PHILIPPINES
A tug of war has begun for control of the provinces.
The election campaign waged by Cory and "Doy"
Laurel mobilized considerable crowds
The decisive tests facing in the provinces, testifying to the national popular support for Marcos' the Aquino government that drove out the former dictator on
February 26 was a Manila affair.
It was only in the capital
Manila-Quezon City, that hundreds of thousands of people came onto the experienced power." The events
CORAZON AQUINO, the new president of the Philippines, has proclaimed a "revolutionary government," dissolving the institutions inherited from the period of martial law (which was decreed in September 1972 and formally lifted in 1981). The political reforms are speeding up, but the new regime's economic program remains very vague.
However, it is precisely in the economic arena that the future of the new government will in large part be decided. It is there that its capacity will be tested to reunify the Philippine elites and get the country out of the crisis into which President Marcos (and the advice of the World Bank) had plunged it.
PAUL PETITJEAN
In the economic arena, the new government will demonstrate to what extent it can stabilize the country's relations with imperialism, as well as respond to the most urgent needs of working people, whose standard has dropped dramatically over the past two decades.
On March 25, Corazon Aquino abolished the old National Assembly
(Batasang Pambansa) and the Marcos constitution of 1973. A provisional constitution has been adopted giving very wide powers, including that of governing by decree.
A committee is going to be set up to draft a new constitution.
the constitution will be put to a plebiscite, and a new National Assembly is to be elected. The objective, according to Corazon Aquino, is to "put out the cancer in our political system."
(1) This is to be done by acquiring the means to liquidate the political institutional
This radical decision was expected.
But it has deeply divided government
According to the minister
Aquilino Pimentel, himself less than decision, half of the cabinet members
In fact, the provisional constitudiscretionary powers
Corazon Aquino at a time when competition is raging among the parties and groups that make up the present again, the weight of the presidency has been reinforced.
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986 dismantling of the institutions of the former regime is continuing in several areas. Marcos had built up a network of tame mass communications, gagging the free press. The new regime has begun to attack this media empire.
The Times Journal (owned by Benjamin Romualdez, Imelda Marcos' brother) and the Daily Express (owned by the sugar czar Roberto Benedicto) have been seized. has taken control of three television daughter. Later they are to be sold
The premartial-law press is reappearing. The new minister of infor-
Teodoro Locsin Jr., himself editor in chief of the Philip-
Democratic freedoms, including the right of habeas corpus reestablished. The Philippine government has ratified the United Nations accord on civic and political freedoms, a pact signed 20 years ago but which Marcos refused to sign because of his martial law. The enormous repressive powers of the Marcos presidency have been abolished.
In taking the radical step of decree-
"revolutionary government" unbound by the laws and structures left over from the Marcos regime, Corazon Aquino not only dissolved
National Assembly. She assumed the power to than 1,500 mayors linked to the old quickly (four days) for the mobiliza-
Thus, even in the central provinces of the island of Luzon, such as Tarlac, which are quite close to the capital, the power of the armed forces and the local notables has not been directly challenged by the mass mobilization.
The right opposition to the new regime is mustering its forces. his Hawaiian exile, Marcos is keeping close touch with his retainers in the capital and in his native province of Ilocos Norte (in Northern
The ousted dictator's New Society Movement (KBL) and Blas Ople, Marcos former minister of labor, who has just formed a new opposition party, the Partido Nacionalista ng Pilipinas (PNP - Nationalist Party of the Philippines) are denouncing the "revolutionary government" in the name of no less than legality and democracy. Mayors resist new government
Blas Ople has not hesitated to say that Cory has "vested herself with the power of a dictator." (3) More than a thousand mayors called on by the president to resign have declared their determination to resist.
However, in those provinces where local strongmen, such as Armando Gustilo, the mayor of Negros del Norte (on Negros, the sugar island rule thanks to veritable private armies, the confrontation threatens to be the most deep-going. That is also the case in Lanao del Sur (on the island of Mindanao), where Ali Dimaporo controls at least 500 armed men.
