those who won't bow to austerity will be summarily fired. As for the 68,437 government-owned vehicles, in theory they are now closely monitored: no more free trips to the mall or weekend holiday getaways.

The frenzy inevitably has led to a surrealist show, including the campaign to have government workers drop their coins into contribution boxes and the idea that every policeman should contribute to the government one day's pay (a little more than $5). Police bosses happily say that if every cop did this they could hand a hefty $450,000 to the government. Cynics like Senator Pimentel insist that if that happens, it would only compel dirty cops to raise extra money from petty rackets.

On a more serious note, Malacanang decided to cut by 38% the P70 million of pork-barrel funds allocated to each congressional district. House Speaker Jose de Venecia swears that pork barrel will totally disappear from the 2005 national budget. The name of the game will be line-item budgeting, so "there can be no more suspicious realignment of funds". In theory, in a new, cleaned-up Philippines, the pork barrel would disappear from the Senate, the House and the executive. Cynical businessmen are not so sure. For his part, perpetually scowling Senator Panfilo Lacson - who ran against Arroyo in the latest presidential election - worries about much-needed funds ceasing to flow toward poor cities and towns that need to improve their water systems, barangay (district) roads and other vital projects.

Besides the austerity pose, Arroyo travels. She recently carried the whole family to China, including shady First Gentleman Mike Arroyo - prompting angry cries of a "family vacation". Powerful Chinese-Filipino tycoon Lucio Tan apparently paid for the family's expenses. But then Arroyo managed to bring home an alleged $1 billion in investment and soft loans. Arroyo gloated that Chinese President Hu Jintao was glad bilateral trade has gone "from practically nothing to $10 billion". She also touted the outcome of her visit: "We made another agreement, this time to increase total trade to $20 billion in the next five years."

A strong partnership with China would be essential at least to alleviate the Philippine drama: think of millions of Chinese tourists ready to burn their yuan on the pristine beaches straddling the Philippines' 8,000 islands. Moreover, it's in China's best interests to fish in the Philippines' pool of millions of skilled, English-speaking - and in many cases unemployed - professionals in communications, construction, engineering, education, distribution, environment, finance, health, tourism, travel and transport.

The non-stop Filipino talk show
The daily lunch buffets at the Peninsula or the Shangri-La in the Makati business district are essential to gauge business sentiment in Manila. And the mood is somber indeed. As a local factory owner puts it: "The banks are not lending to us. They'd rather buy [Treasury] Bills and government papers. The rates are so attractive, and the investment is risk-free and protected from depreciation." Other businessmen complain that the Philippines is forced to pay much more than Malaysia or Indonesia to get foreign currency loans. A bank analyst is adamant: "Arroyo has no short-term or long-term strategy whatsoever on how to deal with the fiscal and economic crisis. I have yet to see a well-documented plan."

Among Filipino businessmen, criticism of the daily barrage of Malacanang speeches alerting about the crisis is pointed. At the mention of Thailand or Malaysia, Filipino businessmen acknowledge that other ASEAN counties also borrowed a lot, but at least they have built highways and improved their education systems. "Our greatest achievement in education is the increase of illiteracy in our public schools," says an angry teacher.

Businessmen also complain the government is not doing anything about smuggling. Car assemblers complain that they sell a maximum of 100,000 automobile units a year while Thailand, with a smaller population, sells more than 500,000: they're still waiting for a ban on the unlimited import of used cars. "We keep asking the Americans and the Japanese to set up their Asian manufacturing hubs here, but obviously they prefer Thailand," says a Toyota dealer. "We lose because our market has no purchasing power, and on top of it there's a lot of smuggling."

There's a certain degree of schizophrenia in the air, though. While a delegation of American businessmen has praised Arroyo's "decisive steps" to deal with the crisis, local businessmen question why these "decisive steps" have not addressed another major Philippine catastrophe in the making: a looming power crisis in 2007 or 2008. "It's tempting to reach the conclusion that what's good for American investors is not necessarily good for Filipino investors," says one businessman. This perception dovetails with what Alexander Remollino writes on the independent website Bulatlat ("to search" or "to probe" in Tagalog) about how Arroyo is very close to US President George W Bush and the reason she was Washington's favorite in the May presidential race: "The United States [is] the real decision-maker ... no one has been able to ascend to Malacanang, and stay there, without its blessings."

A consensus emerges anyway. The crisis has existed since Marcos; it's a consequence of what happened under Marcos. And Malacanang rhetoric will do nothing to solve it. But then there's the "dirty secret" that the elites will never admit to openly: the iron link between the Marcos, Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo administrations, unable to pierce an immutable class structure in which wealth and income distribution is one of the worst in the developing world.

No biz like political show-biz
Is Arroyo credible and legitimate enough to pursue the austerity measures that would "save" the country? Hardly. According to Social Weather Stations, an independent think-tank, her popularity index is at 48% - and going down. Much of this has to do with what happened in the May presidential election.

Banlaoi of the National Defense College charges that in the Philippines "elections are nothing but overt expressions of competing interests of the Filipino elite rather than venues of contending programs of government". This being the easy-going Philippines, competitive elitism takes the form of a huge fiesta - or politics as entertainment. "Filipino voters participate in the election for the same reason they go to cockfights, boxing and basketball, festival and beauty contests," Banlaoi says. "Election season is like a big sports or concert season - highly entertaining." That's the same analysis given by Coronel from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

So the May election - the fourth presidential contest since the restoration of democracy in 1986 - was a fiesta, including elite stalwart Arroyo, inevitable former action star Fernando Poe Jr and even born-again televangelist Eduardo Villanueva. Arroyo, a self- proclaimed Harvard-trained economist and daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal, ran under a party coalition named K4 - in pure Philippine show-biz style, the acronym was copied from F4, a male pop singing group from Taiwan. Show-biz politics has already given the Philippines former action star and disgraced former president Joseph Estrada - not to mention his son Jinggoy, who got a Senate seat last May. Nowadays the Senate has no fewer than three Filipino clones of Ah-nuld the Gubernator, California state Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Former action star Poe, a very close friend of Estrada, ran without a program or even ideas, apart from a vague "unity of the Filipino people". It doesn't matter, because he got the vote of the TV-and-cinema-going masses. Manila Archbishop Rosales was not very pleased with the whole show, even saying that the greatest destructive element that ever visited the country in the past 58 years was Philippine politics. He hit the fundamental nerve when he organized a movement called Pondong Pinoy (Filipino Fund) to force people "beyond the politics of money, power, class, greed and family ambitions that has held the country captive for many generations".

The first People Power revolt in 1986 got rid of Marcos - and inspired, among others, the mass protests that got rid of Suharto in Indonesia in 1998. People Power 2, in 2001, ousted the mega-corrupt Estrada. In both events, the Catholic Church played an absolutely crucial role - mobilizing millions to change the course of Philippine history. But now the Church simply has no one to trust: it has barely begun to contemplate the implications of the four-day military-backed civilian uprising - a de facto coup d'etat - that put Arroyo in power in January 2001. Estrada, a certified rascal, never formally resigned as president and still claims he was "robbed" - the ultimate irony. He now lives under a relaxed form of house arrest near a military camp. As for the Church, it is mired in crisis, with a shortage of priests and the occasional ban on a progressive bishop.

An informal survey around Manila, especially in poor neighborhoods, reveals a widespread popular perception that the May presidential election was also stolen. Fernando Poe is still contesting the result. The "stolen election" explains both the Church reticence toward Arroyo and Arroyo's low approval rating. Moreover, she was never popular enough to succeed Estrada in the first place.

Filipinos have had more than three years to judge Arroyo in action. When she claimed power in January 2001 she proclaimed "four core beliefs" as her government platform: 1) elimination of poverty within a decade; 2) improvement of moral standards and good governance; 3) true political reforms and "dialogue with the people"; and 4) leadership by example. On the troubled economic front, she set to work brandishing the good old IMF one-size-fits-all recipe book.

In 2000, the Philippines was not in as bad a shape as it is in 2004. With inflation at 4.4%, the lowest in a decade, real per capita GDP growth was only 1.8%, denoting low economic growth. Arroyo's government entered into a so-called Poverty Partnership Agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is based in Manila. This was tried in the past - and failed. By 2002, unemployment had expanded from 10% to 11.4% (it currently stands at 11.7%). There were no wage increases. And the debt-service ratio rose from 16% of total exports of goods and services to 17%.

Arroyo's approval rate sank. She then came up with the concept of a "strong republic" as a cure to all ills - an empty public-relations mantra repeated ad nauseam. Arroyo resorted to practicing old-school Philippine politics to the hilt - appointing some dodgy characters to important positions and dressing up every successful government program as an act of personal benevolence by the benign sovereign. In 2003, per capita GDP growth slowed from 2.4% to 2.2% - one of the lowest rates among the 10 members of ASEAN. And the main factor in the growth of the gross national product (GNP) remained the increased flow of remittances by OFWs. Foreign direct investment plummeted from $1.8 billion in 2002 to a paltry $319 million in 2003. Blame the usual suspects: political instability, the terrible state of Philippine infrastructure and, most of all, corruption.

