The January 18 elections marked a clear victory for patronage and for the local "political dynasties". To hell with principles — turncoats are part of the system - and
Aquino's supporters welcomed a growing number of ex-collaborators with the Marcos dictatorship into the majority.
Corazon Aquino, the very Catholic president, had promised to ensure a "moral" functioning in the government and institutions. She played, and continues to play, cleverly on her image as an honest woman, far removed from the base concerns of politicians. Although her charisma had faded somewhat is was not extinguished, and in order to be sure of winning candidates fought for her endorsement. It is therefore very significant that her own family today is being taken to task in the press and in political circles for excessive nepotism.
Patronage prevails in "her" province, Tarlac, to such a degree that both voters and candidates have to fall in behind one of the three factions of the families of her late husband and her own, the Conjuangcos. There are two clans for the presidential maioritv (those of her brother "Peping" and of her brother-in-law, which supports the right-wing opposition (that of her cousin Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, in exile in the USA). This is what they call a democratic choice!
The Aquino-Cojuangco family candidates have spread outside of their own province, looking mainly to establish themthe Nation) party. It should also be noted that a number of other family members regard themselves as potential presidential candidates for the next elections in 1992.
The growing strength of the AquinoCojuangco clans is upsetting the other supporters of the presidential majority. Jovito Salonga has publicly denounced the "return to the age of dynasties" — to the political system of the 1950s and 1960s.2 He is president of the senate and leads the Liberal Party (PL), an important component of the ruling coalition. Competition is getting quite hot between the PL, the PDP and Paul Aquino's Lakas ng Bansa. It is at the expense of this last party, which is very close to Corazon, that PL leader Salonga has strengthened his parliamentary group. It has grown from 18 to 35 members.
National political blocs undermined by clan rivalry
This fierce competition illustrates the extent of the malaise inside the majority. The politicians have two worries: the danger of a military coup on the one hand, and the 1992 presidential elections on the other. In this particularly unstable context, local patronage and the intensity of the conflicts of interest between the "big families" are undermining the national political blocs. In fact, from the May 1987 election victory onward the majority bloc began to break up: last September, vice-president of UNIDO Salvador Laurel had already publicly broken with the government.?
The "reformers", who have been pushed to the political sidelines, are worried about this. Joaquin Bernas - the dean of Ataneo Catholic university, an influential member of the "Jesuit mafia" and an former advisor of Corazon Aquino — noted that "the bitter and intense rivalries between families and families, between burgeoning dynasties... are tearing the nation apart". 4
So the fragmentation of the ruling coalition is continuing. It is one of the most persistent features of the institutional system set up after the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship. This breakdown is impelled by the main social base of the Aquino regime: the big provincial families coming from the traditional elite. It is aggravated 1. See "Aquino scores another personal triumph" by Paul Petitjean, /V 123, June 29, 1987. 2. Cited by Kim Gordon-Bates, Le Monde, January 19, 1988 3. UNIDO is a coalition of small right-wing political JaCuary by me, pal, Far Eastern Economic Review, 11 groups. January 28, 1987, p.17.
March 7, 1988 • International Viewpoint
PHILIPPINES by the unceasing pressure of the army on the regime. An electoral victory does not of itself guarantee political stability. This was dramatically illustrated by the failed putsch last August 28, instigated by Colonel Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan only three months after the triumphant success of the presidential slates in the May 1987 legislative elections.*5
Colonel Honasan was finally captured on December 9, 1987. He probably fell victim to the faction struggles inside the general command. However, he still has serious backing. Other seditious officers are still at large, such as Brigadier General Jose Maria Zumel and Lieutenant Colonel Reynaldo Cabauatan. The threat of a coup d'état has not been removed. Raising the accusation of a plot, General Fidel Ramos put more than 200,000 soldiers and police on a state of alert on January 18, voting day. The army thus gave a forceful reminder to the government and the population that democracy continues to be under the shadow of military power.
Defence Secretary Rafael Ileto resigned at the end of February, noting that all his efforts to reform the army had failed. He is going to be replaced by General Ramos, the current chief of general staff. The dividing line between civil administration and military bodies is becoming increasingly blurred. Although he belongs to a "clan", used to like to portray himself as a pure "professional". Today, he is up to his neck in big-time politics and barely conceals his presidential ambitions.
The Aquino regime is not the same as that led by Marcos. The Marcos' regime got along quite nicely without elections, or else held rigged votes. It denied elected institutions any real authority, accepted no independent parties and imposed an extreme state centralization, the instrument of personal dictatorial power. Today, electoral confrontations play a real role in the political system. Congress is not under Corazon's orders. And presidential power is eroding as the power of the "families" rises.