The dismantling of the political structures inherited from the Marcos regime has its economic corollary. Under martial law and thanks to
International Herald Tribune', March 26, 1986.
2. See, for example, the report of Patrick Sabatier in the Paris daily 'Liberation', March 4, 1986.
International Herald Tribune, March 26, 1986.
3
Demonstration by supporters of the radical nationalist coalition, Bayan (DR)
state support, monopolies were constituted in the key sectors, and a parasitic state bourgeoisie was reinforced - a "crony capitalism," or "bureaucratic capitalism.
In its 20 years in power, the Marcos regime formed more than 300 state enterprises, while at the same time opening up the country widely to foreign capital. The main financial and commercial monopolies were in sugar (Roberto Bendicto) and coconuts (Eduardo Cojuangco, a cousin of the new president, who has fled).
The presidential family, the Marcosthe point of caricature, a picture of corrupt, nepotistic, and graftridden bourgeoisie. frozen Marcos' holdings in the Philippines and is trying to get such against the assets away abroad, particular in the United States
Switzerland. It is liquidating the privileges and protection of the "bureaucratic" bourgeoisie.
the monopolies and coconuts.
In the course of this, it is going to run up against sharp resistance and some delicate problems. For example, Juan Ponce Enrile, minister of defence under Marcos and still in that post today, made his fortune under martial law in the coconut business, working hand in glove with Eduardo Cojuangco.
It is, however, in this area that the Aquino government's economic policy is the clearest. In fact, dismantling the parasitic apparatus built up under the dictatorship is in line both with the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
TEACNAY NICARAGUA TOMORROW PHILiPPINES program of the modern big-business bourgeoisie. It also coincides with the interests of the sugar and coconut planters, who have long been under the heel of the financial and mercial monopolies and subjected to the competition of Marcos' The regime hopes thereby to restore the confidence and initiative of international big-business circles and the Philippine bourgeoisie.
To this end, Corazon Aquino has professionals economic posts in the government. The minister of finance, Jaime Ongpin, one of the main mining trusts and close to the Church, is quite representative of the Makati Business Club, which under Marcos served as a kind of parliament for the opposition bourgeoisie. The minister of commerce and industry, Jose Concepcion, has a similar background. He is the head of a big-business clan with interests agriculture, the country's biggest association of Catholic laypeople. The minister of controls an industrial and commercial
The minister of agriculture, Ramon Mitra, a member of the Philip-
Democratic Party (PDP-Laban), is a big stock raiser on the island of Palawan.
Nonetheless, government's desire to revive and reform the ecogoing to run up against fundamental problems in the context of a bad economic situation. economy is in a bad state because of the disarray left behind by Ferdinand Marcos, who literally looted the publie treasury. At the end of his regime, he built up his holdings abroad considerably. And he printed money without any restraint to finance his election campaign. The printing presses churned out around 12.5 thousand million pesos for that purpose.
Since the end of 1983, business closures have multiplied, and unemployment has gone up drastically. Raw materials prices are generally very low on the world market. In two years, 1984-1985, the country's gross national product has declined by 10%. It is probably going to shrink again in 1986. The economic and social crisis in the Philippines has no parallel among its partners in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Dependence on imperialism presents a major problem
The primary underlying problem is a very great dependence on the world market and imperialism. The scale of "crony capitalism" (sometimes protected by tariff barriers that the IMF wants to see dismantled) should not give rise to any illusions. The Marcos regime did not implement a policy for industrializing the country. Its dependence — always great because of its colonial past - has increased over the last two decades.
The direct influence of foreign capital and the control it has over commercial exports (fruit in Mindanao, for instance) have increased. On the insistent "advice" of the World Bank, economic develop. ment has been oriented toward exports, thereby perpetuating the coun try's dependence on international markets. This is heightened by the
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
The trade unions in
THE OVERALL structures of the Philippine trade-union movement may fact that the export trade is concentrated to a great extent in a few main sugar, coconuts, copper, forestry products, tourism (including prostitution), labor power, semi-cond change profoundly as a result of the fall of the Marcos regime. The main industries today face a severe crisis. This is particular-
The May 1 Movement (Kilusang Mayo Uno, KMU). Founded in 1980, it is the main "class struggle" union confederation. It is militant and indepenly true for sugar, in which the Aquino-
Cojuangco family has major interests.