By the time of the May election, Filipinos were extremely gloomy. A survey by the Social Weather Stations think-tank revealed that 44% of the respondents believed their quality of life had deteriorated; and the all-meaningful self-rated poverty index - which had oscillated between 54% and 65% under Estrada and 53-66% during the 2001-04 Arroyo years - was still stuck at 56%. Since July 2001 there have been at least 11 accusations of corruption targeting First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, apparently very fond of dodgy "commissions". In the Corruption Perception Index established by Transparency International, the Philippines is ranked 2.5 on a scale of 0 (very corrupt) to 10 (very clean). Even under the racketeer Estrada, the country's index was 2.9.

After the first 100 days of Arroyo Part 2, enveloped by a rhetorical blitzkrieg from Malacanang, the country remains gloomy. Arroyo's national approval rate remains at only 48% - and falling. And 55% of Filipinos still believe the May elections were stolen.

Blame the poor
The Manila Municipal Development Authority (MMDA) is widely considered to be a nest of bureaucratic corruption - probably even worse than the Department of Public Works and Highways. These two agencies keep exchanging rhetorical blows over who's responsible for Manila's urban nightmare. But it seems some MMDA officials know something that 84 million Filipinos don't. An official with the Estrada government once famously said that Filipinos were rich because they had a lot of garbage. Now MMDA officials under Arroyo have discovered that the "uncontrollable floods" in the national capital are caused by the urban poor and their garbage. So Arroyo may be right, in a sense: waging war on poverty is meaningless. After all, the poor are responsible for the whole mess. Well, not really, as we'll see next in this series.

According to research by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, "the poor vote is a thinking vote". The masses are constantly dismissed by the middle classes and the Filipino elite, but they seem to smell that something is terribly wrong. The shrinking Filipino middle class shares most of the values of the conservative ruling elite. They may be striving to amplify their political voice, but they definitely have no interest in radical change - an absolute must if this long-suffering land of warm, gracious people does not want to be devastated by a social volcano.

People Power 1 got rid of a corrupt dictator, Marcos, and People Power 2 a sleazy, corrupt president, Estrada. Some say a mild version of People Power 3 has already happened - when disgruntled Estrada supporters rallied in May 2001 and almost laid siege to Malacanang. Metro Manila's Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) Shrine - with its faux-golden freedom statue - is constantly barricaded on Arroyo's orders. The president will do anything to prevent a People Power 4, which, considering the depth of popular desperation, is all too possible within the next two years.

The frenzy inevitably has led to a surrealist show, including the campaign to have government workers drop their coins into contribution boxes and the idea that every policeman should contribute to the government one day's pay (a little more than $5). Police bosses happily say that if every cop did this they could hand a hefty $450,000 to the government. Cynics like Senator Pimentel insist that if that happens, it would only compel dirty cops to raise extra money from petty rackets.

On a more serious note, Malacanang decided to cut by 38% the P70 million of pork-barrel funds allocated to each congressional district. House Speaker Jose de Venecia swears that pork barrel will totally disappear from the 2005 national budget. The name of the game will be line-item budgeting, so "there can be no more suspicious realignment of funds". In theory, in a new, cleaned-up Philippines, the pork barrel would disappear from the Senate, the House and the executive. Cynical businessmen are not so sure. For his part, perpetually scowling Senator Panfilo Lacson - who ran against Arroyo in the latest presidential election - worries about much-needed funds ceasing to flow toward poor cities and towns that need to improve their water systems, barangay (district) roads and other vital projects.

Besides the austerity pose, Arroyo travels. She recently carried the whole family to China, including shady First Gentleman Mike Arroyo - prompting angry cries of a "family vacation". Powerful Chinese-Filipino tycoon Lucio Tan apparently paid for the family's expenses. But then Arroyo managed to bring home an alleged $1 billion in investment and soft loans. Arroyo gloated that Chinese President Hu Jintao was glad bilateral trade has gone "from practically nothing to $10 billion". She also touted the outcome of her visit: "We made another agreement, this time to increase total trade to $20 billion in the next five years."

A strong partnership with China would be essential at least to alleviate the Philippine drama: think of millions of Chinese tourists ready to burn their yuan on the pristine beaches straddling the Philippines' 8,000 islands. Moreover, it's in China's best interests to fish in the Philippines' pool of millions of skilled, English-speaking - and in many cases unemployed - professionals in communications, construction, engineering, education, distribution, environment, finance, health, tourism, travel and transport.

The non-stop Filipino talk show
The daily lunch buffets at the Peninsula or the Shangri-La in the Makati business district are essential to gauge business sentiment in Manila. And the mood is somber indeed. As a local factory owner puts it: "The banks are not lending to us. They'd rather buy [Treasury] Bills and government papers. The rates are so attractive, and the investment is risk-free and protected from depreciation." Other businessmen complain that the Philippines is forced to pay much more than Malaysia or Indonesia to get foreign currency loans. A bank analyst is adamant: "Arroyo has no short-term or long-term strategy whatsoever on how to deal with the fiscal and economic crisis. I have yet to see a well-documented plan."

Among Filipino businessmen, criticism of the daily barrage of Malacanang speeches alerting about the crisis is pointed. At the mention of Thailand or Malaysia, Filipino businessmen acknowledge that other ASEAN counties also borrowed a lot, but at least they have built highways and improved their education systems. "Our greatest achievement in education is the increase of illiteracy in our public schools," says an angry teacher.

Businessmen also complain the government is not doing anything about smuggling. Car assemblers complain that they sell a maximum of 100,000 automobile units a year while Thailand, with a smaller population, sells more than 500,000: they're still waiting for a ban on the unlimited import of used cars. "We keep asking the Americans and the Japanese to set up their Asian manufacturing hubs here, but obviously they prefer Thailand," says a Toyota dealer. "We lose because our market has no purchasing power, and on top of it there's a lot of smuggling."

There's a certain degree of schizophrenia in the air, though. While a delegation of American businessmen has praised Arroyo's "decisive steps" to deal with the crisis, local businessmen question why these "decisive steps" have not addressed another major Philippine catastrophe in the making: a looming power crisis in 2007 or 2008. "It's tempting to reach the conclusion that what's good for American investors is not necessarily good for Filipino investors," says one businessman. This perception dovetails with what Alexander Remollino writes on the independent website Bulatlat ("to search" or "to probe" in Tagalog) about how Arroyo is very close to US President George W Bush and the reason she was Washington's favorite in the May presidential race: "The United States [is] the real decision-maker ... no one has been able to ascend to Malacanang, and stay there, without its blessings."

A consensus emerges anyway. The crisis has existed since Marcos; it's a consequence of what happened under Marcos. And Malacanang rhetoric will do nothing to solve it. But then there's the "dirty secret" that the elites will never admit to openly: the iron link between the Marcos, Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo administrations, unable to pierce an immutable class structure in which wealth and income distribution is one of the worst in the developing world.

No biz like political show-biz
Is Arroyo credible and legitimate enough to pursue the austerity measures that would "save" the country? Hardly. According to Social Weather Stations, an independent think-tank, her popularity index is at 48% - and going down. Much of this has to do with what happened in the May presidential election.

Banlaoi of the National Defense College charges that in the Philippines "elections are nothing but overt expressions of competing interests of the Filipino elite rather than venues of contending programs of government". This being the easy-going Philippines, competitive elitism takes the form of a huge fiesta - or politics as entertainment. "Filipino voters participate in the election for the same reason they go to cockfights, boxing and basketball, festival and beauty contests," Banlaoi says. "Election season is like a big sports or concert season - highly entertaining." That's the same analysis given by Coronel from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

So the May election - the fourth presidential contest since the restoration of democracy in 1986 - was a fiesta, including elite stalwart Arroyo, inevitable former action star Fernando Poe Jr and even born-again televangelist Eduardo Villanueva. Arroyo, a self- proclaimed Harvard-trained economist and daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal, ran under a party coalition named K4 - in pure Philippine show-biz style, the acronym was copied from F4, a male pop singing group from Taiwan. Show-biz politics has already given the Philippines former action star and disgraced former president Joseph Estrada - not to mention his son Jinggoy, who got a Senate seat last May. Nowadays the Senate has no fewer than three Filipino clones of Ah-nuld the Gubernator, California state Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Former action star Poe, a very close friend of Estrada, ran without a program or even ideas, apart from a vague "unity of the Filipino people". It doesn't matter, because he got the vote of the TV-and-cinema-going masses. Manila Archbishop Rosales was not very pleased with the whole show, even saying that the greatest destructive element that ever visited the country in the past 58 years was Philippine politics. He hit the fundamental nerve when he organized a movement called Pondong Pinoy (Filipino Fund) to force people "beyond the politics of money, power, class, greed and family ambitions that has held the country captive for many generations".