However, a double historical heritage has shaped beth the Aquino and Marcos regimes. One long-standing aspect is the weight of the clans, which leads to a continual privatization of the public administration. The other, more recent, is the role of the military caste that came into politics with the establishment of martial law, and which intends to keep its hand in. What this in fact reflects is the real social content of Philippine democracy (and of the dictatorship before): namely, the interests and impasses of a bourgeoisie dependent on its links with imperialism, which is incapable of breaking from the shackles of the debt, and of the traditional elites, who are incapable of breaking with clientelism in order to bring about a genuine modernization of this bourgeoisie's state. 12 differen family group interests, electoral Being so rooted in the struggle between International Viewpoint • March 7, 1988 jousts can easily become bloody affairs. The last campaign cost the lives of around 100 people, of whom over 40 were candi-
Although this is distinctly less blood-letting than in some of the elections before martial law, it is still no small thing Indeed, it demonstrates that it is foolhardy to take on the ruling "families" seriously in politics without body guards for protection
- and, therefore, without the money to pay them. Aquino-style Philippine democracy excludes de facto what the Marcos dictatorship excluded de jure: genuine free participation by the popular organizations in institutional political competition.
Corazon Aquino contends that she wants to fight the communist guerrillas, but the repression is hitting all the popular movements. Threatened by assassination, the legal left leaders are permanently insecure. Since the murder of Lean Alejandro*6, pressure has increased on the coalition of mass organizations, Bayan (of which Alejandro was general secretary), on the Volunteers for Popular Democracy (VPD) and on the Partido ng Bayan (People's Party), as well as on other progressive formations and personalities like Doctor Prudente, president of the University Polytechnic, near-victim of an attack last November 10
Land occupations by the peasants have been decreed illegal, since the agrarian reform law has not yet been passed. The needy must wait on the good will of the big landowners who sit in Congress. On October 20, Corazon Aquino announced an order to "the police and other peacekeeping authorities to give full assistance to the labor department to remove all illegal strike blockades at the factory". She explained to an assembly of businessmen that "a special peacekeeping force had been organized and was now being trained to enforce return-to-work orders and injunctions."*7
After having given the army a free hand for its rural counter-insurgency operations, the president thereby in practice declared war on the militant workers' movement -and already the most elementary workers' rights were very often not being respected by the bosses. However, nothing reflects the elitist and repressive social character of the Philippine political system better than the formation of "vigilante" groups, real private armies of the bosses. Since the end of 1987, they have mushroomed right across the archipelago. Para-military organizations or fanatical religious sects, they are virulently anti-communist and systematically create insecurity and terror locally. Amnesty International gave an early warning about this problem: "(we are) worried...by the extra-legal exactions perpetrated by the vigilantes, financed and equipped by local authorities, either civil or military. "*g
On October 22, 1987, Corazon Aquino publicly gave her backing to the top vigilante group, Alsa Masa of Davao, in the southern isle of Mindanao. She called on the civil population of the country to participate actively in the"battle against communism" by joining up with vigilante groups. Despite the cautious language used, she thus legalized the savage parallel-police repression she previously condemned She gives the most sinister implications to the declaration of "total war" against "communism" issued after breaking off peace negotiations between the government and the NaProtests have grown since the president came out behind the "vigilantes" Karina Constantino-David, deputy minister of social affairs, resigned from the government. The human rights movements, all the independent left from the
Partido ng Bayan to the socialist organization Bisig, have vigorously condemned the official support given to terrorist para-military groups.
The anti-dictatorial uprising in February 1986 raised democratic hopes both within the social elite and among the working people. The elites have got back their democracy — elections in which victory is determined by corruption, armed force and clientelism. Workers and peasants today are rediscovering the insecurity they had previously fought under Ferdinand Marcos' martial law. * 5. See "Aquino under the shadow of the gun" by Paul Petitjean, JV 126, September 28, 1987; and "L'armée philippine défie ouvertement les institutions démocratiques" by Pierre Rousset, Le Monde diplomatique, October 1987. 6. See IV 127, October 12, 1987 (and Erratum /V 128). 7. Corazon Aquino, "Speech before businessmen at the Manila Hotel, October 20, 1987", Chronology of Events 38, October 1987, p.11. 8. Amnesty Interational, SF 87 RN033/ASA 35/05/ 87. Substantial extracts from this report were published in Philippines informations 59, December 1987.