claimed 500,000. It includes federations, regional unions and independent
Sugar-cane growing faces very strong unions. It does not belong to any world confederation but is recognized by supermechanized some national confederations (the ICTU in Ireland, the NZFL of New Zealand, plantations in other countries; from
ACTU in Australia and the GIL in Italy). Its general secretary, the European sugar-beet growers, who
Olalia, succeeded his father, Felixberto. The KMU is present in the industrial enjoy solicitous protection from their sector, in mining and in the plantations. (1)
governments; and from artificial sweet-
The TUPAS. Founded in 1972 by Bonifacio Tupaz, it claimed 120,000 members in 1985. It belongs to the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), whose headquarters is in Prague and which includes the unions in the Eastern the end of 1985, a pound of bloc countries, as well as others such as the French CGT.
sugar was worth 25 US cents on the
The Federation of Free Workers (FFW). It was founded in 1980 by world market, while the Philippine
American Jesuits in the context of the Cold War. After supporting the Marcos production cost was 14 cents! As a regime, it took its distance from it in the 1980s. It belongs to the World result, out of the 400,000 hectares
Confederation of Labor (WCL, the Catholic confederation) and is supported that had been under sugar cane in the by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in West Germany.
islands, 170,000 were taken out of
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP). It was organized production.
in 1975 by the Marcos regime under martial law. It claimed 1,200,000 memthousands of workers depend on this bers in 1985. It is led by Democrito Mendoza and belongs to the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), like FO in France and the industry. Some 250,000 of them are
AFL-CIO in the United States. It has become quite compromised by its colalready without work and prey to laboration with the regime over a decade.
alliances have appeared with the radicalization of the
After a brief upturn in 1983,
One was the PMP (Pagkakaisa ng Mang revenue from exports of coconut
Pilipino, Philippine Workers Unity) which products fell again in 1985 to 50 and included the KMU, the TUPAS and independent unions. This alliance per cent of the level of the previous was banned by the government in 1982 and its leaders were arrested. In 1984, and a third of the islands' the PKMP (Pambansang Koalisyon ng mga Manggagawa Laban sa Kahirapan, population depends on this industry.
National Coalition of Workers Against Poverty) appeared. It includes the same
Exports of manufactured products organizations as the PMP and extended its support to the dissident federations are restricted by the policy of quotas imposed by the Western countries,
See the interview with Roland Olalia published in 'International Viewpoint, No.
in clothing for example. Competition from other dominated countries and technological advances in the imperialist countries, in particular in the armament industry and microelectronics, further limit exports.
Dismal examples of the dynamic
"outward-turned"
tourism and tourism-prostitution, as as the export of labor power, have become key sources of foreign
But in this area also, the
The massive export of labor power promoted by the Marcos government has considerably weakened the coun try's potential. It is often skilled workers who are exported - from doctors and nurses, who are cruelly lacking in the countryside and the poor urban neighborhoods, to electricians and telephone workers.
The dictatorship took its pound of flesh from this emigration by trying to control the repatriation of the emigrants' wages and by imposing double taxation. Phony employment ruthlessly fleecing many of those looking for jobs abroad or promising honest jobs to women prostitution when they reached their
The consequences of this massive exporting of workers family life have sometimes been very
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986 groupings are the following:
the regime. At its founding, "Trade-union" social struggle in the Philippines.
of the FFW and the TUCP.
68, January 28, 1985.
But getting a job overseas has often served as a life preserver suffering from unemployment and declining living standards. Hundreds of thousands of workers have in fact benefited from much higher wages overseas they could have hoped to get if they stayed at home.
Today, with the economic crisis and falling oil revenues, the international labor market is contracting. In fact, for a decade most Philippine emigrant workers have gone to the building sites in the Middle East and prostitutes have found jobs more readily in the West or in Hong Kong).
If the economic crisis continues in the Philippines, the cutbacks in infrastructural developmental projects in the oil-producing countries threaten to have profound social consequences in the islands.