The first People Power revolt in 1986 got rid of Marcos - and inspired, among others, the mass protests that got rid of Suharto in Indonesia in 1998. People Power 2, in 2001, ousted the mega-corrupt Estrada. In both events, the Catholic Church played an absolutely crucial role - mobilizing millions to change the course of Philippine history. But now the Church simply has no one to trust: it has barely begun to contemplate the implications of the four-day military-backed civilian uprising - a de facto coup d'etat - that put Arroyo in power in January 2001. Estrada, a certified rascal, never formally resigned as president and still claims he was "robbed" - the ultimate irony. He now lives under a relaxed form of house arrest near a military camp. As for the Church, it is mired in crisis, with a shortage of priests and the occasional ban on a progressive bishop.

An informal survey around Manila, especially in poor neighborhoods, reveals a widespread popular perception that the May presidential election was also stolen. Fernando Poe is still contesting the result. The "stolen election" explains both the Church reticence toward Arroyo and Arroyo's low approval rating. Moreover, she was never popular enough to succeed Estrada in the first place.

Filipinos have had more than three years to judge Arroyo in action. When she claimed power in January 2001 she proclaimed "four core beliefs" as her government platform: 1) elimination of poverty within a decade; 2) improvement of moral standards and good governance; 3) true political reforms and "dialogue with the people"; and 4) leadership by example. On the troubled economic front, she set to work brandishing the good old IMF one-size-fits-all recipe book.

In 2000, the Philippines was not in as bad a shape as it is in 2004. With inflation at 4.4%, the lowest in a decade, real per capita GDP growth was only 1.8%, denoting low economic growth. Arroyo's government entered into a so-called Poverty Partnership Agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is based in Manila. This was tried in the past - and failed. By 2002, unemployment had expanded from 10% to 11.4% (it currently stands at 11.7%). There were no wage increases. And the debt-service ratio rose from 16% of total exports of goods and services to 17%.

Arroyo's approval rate sank. She then came up with the concept of a "strong republic" as a cure to all ills - an empty public-relations mantra repeated ad nauseam. Arroyo resorted to practicing old-school Philippine politics to the hilt - appointing some dodgy characters to important positions and dressing up every successful government program as an act of personal benevolence by the benign sovereign. In 2003, per capita GDP growth slowed from 2.4% to 2.2% - one of the lowest rates among the 10 members of ASEAN. And the main factor in the growth of the gross national product (GNP) remained the increased flow of remittances by OFWs. Foreign direct investment plummeted from $1.8 billion in 2002 to a paltry $319 million in 2003. Blame the usual suspects: political instability, the terrible state of Philippine infrastructure and, most of all, corruption.

By the time of the May election, Filipinos were extremely gloomy. A survey by the Social Weather Stations think-tank revealed that 44% of the respondents believed their quality of life had deteriorated; and the all-meaningful self-rated poverty index - which had oscillated between 54% and 65% under Estrada and 53-66% during the 2001-04 Arroyo years - was still stuck at 56%. Since July 2001 there have been at least 11 accusations of corruption targeting First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, apparently very fond of dodgy "commissions". In the Corruption Perception Index established by Transparency International, the Philippines is ranked 2.5 on a scale of 0 (very corrupt) to 10 (very clean). Even under the racketeer Estrada, the country's index was 2.9.

After the first 100 days of Arroyo Part 2, enveloped by a rhetorical blitzkrieg from Malacanang, the country remains gloomy. Arroyo's national approval rate remains at only 48% - and falling. And 55% of Filipinos still believe the May elections were stolen.

Blame the poor
The Manila Municipal Development Authority (MMDA) is widely considered to be a nest of bureaucratic corruption - probably even worse than the Department of Public Works and Highways. These two agencies keep exchanging rhetorical blows over who's responsible for Manila's urban nightmare. But it seems some MMDA officials know something that 84 million Filipinos don't. An official with the Estrada government once famously said that Filipinos were rich because they had a lot of garbage. Now MMDA officials under Arroyo have discovered that the "uncontrollable floods" in the national capital are caused by the urban poor and their garbage. So Arroyo may be right, in a sense: waging war on poverty is meaningless. After all, the poor are responsible for the whole mess. Well, not really, as we'll see next in this series.

According to research by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, "the poor vote is a thinking vote". The masses are constantly dismissed by the middle classes and the Filipino elite, but they seem to smell that something is terribly wrong. The shrinking Filipino middle class shares most of the values of the conservative ruling elite. They may be striving to amplify their political voice, but they definitely have no interest in radical change - an absolute must if this long-suffering land of warm, gracious people does not want to be devastated by a social volcano.

People Power 1 got rid of a corrupt dictator, Marcos, and People Power 2 a sleazy, corrupt president, Estrada. Some say a mild version of People Power 3 has already happened - when disgruntled Estrada supporters rallied in May 2001 and almost laid siege to Malacanang. Metro Manila's Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) Shrine - with its faux-golden freedom statue - is constantly barricaded on Arroyo's orders. The president will do anything to prevent a People Power 4, which, considering the depth of popular desperation, is all too possible within the next two years.

MANILA - Now let's put our hands together and pray.

This is exactly what the top stars in the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did recently at the 23rd National Prayer Breakfast in a Manila hotel. Everybody was there, from cabinet ministers to Supreme Court justices, from former president Fidel
Gallery 1



Gallery 2



EDITORIAL
Philippines: More pain, no gain
Ramos to Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales - all praying for courage and faith to lead the nation as the Philippines faces an abysmal fiscal crisis.

The crisis is triggered by a P200 billion (US$3.5 billion) budget deficit and a P3 trillion ($53.2 billion) public-sector debt. The budget crisis gets even more serious because of the ballooning foreign debt. According to the Freedom from Debt Coalition, total Philippine debt, public and private, domestic and foreign, is now $96 billion - and counting. More than 31% of the 2004 national budget bleeds to service the debt. Many an economist warns that the Philippines could soon face a crisis of Argentine proportions.

Just so the message was clear, American motivational speaker John Maxwell also lent a hand to the National Prayer Breakfast. Maxwell called on all Filipinos to support Arroyo, asking that she be "the servant of all Filipinos". Compounding the mood of non-separation of Church and state - which would have pleased many a member of the Christian Right in the United States - Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo even implored the Lord to help Arroyo bear the cross of leading the Philippines out of a number of appalling poverty statistics: "Bless her, O Lord, and give her the courage to carry on."

There's only one problem. The Lord does not seem to be listening.

Have mercy
In the 1950s, the Philippines was the most dynamic economy in Asia - hailed by the World Bank as a future powerhouse. Half a century later the country is, in the words of Rommel Banlaoi, a political-science professor at the National Defense College, "the sick man of Asia".

The numbers are extremely alarming. Let's start with the demographic bomb. The Philippines is already the 12th-most-populous country in the world: 84 million by the end of 2004, and counting. At an annual growth rate of 2.36%, the population will have doubled by 2033 and may reach 200 million by 2042. The growth rate is extremely high compared with other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries such as Indonesia (1.6%) and Thailand (1.3%). Thailand and the Philippines had the same population size in 1965. Twenty years later, Thailand was at 52 million and the Philippines at 55 million. In 2004, Thailand's population stands at 64 million while the Philippines is approaching 84 million. Sheila Coronel, executive director of the remarkable Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, says "we'll have to endure nine years of Arroyo without a population policy. She's a devout Catholic. She won't budge. A partial solution would be the private sector taking over the distribution of contraceptives."

This is a young population - 50% under 21 years old - and it's facing myriad very serious shortages. According to Congressman Gilbert Remulla, the latest data reveal that in 2003 there was only one government doctor for every 28,493 people; one government nurse for every 16,986 people; one government midwife for every 5,193 people; and only one rural health-care unit for every 29,746 people. The Philippines needs 9,000 additional teachers per year just to cope with the arrival of new students.

The missing doctors, nurses and teachers are part of the vast legions of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) - something that leads former senator and vice-presidential candidate Loren Legarda to cry over the international image of Filipinos as "the groveling nomads of the world". Up to 8 million Filipinos are OFWs. Of those, about 2.5 million are permanent foreign residents; but the majority are registered (42%) or illegal (58%) overseas workers, at least 50% of them women. Without OFWs, the Philippines would already have hit rock bottom: they are sending about $8 billion back home per year, and counting. Unofficially, the total amount of remittances may be 50% higher, or more.

Incredible as it may seem in booming East Asia, the Philippines' average gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is actually shrinking. It peaked at $1,180 in 1996 (before the Asian financial crisis), stood at $998 in 1999 and was at $953 in 2003. Compare this with Thailand: from $1,876 in 1999 to $2,322 in 2003. Last year, at least 27 million Filipinos - one-third of the population - were living with well under $1 a day, too poor to sustain their basic food and shelter needs. Today these poorest of the poor may be closer to 40% of the total population. According to a 2002 National Statistics Office report, during that year 3.4 million Filipinos were unemployed and 4.6 million underemployed. Today it is widely assumed, unofficially, that there are at least 10 million unemployed or underemployed Filipinos. The national debt is hovering around 85% of GDP. And with the price of oil on the rise, poverty in the Philippines is expected to worsen.

Gloria in excelsis
So what is Arroyo doing about this unmitigated disaster? The buzzword in Manila - from the Malacanang presidential palace to state-run companies - is "austerity". For many Filipinos - smiling, lovely, very perceptive - it's just panic: Aquilino Pimentel Jr, the minority leader in the Senate, agrees. For the absolute majority of an impoverished population, the whole thing means more sacrifice: Arroyo, via press secretary Ignacio Bunye, hinted there will be no wage increases until the economy is "nursed back to good health". Acid commentator Adrian Cristobal, a former press secretary to mega-dictator Ferdinand Marcos and currently a columnist in the Manila Bulletin, says that "if anyone is in panic, it's the people who have to live with rising prices for everything while salaries stay the same". But still everyone wants to help. "Their only condition is that since the crisis has to do with the foreign debt [more than P5 trillion], they want the IMF [International Monetary Fund], the World Bank and other foreign banks to receive their contributions directly," Cristobal says.

Press secretary Bunye - who did not reply to an Asia Times Online request for an interview - actually told workers demanding a modest wage increase they should be grateful they still had jobs. Cristobal once again hit the right note: "Shouldn't Mr Bunye be also grateful that his fellow countrymen are grateful? It took 330 years for them to be ungrateful to the Spaniards." The Philippines, as is well known, spent more than three centuries as a Spanish colony before its half-century under the Pentagon/Hollywood axis.

Arroyo, always sporting a Philippine terno (women's business suit), tries to look as though she does mean business. Her current mantra is Administrative Order No 103, which spells out a torrent of cost-cutting measures, including no foreign and local travel, no overtime pay and a ban on benefits for top executives in state-run corporations and agencies. Those who won't bow to austerity will be summarily fired. As for the 68,437 government-owned vehicles, in theory they are now closely monitored: no more free trips to the mall or weekend holiday getaways.

The frenzy inevitably has led to a surrealist show, including the campaign to have government workers drop their coins into contribution boxes and the idea that every policeman should contribute to the government one day's pay (a little more than $5). Police bosses happily say that if every cop did this they could hand a hefty $450,000 to the government. Cynics like Senator Pimentel insist that if that happens, it would only compel dirty cops to raise extra money from petty rackets.

On a more serious note, Malacanang decided to cut by 38% the P70 million of pork-barrel funds allocated to each congressional district. House Speaker Jose de Venecia swears that pork barrel will totally disappear from the 2005 national budget. The name of the game will be line-item budgeting, so "there can be no more suspicious realignment of funds". In theory, in a new, cleaned-up Philippines, the pork barrel would disappear from the Senate, the House and the executive. Cynical businessmen are not so sure. For his part, perpetually scowling Senator Panfilo Lacson - who ran against Arroyo in the latest presidential election - worries about much-needed funds ceasing to flow toward poor cities and towns that need to improve their water systems, barangay (district) roads and other vital projects.

Besides the austerity pose, Arroyo travels. She recently carried the whole family to China, including shady First Gentleman Mike Arroyo - prompting angry cries of a "family vacation". Powerful Chinese-Filipino tycoon Lucio Tan apparently paid for the family's expenses. But then Arroyo managed to bring home an alleged $1 billion in investment and soft loans. Arroyo gloated that Chinese President Hu Jintao was glad bilateral trade has gone "from practically nothing to $10 billion". She also touted the outcome of her visit: "We made another agreement, this time to increase total trade to $20 billion in the next five years."

A strong partnership with China would be essential at least to alleviate the Philippine drama: think of millions of Chinese tourists ready to burn their yuan on the pristine beaches straddling the Philippines' 8,000 islands. Moreover, it's in China's best interests to fish in the Philippines' pool of millions of skilled, English-speaking - and in many cases unemployed - professionals in communications, construction, engineering, education, distribution, environment, finance, health, tourism, travel and transport.

The non-stop Filipino talk show
The daily lunch buffets at the Peninsula or the Shangri-La in the Makati business district are essential to gauge business sentiment in Manila. And the mood is somber indeed. As a local factory owner puts it: "The banks are not lending to us. They'd rather buy [Treasury] Bills and government papers. The rates are so attractive, and the investment is risk-free and protected from depreciation." Other businessmen complain that the Philippines is forced to pay much more than Malaysia or Indonesia to get foreign currency loans. A bank analyst is adamant: "Arroyo has no short-term or long-term strategy whatsoever on how to deal with the fiscal and economic crisis. I have yet to see a well-documented plan."

Among Filipino businessmen, criticism of the daily barrage of Malacanang speeches alerting about the crisis is pointed. At the mention of Thailand or Malaysia, Filipino businessmen acknowledge that other ASEAN counties also borrowed a lot, but at least they have built highways and improved their education systems. "Our greatest achievement in education is the increase of illiteracy in our public schools," says an angry teacher.

Businessmen also complain the government is not doing anything about smuggling. Car assemblers complain that they sell a maximum of 100,000 automobile units a year while Thailand, with a smaller population, sells more than 500,000: they're still waiting for a ban on the unlimited import of used cars. "We keep asking the Americans and the Japanese to set up their Asian manufacturing hubs here, but obviously they prefer Thailand," says a Toyota dealer. "We lose because our market has no purchasing power, and on top of it there's a lot of smuggling."

There's a certain degree of schizophrenia in the air, though. While a delegation of American businessmen has praised Arroyo's "decisive steps" to deal with the crisis, local businessmen question why these "decisive steps" have not addressed another major Philippine catastrophe in the making: a looming power crisis in 2007 or 2008. "It's tempting to reach the conclusion that what's good for American investors is not necessarily good for Filipino investors," says one businessman. This perception dovetails with what Alexander Remollino writes on the independent website Bulatlat ("to search" or "to probe" in Tagalog) about how Arroyo is very close to US President George W Bush and the reason she was Washington's favorite in the May presidential race: "The United States [is] the real decision-maker ... no one has been able to ascend to Malacanang, and stay there, without its blessings."

A consensus emerges anyway. The crisis has existed since Marcos; it's a consequence of what happened under Marcos. And Malacanang rhetoric will do nothing to solve it. But then there's the "dirty secret" that the elites will never admit to openly: the iron link between the Marcos, Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo administrations, unable to pierce an immutable class structure in which wealth and income distribution is one of the worst in the developing world.

No biz like political show-biz
Is Arroyo credible and legitimate enough to pursue the austerity measures that would "save" the country? Hardly. According to Social Weather Stations, an independent think-tank, her popularity index is at 48% - and going down. Much of this has to do with what happened in the May presidential election.

Banlaoi of the National Defense College charges that in the Philippines "elections are nothing but overt expressions of competing interests of the Filipino elite rather than venues of contending programs of government". This being the easy-going Philippines, competitive elitism takes the form of a huge fiesta - or politics as entertainment. "Filipino voters participate in the election for the same reason they go to cockfights, boxing and basketball, festival and beauty contests," Banlaoi says. "Election season is like a big sports or concert season - highly entertaining." That's the same analysis given by Coronel from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

So the May election - the fourth presidential contest since the restoration of democracy in 1986 - was a fiesta, including elite stalwart Arroyo, inevitable former action star Fernando Poe Jr and even born-again televangelist Eduardo Villanueva. Arroyo, a self- proclaimed Harvard-trained economist and daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal, ran under a party coalition named K4 - in pure Philippine show-biz style, the acronym was copied from F4, a male pop singing group from Taiwan. Show-biz politics has already given the Philippines former action star and disgraced former president Joseph Estrada - not to mention his son Jinggoy, who got a Senate seat last May. Nowadays the Senate has no fewer than three Filipino clones of Ah-nuld the Gubernator, California state Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Former action star Poe, a very close friend of Estrada, ran without a program or even ideas, apart from a vague "unity of the Filipino people". It doesn't matter, because he got the vote of the TV-and-cinema-going masses. Manila Archbishop Rosales was not very pleased with the whole show, even saying that the greatest destructive element that ever visited the country in the past 58 years was Philippine politics. He hit the fundamental nerve when he organized a movement called Pondong Pinoy (Filipino Fund) to force people "beyond the politics of money, power, class, greed and family ambitions that has held the country captive for many generations".

The first People Power revolt in 1986 got rid of Marcos - and inspired, among others, the mass protests that got rid of Suharto in Indonesia in 1998. People Power 2, in 2001, ousted the mega-corrupt Estrada. In both events, the Catholic Church played an absolutely crucial role - mobilizing millions to change the course of Philippine history. But now the Church simply has no one to trust: it has barely begun to contemplate the implications of the four-day military-backed civilian uprising - a de facto coup d'etat - that put Arroyo in power in January 2001. Estrada, a certified rascal, never formally resigned as president and still claims he was "robbed" - the ultimate irony. He now lives under a relaxed form of house arrest near a military camp. As for the Church, it is mired in crisis, with a shortage of priests and the occasional ban on a progressive bishop.

An informal survey around Manila, especially in poor neighborhoods, reveals a widespread popular perception that the May presidential election was also stolen. Fernando Poe is still contesting the result. The "stolen election" explains both the Church reticence toward Arroyo and Arroyo's low approval rating. Moreover, she was never popular enough to succeed Estrada in the first place.

Filipinos have had more than three years to judge Arroyo in action. When she claimed power in January 2001 she proclaimed "four core beliefs" as her government platform: 1) elimination of poverty within a decade; 2) improvement of moral standards and good governance; 3) true political reforms and "dialogue with the people"; and 4) leadership by example. On the troubled economic front, she set to work brandishing the good old IMF one-size-fits-all recipe book.

In 2000, the Philippines was not in as bad a shape as it is in 2004. With inflation at 4.4%, the lowest in a decade, real per capita GDP growth was only 1.8%, denoting low economic growth. Arroyo's government entered into a so-called Poverty Partnership Agreement with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which is based in Manila. This was tried in the past - and failed. By 2002, unemployment had expanded from 10% to 11.4% (it currently stands at 11.7%). There were no wage increases. And the debt-service ratio rose from 16% of total exports of goods and services to 17%.

Arroyo's approval rate sank. She then came up with the concept of a "strong republic" as a cure to all ills - an empty public-relations mantra repeated ad nauseam. Arroyo resorted to practicing old-school Philippine politics to the hilt - appointing some dodgy characters to important positions and dressing up every successful government program as an act of personal benevolence by the benign sovereign. In 2003, per capita GDP growth slowed from 2.4% to 2.2% - one of the lowest rates among the 10 members of ASEAN. And the main factor in the growth of the gross national product (GNP) remained the increased flow of remittances by OFWs. Foreign direct investment plummeted from $1.8 billion in 2002 to a paltry $319 million in 2003. Blame the usual suspects: political instability, the terrible state of Philippine infrastructure and, most of all, corruption.

By the time of the May election, Filipinos were extremely gloomy. A survey by the Social Weather Stations think-tank revealed that 44% of the respondents believed their quality of life had deteriorated; and the all-meaningful self-rated poverty index - which had oscillated between 54% and 65% under Estrada and 53-66% during the 2001-04 Arroyo years - was still stuck at 56%. Since July 2001 there have been at least 11 accusations of corruption targeting First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, apparently very fond of dodgy "commissions". In the Corruption Perception Index established by Transparency International, the Philippines is ranked 2.5 on a scale of 0 (very corrupt) to 10 (very clean). Even under the racketeer Estrada, the country's index was 2.9.

After the first 100 days of Arroyo Part 2, enveloped by a rhetorical blitzkrieg from Malacanang, the country remains gloomy. Arroyo's national approval rate remains at only 48% - and falling. And 55% of Filipinos still believe the May elections were stolen.

Blame the poor
The Manila Municipal Development Authority (MMDA) is widely considered to be a nest of bureaucratic corruption - probably even worse than the Department of Public Works and Highways. These two agencies keep exchanging rhetorical blows over who's responsible for Manila's urban nightmare. But it seems some MMDA officials know something that 84 million Filipinos don't. An official with the Estrada government once famously said that Filipinos were rich because they had a lot of garbage. Now MMDA officials under Arroyo have discovered that the "uncontrollable floods" in the national capital are caused by the urban poor and their garbage. So Arroyo may be right, in a sense: waging war on poverty is meaningless. After all, the poor are responsible for the whole mess. Well, not really, as we'll see next in this series.

According to research by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, "the poor vote is a thinking vote". The masses are constantly dismissed by the middle classes and the Filipino elite, but they seem to smell that something is terribly wrong. The shrinking Filipino middle class shares most of the values of the conservative ruling elite. They may be striving to amplify their political voice, but they definitely have no interest in radical change - an absolute must if this long-suffering land of warm, gracious people does not want to be devastated by a social volcano.

People Power 1 got rid of a corrupt dictator, Marcos, and People Power 2 a sleazy, corrupt president, Estrada. Some say a mild version of People Power 3 has already happened - when disgruntled Estrada supporters rallied in May 2001 and almost laid siege to Malacanang. Metro Manila's Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) Shrine - with its faux-golden freedom statue - is constantly barricaded on Arroyo's orders. The president will do anything to prevent a People Power 4, which, considering the depth of popular desperation, is all too possible within the next two years.

From pre-colonial Philippines to the present, women have played an important role in the development and emergence of the Filipino nation. As exemplified by the pre-Hispanic babaylan or katalonan – the chief priestess in the barangay, the women of the revolution, to the women of the 19th century suffragist movement until the present day women leaders, history presents a moving tableau of Filipinas asserting their God-given right to participate in the development of community and nation equal with men.

Women in politics and public policy gradually increased in number starting 1938 when universal suffrage was finally won until the most recent 11th Congress of the Republic of the Philippines. Still their number remains a measly 10 percent of the total number of elected representatives and senators of the Philippine Congress.

It is commonly observed that most if not all women in national politics in the Philippines, past and present, belong to the elite class and to established political clans. "All are college educated and endowed with special expertise." At first their politics start in political campaigns with no legislative agenda specific for women’s concerns. In time, however, largely in part to the existence of a strong women’s movement in the Philippines, women’s issues and concerns are increasingly incorporated in political platforms and the legislative agenda of women candidates and legislators.

Although there is perceptible trend towards greater participation of women both in elective and appointive positions, women are still very much in the minority. The enactment of the Party-list Law (RA 7941) raised hopes for the 12 marginalized sectors: labor, peasant, fisherfolk, urban poor, indigenous cultural communities, elderly, handicapped, women, youth, veterans, overseas workers and professionals. The implementation of the law however revealed both generic weaknesses and absence of viable mechanisms for government agencies to fully implement the law.

Across town, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's endless flip-flopping around for political advantage finally made civil society groups come out and declare that they were alarmed by the president's outrageous "opportunism." They were referring not only to the president's announced pledge a few months ago of trying to achieve national reconciliation by pardoning former enemies such as ex-president Joseph Estrada and the Marcoses, but to the administration's proposed
lineup for the elections. Not only have Senator John Osmeña and Orlando Mercado filed papers to run for the Senate under the administration's Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats party, but a slot had been reserved for Santiago too! Unfortunately, Santiago has accepted the Lakas-CMD invitation to run under its banner.

But EDSA People Power II activists must be heaving with horror at Osmeña and Mercado running on the administration's
slate. Just as they must be upset at seeing Legarda run with Poe, who many in the administration claim to be a doppelganger for Estrada. But as Legarda pointed out in many interviews this past week, Poe is a man of integrity, a man who cares deeply about the poor and the nation, and someone who cannot be manipulated. As she rightly pointed out to columnist Rina Jimenez-David, Poe doesn't need a Harvard education to run the country, which is exactly what I've been saying all along to those sneering doubting Tomases.

The loser in all this ship jumping seems to be presidential candidate Raul Roco. His campaign started with a loud bang, but now seems to be sinking into oblivion with hardly a whimper. He's been losing candidates right and left, the first being Senator Rodolfo Biazon, who after jumping ship from the LDP party to Roco's Aksyon Demokratiko party is now running on the administration's ticket. On Wednesday, former president Fidel Ramos' daughter Cristy withdrew from Roco's ticket after her father told her to. Ramos is the chairman emeritus of the Lakas-CMD, and naturally doesn't want his daughter running against the administration.

Of course the official campaigning period hasn't started yet, so Roco still has a chance of rebounding, but I wouldn't bet on it. All the money seems to be on a Macapagal-De Castro vs. Poe-Legarda fight. It's going to be bloody and it won't be pretty.



* * *

What's going on in Kuwait?
IT IS UNFORTUNATE but true: Young Filipina housemaids in Kuwait seem to be the target of choice these days for young Kuwaiti men when they decide to rape someone.

A veritable slew of rape cases involving Filipina maids have cropped up in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates over the past six months. In the UAE a few months ago, a young Filipina woman was gang raped by several UAE men after she accepted a lift home from them after attending a party. They drove her out to the desert, raped her and dumped her there. Luckily, the police found her in time and took her to a hospital for treatment. Now, in Kuwait the Philippine embassy is pressing charges against three Kuwaiti policemen who not only raped but also sodomized an 18-year-old runaway Filipina maid. She had run away from an allegedly abusive employer to seek refuge in a police station. One can only imagine her horror to find out that rather than be protected by the police, she was repeatedly raped by them! Such cruel irony.

The three policemen have been detained and are denying the charges, but according to a Kuwaiti newspaper forensic tests have shown that she was indeed raped by the policemen. In a heartening move, the Kuwaiti Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said it is determined to have charges pressed against the three policemen.

This is not the first rape of a Filipina in Kuwait. Just a few months ago another Filipina domestic helper was gang-raped by nine Kuwaiti teenagers at a desert camp. The late Foreign Secretary Blas Ople protested strongly to the Kuwaiti chargé d'affaires in Manila last November, but I haven't heard what happened to the nine teenagers.

The problem with all these rapes is that it just shows how many Gulf men think that foreign women, especially Asian ones, are mere objects to satisfy their more obscene sexual desires. I think it is symptomatic of a macho culture gone horribly wrong, one where the rigid segregation of the sexes only serves to make some Gulf men into sexual monsters.

The other side to these nasty rapes is why is the Philippines deploying 18-year-old women to the Gulf to be housemaids? I thought there were strict age restrictions for the domestic helpers sent abroad, and that they had to be at least 25 years of age and above? It is obvious that corruption allows some underage women to slip out of the country, but the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration have to do more to make sure that 18-year-old women are not deployed abroad, especially as domestic helpers which places them at great risk of sexual molestation.

I just hope that the Kuwaiti policemen who raped the housemaid get severely punished for their nasty act. Being fired from their jobs, losing all their benefits and facing at least 20 years in jail, should be the least punishment they receive.

In the last Pearl, I presented a contrarian view of the current ruckus in the Philippines. I focused on a number of positive factors and did my best to come to a more-or-less optimistic conclusion. In addition to providing a useful counterpoint to the prevailing drumbeat of despair, it may have reminded readers that the current situation, dismal and disturbing though it be, won't last forever.
Nevertheless, I can't find it within myself to generate another such piece. The reality is that this is one heck of a mess and the fate of the country hangs in precarious balance.

Perhaps I can contribute to the debate by stepping back, putting on my academic hat, and providing some perspective on a question that may puzzle the uninitiated - Why is the Philippines so darn corrupt? Or, to rephrase it using an old hillbilly idiom my grandpa used a lot, why are so many key players here crooked as a dog's hind leg?

Herewith, a few observations on the seemingly impenetrable jungle of Philippine politics and corruption. Interested readers might want to refer to An Oversimplified History Lesson or Cronies and Booty Capitalism for additional background.

Filipino Democracy


Various terms have been bandied about to describe Filipino democracy - élitist, oligarchic, illiberal, authoritarian, anarchic, chaotic, and wide-open come to mind. I believe I myself have referred to it as "vibrant" (although that begs the question of which way the thing vibrates and how many fragile institutions are jeopardized in the process of vibration).

The Republic of the Philippines is a weak postcolonial state. The public sector is basically subservient to the dominant social classes and deeply entrenched special interests. The reasons can be traced back to the historical evolution of the political system and modes of governance.

Both Spain and America created bureaucracies based on their own models. Indeed, the Philippine state owes little to indigenous Filipino norms or culture - the whole apparatus was externally imposed.

Part of the problem was that Uncle Sam was conflicted about the unaccustomed role of colonialist power. Lacking the long history of colonial rule of the Spanish or British, the Americans were never quite comfortable as authoritarian rulers, and never solved the dilemma of how to "save the little brown brothers" while still protecting their strategic interests in Asia.

The American administration imposed colonial-style rule (albeit with a Filipino-staffed bureaucracy) while simultaneously encouraging grassroots democracy. They introduced local elections in 1901, only three years after taking over, then legislative elections in 1907, and eventually presidential elections in 1935.

From the beginning, the domestic political process was dominated by powerful clans in the provinces. They have been referred to as caciques, a term originally used in Spain and Latin America, but equally applicable in the Hispanic-influenced Philippines. Michael Cullinane refers to the resultant system as "colonial democracy". Early on, provincial aristocrats like Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmeña, Sr. extended their power, with local patronage politics gradually seeping up to the national level legislature and the President's cabinet. Tip O'Neill, the former US House Speaker, used to say that "all politics is local". This has always been the case in the Philippines.

Political participation in the Philippines was never based on a democratic model. Given the long history of patron-client relationships, the provincial caciques held tremendous clout based on their ability to deliver votes. Complex and labor-intensive political machines soon evolved. The élite bosses knew how to mobilize opinion leaders, poll watchers, and enforcers; their power was unquestioned within their own spheres of influence. As one scholar of the Mafia put it, the bigger and stronger the reputation, the less need to deploy the resources that led to that reputation in the first place. From the time of the first national elections in 1935, Presidential candidates were beholden to various bosses in the countryside, for without them they could not be elected to office.

From the beginning, electoral competition did not revolve around class differences. Instead, politics was a game played within the élite classes, who manipulated and controlled the political process. They were a homogeneous group, and there were few substantive differences in politics or political philosophy. Everybody was a conservative. One consequence was that the political and electoral process was based more on personality than on substance.

Post-War Political Evolution


After the War, Philippine presidents were still very much dependent on the support of the provincial élites and Manila oligarchs. The executive branch was always faced with a dilemma: How to support and uphold the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy (the American model) against the reality that holding office and exercising power required the support of corrupt political machines in various corners of a spread-out country?

Among other things, this led to tremendous pressure on the bureaucracy. The civil service, staffed predominantly by Filipinos, was relatively efficient during the American colonial era After independence, however, it quickly degenerated. The combination of low prestige, incompetence, lousy pay, and inadequate resources was demoralizing and the opportunities for graft were many. The resulting corruption should not be surprising.

During the pre-Marcos era (basically the 1950s and 1960s), the Philippine state played a key role in economic development following the dictates of import substitution and economic nationalism (see Globalization Part 1). The government's intermittent efforts to promote democracy and development in the countryside, encouraged by donor agencies and the American government, were sabotaged by conflict with the elite classes. Efforts at land reform, for example, never had much chance of success given the entrenched power of the landowning classes.

During the same period, the state began to lose its monopoly on armed forces. The Americans had relied on the Philippine Constabulary, a legacy of the Spanish era (the Guardia Civil), to enforce its will. But as local elites gained power after the War, their private armies became a de facto source of power and the Constabulary was undermined. The provincial bosses settled into a comfortable role in which they exchanged the large blocks of votes they controlled for economic booty and special considerations. One of the main consequences was endemic political violence.

Marcos himself emerged from this corrupt environment. He learned the political trade from his father's prewar campaigns for the National Assembly. His first political presence was as a defendant changed with murdering his father's rival, and his wartime experience included significant black marketeering and fraud. It's not surprising that he brought the violence-oriented philosophy of the provincial politician to the national level.

Marcos, of course, took corruption to unprecedented heights through systematic plundering of the Philippine economy. Members of the Marcos family and key associates accrued tremendous wealth from bribe-taking and kickbacks from crony monopolies. They also diverted government loans and contracts into their own pockets, made fortunes from profits from over-priced goods and construction projects, and directly skimmed from the public trough.

The Post-EDSA Political System


One of the first things President Cory Aquino did was to create the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to identify and retrieve money stolen by the Marcos family and their cronies. However, Aquino's early reputation as a house cleaner did not survive allegations that two of her Cabinet members and certain relatives were themselves corrupt. The PCGG was accused of corruption, favoritism, and incompetence. Eventually, Aquino established the Presidential Committee on Public Ethics and Accountability, a less corrupt body but one plagued by insufficient staff, funds, and political will to adequately address the problems.

President Ramos also took on the anti-corruption mantle and made some apparent progress. The achievements of his administration, chronicled in other Pearls and in the Philippines Economic Capsule, were substantial, particularly in such reforms as liberalizing the telecommunications industry and welcoming foreign investment. However, the Ramos administration was not above reproach, as evidenced by various scandals and allegations of corruption (including the Philippine Estate Authority/Amari mess and kickbacks associated with the Centennial Expo at Clark).

Throughout the Aquino and Ramos years (1986-199 cool , the combination of limited government money, political and economic uncertainty, and the newly restored constitutional democracy weakened the Federal government. The élites whose power had been preempted by Marcos swept back in to fill the void. By the time of the 1998 elections, the system had in many ways reverted to the corruption of the pre-Marcos years (although somewhat moderated and not as extreme).

The 1998 Election


In placing Estrada's election into context, it should be noted that Philippine political parties aren't very different from one another. Unlike the Republicans and Democrats in the states or the Tories and Labour in England, they are pretty much indistinguishable in terms of policy and philosophy. They are at root élite old boys' clubs, controlled by politicians and businessmen who have been wealthy and powerful for generations. Thus, the recent defection of Senator Ramon Magsaysay, Jr. (author of the much-ballyhooed E-Commerce Act) from the President's party was a non-event. Party switching in the Philippines is a long-established pattern that raises no eyebrows at all.

In concrete terms, elections and the political system itself are still largely driven by the politics of personality. Voters do not identify with political parties, they identify with individuals. As Conrad de Quiros noted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1998: "nobody remembers the party, everybody remembers the candidate".

President Estrada won by a large margin (6 million votes) over his nearest rival, Jose de Venecia. He garnered nearly 40% of the vote in a field of ten "presidentiables", compared to only 24% for Ramos in 1992. Erap, of course, was swept into office on the strength of the support of the masa, the Class C-D-E voters. They knew him as a popular movie actor who specialized in Robin Hood roles. The urban and rural masses related to Erap; his English was only slightly better than theirs and he was quick to play to their sensibilities (although he himself was from an élite family). At the same time, the tremendous criticism directed at Erap by other politicians and the media (he's ignorant, a womanizer, an intellectual pygmy, a brawler, a gambler, a heavy drinker, ad infinitum) backfired. Many of the masa saw such putdowns as reflecting on themselves, and many undecided voters no doubt voted for Erap out of sympathy. (Some of my earlier commentaries on the administration include Filipino Political Theatre and Two Years With Erap).

The last two years have demonstrated just how flawed the Philippine democratic system is. Erap's election is clearly understandable given the above dynamics. However, the fallout of his ascension to power has not been pretty. While corruption and a crony-dominated system may not prevent a country from growing during boom times, such a system can create major problems during bad economic times. And that describes the current situation accurately.

If we think of the transition from the Marcos dictatorship (dark ages) to Aquino (transitional administration) to Ramos (breakthrough administration) as three steps up a progressive ladder, then the election of Estrada in 1998 represented a throwback to a crony-dominated system that should never have happened.

A Tentative Conclusion


Corruption occurs all over the globe and in all historical eras. Just think of 18th century England, the urban political machines of 19th century America (Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall), the caciques of Spain and Latin America, or the chaopho (godfathers) in Thailand. However, especially given the Asian economic crisis and increasing and apparently irreversible globalization, crony capitalism must somehow give way to more enlightened forms of governance if developing economies are to move forward.

The Philippine state remains weak, and the continued power of entrenched éelites makes it difficult for the central government to provide cohesive and non-corrupt leadership. Insider factions still maneuver for their pieces of the federal government pie, tax collections and customs collections are highly centralized, and the Philippines bureaucracy's long tradition of corruption remains intact. Further, the President and other national officials remain dependent on local politicians to deliver the votes on demand. All in all, a recipe for continued corruption.

In short, the problems are structural and institutionalized. Among the prerequisites for a viable democratic system are a stable middle class, educational achievement and opportunities for social mobility, and open access to the political process. The still-extreme polarization between rich and poor in the Philippines (see Globalization Part 1 and Globalization Part 2) remains a major obstacle to meaningful reform. And as long as civil service salaries stay abysmally low, it will be extremely difficult to eliminate (or even minimize) corruption in the government.

There are some groups now pushing reform, including NAMFREL (National Citizens Movement for Free Elections), the Consortium for Electoral Reform (CER), the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIIJ), and Akbayan (Citizens' Action Party). One can hope that young professionals, businesspeople, and the (slowly) emerging middle class are getting tired of politics as usual.

More importantly, however, the impetus for true reform must come from the political leadership. Although all outcomes are unpredictable as I write these words, it seems clear that a totally new vision will be required if corruption is to (finally) be brought under control.

Without recounting the misdeeds of the administration, the crony-related incidents and pervasive corruption now under investigation are part and parcel of the syndrome discussed throughout this article. The current debacle reflects a major crisis of the entire system. Whatever form the upcoming resolution may take, the nation's leaders and thinkers must seriously address the causes of the problems and develop strategies to overcome the deeply rooted tradition of corruption. If they don't, the long-term prospects for this country in the global economy will be significantly jeopardized.

Everyone’s already got a share on this most prominent issue in the country today, so I might as well share my opinion as a Filipino and as a UP student.

Arroyo should never be removed by extra-constitutional means such as a “people power” revolution. We all know from the two EDSAs that toppling a president by a “bloodless” marching on the streets is not enough, the military needs to jump to the other side. It was just an inch of people empowerment. We have been f* up all the time, our Southeast Asian neighbors who used to be behind, are all sneering at us.

She has two options: she resigns or she goes through the impeachment process. Both are within the constitution. However, I am not for her resignation. The executive house has been shuffled all these years, we cannot see a common and consistent blueprint from the government. If she stays in office, she can finish her job and we can move on with the presidency legally. I subscribe to the idea that presidency is not a popularity contest. If her agenda is to increase taxes and curb corruption in collecting agencies to generate revenue, of course everybody is expected to say no, everyone hates taxes.

Some of my fellow students at the university are shouting for Gloria’s resignation. Others want another people power movement. There are two observable things: one is, they do it with each new president, secondly they were always asking what the government has done. Well, most of the people who go to physical rallies always demand something from the government never asking the important question, as J. F. Kennedy puts it, “ask what you can do for your country”. These students are the same politicians who will sit in the House someday.

However, my apathy to politics tend to lean in the notion subscribed by pessimistic Filipinos that “whichever side doesn’t make a difference”.

In the last Pearl, I presented a contrarian view of the current ruckus in the Philippines. I focused on a number of positive factors and did my best to come to a more-or-less optimistic conclusion. In addition to providing a useful counterpoint to the prevailing drumbeat of despair, it may have reminded readers that the current situation, dismal and disturbing though it be, won't last forever.
Nevertheless, I can't find it within myself to generate another such piece. The reality is that this is one heck of a mess and the fate of the country hangs in precarious balance.

Perhaps I can contribute to the debate by stepping back, putting on my academic hat, and providing some perspective on a question that may puzzle the uninitiated - Why is the Philippines so darn corrupt? Or, to rephrase it using an old hillbilly idiom my grandpa used a lot, why are so many key players here crooked as a dog's hind leg?

Herewith, a few observations on the seemingly impenetrable jungle of Philippine politics and corruption. Interested readers might want to refer to An Oversimplified History Lesson or Cronies and Booty Capitalism for additional background.

Filipino Democracy


Various terms have been bandied about to describe Filipino democracy - élitist, oligarchic, illiberal, authoritarian, anarchic, chaotic, and wide-open come to mind. I believe I myself have referred to it as "vibrant" (although that begs the question of which way the thing vibrates and how many fragile institutions are jeopardized in the process of vibration).

The Republic of the Philippines is a weak postcolonial state. The public sector is basically subservient to the dominant social classes and deeply entrenched special interests. The reasons can be traced back to the historical evolution of the political system and modes of governance.

Both Spain and America created bureaucracies based on their own models. Indeed, the Philippine state owes little to indigenous Filipino norms or culture - the whole apparatus was externally imposed.

Part of the problem was that Uncle Sam was conflicted about the unaccustomed role of colonialist power. Lacking the long history of colonial rule of the Spanish or British, the Americans were never quite comfortable as authoritarian rulers, and never solved the dilemma of how to "save the little brown brothers" while still protecting their strategic interests in Asia.

The American administration imposed colonial-style rule (albeit with a Filipino-staffed bureaucracy) while simultaneously encouraging grassroots democracy. They introduced local elections in 1901, only three years after taking over, then legislative elections in 1907, and eventually presidential elections in 1935.

From the beginning, the domestic political process was dominated by powerful clans in the provinces. They have been referred to as caciques, a term originally used in Spain and Latin America, but equally applicable in the Hispanic-influenced Philippines. Michael Cullinane refers to the resultant system as "colonial democracy". Early on, provincial aristocrats like Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmeña, Sr. extended their power, with local patronage politics gradually seeping up to the national level legislature and the President's cabinet. Tip O'Neill, the former US House Speaker, used to say that "all politics is local". This has always been the case in the Philippines.

Political participation in the Philippines was never based on a democratic model. Given the long history of patron-client relationships, the provincial caciques held tremendous clout based on their ability to deliver votes. Complex and labor-intensive political machines soon evolved. The élite bosses knew how to mobilize opinion leaders, poll watchers, and enforcers; their power was unquestioned within their own spheres of influence. As one scholar of the Mafia put it, the bigger and stronger the reputation, the less need to deploy the resources that led to that reputation in the first place. From the time of the first national elections in 1935, Presidential candidates were beholden to various bosses in the countryside, for without them they could not be elected to office.

From the beginning, electoral competition did not revolve around class differences. Instead, politics was a game played within the élite classes, who manipulated and controlled the political process. They were a homogeneous group, and there were few substantive differences in politics or political philosophy. Everybody was a conservative. One consequence was that the political and electoral process was based more on personality than on substance.

Post-War Political Evolution


After the War, Philippine presidents were still very much dependent on the support of the provincial élites and Manila oligarchs. The executive branch was always faced with a dilemma: How to support and uphold the ideals of Jeffersonian democracy (the American model) against the reality that holding office and exercising power required the support of corrupt political machines in various corners of a spread-out country?

Among other things, this led to tremendous pressure on the bureaucracy. The civil service, staffed predominantly by Filipinos, was relatively efficient during the American colonial era After independence, however, it quickly degenerated. The combination of low prestige, incompetence, lousy pay, and inadequate resources was demoralizing and the opportunities for graft were many. The resulting corruption should not be surprising.

During the pre-Marcos era (basically the 1950s and 1960s), the Philippine state played a key role in economic development following the dictates of import substitution and economic nationalism (see Globalization Part 1). The government's intermittent efforts to promote democracy and development in the countryside, encouraged by donor agencies and the American government, were sabotaged by conflict with the elite classes. Efforts at land reform, for example, never had much chance of success given the entrenched power of the landowning classes.

During the same period, the state began to lose its monopoly on armed forces. The Americans had relied on the Philippine Constabulary, a legacy of the Spanish era (the Guardia Civil), to enforce its will. But as local elites gained power after the War, their private armies became a de facto source of power and the Constabulary was undermined. The provincial bosses settled into a comfortable role in which they exchanged the large blocks of votes they controlled for economic booty and special considerations. One of the main consequences was endemic political violence.

Marcos himself emerged from this corrupt environment. He learned the political trade from his father's prewar campaigns for the National Assembly. His first political presence was as a defendant changed with murdering his father's rival, and his wartime experience included significant black marketeering and fraud. It's not surprising that he brought the violence-oriented philosophy of the provincial politician to the national level.

Marcos, of course, took corruption to unprecedented heights through systematic plundering of the Philippine economy. Members of the Marcos family and key associates accrued tremendous wealth from bribe-taking and kickbacks from crony monopolies. They also diverted government loans and contracts into their own pockets, made fortunes from profits from over-priced goods and construction projects, and directly skimmed from the public trough.

The Post-EDSA Political System


One of the first things President Cory Aquino did was to create the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to identify and retrieve money stolen by the Marcos family and their cronies. However, Aquino's early reputation as a house cleaner did not survive allegations that two of her Cabinet members and certain relatives were themselves corrupt. The PCGG was accused of corruption, favoritism, and incompetence. Eventually, Aquino established the Presidential Committee on Public Ethics and Accountability, a less corrupt body but one plagued by insufficient staff, funds, and political will to adequately address the problems.

President Ramos also took on the anti-corruption mantle and made some apparent progress. The achievements of his administration, chronicled in other Pearls and in the Philippines Economic Capsule, were substantial, particularly in such reforms as liberalizing the telecommunications industry and welcoming foreign investment. However, the Ramos administration was not above reproach, as evidenced by various scandals and allegations of corruption (including the Philippine Estate Authority/Amari mess and kickbacks associated with the Centennial Expo at Clark).

Throughout the Aquino and Ramos years (1986-199 cool , the combination of limited government money, political and economic uncertainty, and the newly restored constitutional democracy weakened the Federal government. The élites whose power had been preempted by Marcos swept back in to fill the void. By the time of the 1998 elections, the system had in many ways reverted to the corruption of the pre-Marcos years (although somewhat moderated and not as extreme).

The 1998 Election


In placing Estrada's election into context, it should be noted that Philippine political parties aren't very different from one another. Unlike the Republicans and Democrats in the states or the Tories and Labour in England, they are pretty much indistinguishable in terms of policy and philosophy. They are at root élite old boys' clubs, controlled by politicians and businessmen who have been wealthy and powerful for generations. Thus, the recent defection of Senator Ramon Magsaysay, Jr. (author of the much-ballyhooed E-Commerce Act) from the President's party was a non-event. Party switching in the Philippines is a long-established pattern that raises no eyebrows at all.

In concrete terms, elections and the political system itself are still largely driven by the politics of personality. Voters do not identify with political parties, they identify with individuals. As Conrad de Quiros noted in the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1998: "nobody remembers the party, everybody remembers the candidate".

President Estrada won by a large margin (6 million votes) over his nearest rival, Jose de Venecia. He garnered nearly 40% of the vote in a field of ten "presidentiables", compared to only 24% for Ramos in 1992. Erap, of course, was swept into office on the strength of the support of the masa, the Class C-D-E voters. They knew him as a popular movie actor who specialized in Robin Hood roles. The urban and rural masses related to Erap; his English was only slightly better than theirs and he was quick to play to their sensibilities (although he himself was from an élite family). At the same time, the tremendous criticism directed at Erap by other politicians and the media (he's ignorant, a womanizer, an intellectual pygmy, a brawler, a gambler, a heavy drinker, ad infinitum) backfired. Many of the masa saw such putdowns as reflecting on themselves, and many undecided voters no doubt voted for Erap out of sympathy. (Some of my earlier commentaries on the administration include Filipino Political Theatre and Two Years With Erap).

The last two years have demonstrated just how flawed the Philippine democratic system is. Erap's election is clearly understandable given the above dynamics. However, the fallout of his ascension to power has not been pretty. While corruption and a crony-dominated system may not prevent a country from growing during boom times, such a system can create major problems during bad economic times. And that describes the current situation accurately.

If we think of the transition from the Marcos dictatorship (dark ages) to Aquino (transitional administration) to Ramos (breakthrough administration) as three steps up a progressive ladder, then the election of Estrada in 1998 represented a throwback to a crony-dominated system that should never have happened.

A Tentative Conclusion


Corruption occurs all over the globe and in all historical eras. Just think of 18th century England, the urban political machines of 19th century America (Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall), the caciques of Spain and Latin America, or the chaopho (godfathers) in Thailand. However, especially given the Asian economic crisis and increasing and apparently irreversible globalization, crony capitalism must somehow give way to more enlightened forms of governance if developing economies are to move forward.

The Philippine state remains weak, and the continued power of entrenched éelites makes it difficult for the central government to provide cohesive and non-corrupt leadership. Insider factions still maneuver for their pieces of the federal government pie, tax collections and customs collections are highly centralized, and the Philippines bureaucracy's long tradition of corruption remains intact. Further, the President and other national officials remain dependent on local politicians to deliver the votes on demand. All in all, a recipe for continued corruption.

In short, the problems are structural and institutionalized. Among the prerequisites for a viable democratic system are a stable middle class, educational achievement and opportunities for social mobility, and open access to the political process. The still-extreme polarization between rich and poor in the Philippines (see Globalization Part 1 and Globalization Part 2) remains a major obstacle to meaningful reform. And as long as civil service salaries stay abysmally low, it will be extremely difficult to eliminate (or even minimize) corruption in the government.

There are some groups now pushing reform, including NAMFREL (National Citizens Movement for Free Elections), the Consortium for Electoral Reform (CER), the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIIJ), and Akbayan (Citizens' Action Party). One can hope that young professionals, businesspeople, and the (slowly) emerging middle class are getting tired of politics as usual.

More importantly, however, the impetus for true reform must come from the political leadership. Although all outcomes are unpredictable as I write these words, it seems clear that a totally new vision will be required if corruption is to (finally) be brought under control.

Without recounting the misdeeds of the administration, the crony-related incidents and pervasive corruption now under investigation are part and parcel of the syndrome discussed throughout this article. The current debacle reflects a major crisis of the entire system. Whatever form the upcoming resolution may take, the nation's leaders and thinkers must seriously address the causes of the problems and develop strategies to overcome the deeply rooted tradition of corruption. If they don't, the long-term prospects for this country in the global economy will be significantly jeopardized.

The 1987 constitution limits the president to a single six-year term. However, government proposals for an amendment suggest that President Fidel Ramos might seek re-election in 1998.
Political Parties
The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) of Nur Misuari is now heading a new Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Develpment which oversees 14 provinces for three years and works towards autonomy for (at least) four Muslim provinces by a plebsicite in 1999 (autonomous Muslim region). Already, 7,000 of the 17,000 MNLF guerrillas have been integrated into the army and police. A violent Christian minority and two breakaway Muslim groups are opposing the deal.

History and News

2 Sep 1996: Appointed date for signing a peace treaty with MNLF.
May 1998: End of term of President Fidel Ramos. He has announced to step down at this time, but then delayed his decision until November 1997. A second term would require changing the constitution.
8 Sep 1997: Ramos pledges that the presidential election would not be cancelled, that he would not declare martial law, and that he opposed extending the presidential term.
May 1996: The ruling coalition proposes an amendment of the constitution that would allow for re-election of the president.
1993: A MNLF ceasefire ends civil war.
1989: In a plebiscite, 4 Mulsim provinces vote for autonomy.
1986: President Ferdinand Marcos is being deposed in a popular revolution under leaders Corazon Aquino and Cardinal Jaime Sin.
1972: Martial law is imposed by President Ferdinand Marcos.
1970s: More than 70,000 people die in a civil war of the Muslim minority in the South against the Christian majority of the Philippines.

...BAWAL 'TO!!! pirate pirate pirate pirate pirate

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