The whole policy of developing the country by means of an export economy is now in question. The new government recognizes that talking about building up the domestic market. But the country's dependence also shows up on the politico-financial
The form of growth that the Marcos government adopted, under the aegis of the World Bank, has it had 50,000 members. In 1985, it was formed in 1981 led to one of the worse situations of indebtedness in Asia. The external debt is officially - estimated at 26,000 million dollars and semiofficially at 30,000 million.
In the negotiations on rescheduling of interest payments on the debt, the IMF imposed drastic conditions giving to itself a veritable right of overseeing government decisions. The journalist Jose Galand wrote: "The IMF has extended a standby credit facility of 615 million special drawing rights (SDR, worth 710.8 million US dollars) under an agreement that gives the fund considerable say over the country's economic policies. •" (5)
The IMF makes a quarterly report on the implementation of the political directions it has imposed. Its judgements influence the group of 483 foreign banks that hold the Philippine debts. It is possible that
4. Figures cited by Walden Bello "Philippine economic crisis: Waiting for the receiver, Inside Asia', November-December 1985. On the crisis of the sugar industry, see in particular Philippe Pons, "Le de Negros, 'Le Monde, Much March 25, 1986, and Paul Petitjean, guerrilla movement fuelled by peasant desperation", International Viewpoint, No. 49 March 26, 1984.
Jose Galand, 'Far Eastern Economic Review, March 13, 1986.
5
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
the Philippines
in view of the present situation the IMF will display to avoid having to declare the country bankrupt out of fear of the possible repercussions. But through its credit it holds a very means of applying pressure. And the margin for maneuver in this powerful imperialist institution was further reduced under the Marcos regime, which thus again sold out the national sovereignty.
In fact, the policy of the IMF is for removing all protection against the competition of imperialist capital, for drastic austerity policies paid for by the poor masses, for a contraction rather than an expansion of for weakening rather than strengthening the autonomy of national capital.
The country's dependence become a formidable obstacle in the way of social and economic reforms. But any policy of radical reform, in particular in against two other underlying problems — the weight of the traditionally dominant social strata and the dynamic of the capitalist The new government, like its pre decessors, knows that 70 percent of the population lives from agriculture and that it has to establish its authority in the countryside where the insurrection is most deeply rooted.
Corazon Aquino and her advisers are probably aware of the importance of a policy of agrarian reform and support for the peasantry. But the whole of the contemporary history of the Philippines shows that there is a long way proclaiming an agrarian reform and really transforming the agrarian structures in the interests of the working people in the rural population.
Already in the 1950s, in response to the Hukbalahap peasant uprising the island Magsaysay was elected president on a program calling for agrarian reform.
1952, moreover, American investigating committee had created a scandal among the Philippine notables. The Harding Report produced by this committee called in fact for nothing less than the elimination of tenant farming and sharecropping by distributing the land.
In 1963, it was the turn of President Diosdado Macapagal to introduce an agrarian reform law. President Marcos himself was the official revolution": the agrarian reform law of 1972, the Masagana 99 program for rural credit of 1973, research on high-yield seeds (the Institute of RiceGrowing Research - IRI - was set up in the Philippines) and later the cooperative movement, Samahang 6
In the past 30 years, Philippine agriculture has undergone considerable evolution. The Magsaysay plan helped to bring about the success of the counterinsurgency policy by raising the hopes of the peasants concerned. The market economy has spread widely throughout the country. Agribusiness has spread to new regions and taken on more modern forms. The methods of cultivation have been modified with the introduction of high-yield seeds, mechanization and industrial fertilizers and pesticides.
However, no government reform has put an end to the conditions of exploitation, oppression, poverty and dependence suffered by the working as well as by the agricul workers. On the contrary, a dramatic contrast has between the wealth of agricultural produce produced by the country and the growing poverty of those Small farmers trapped by capitalist market are two underlying causes The political and economic of the traditional possessing classes (the landowners who are also traders and usurers, the big planters) and of the modern possessing classes (the entrepreneurs, agents of multinational companies) over the small peasants, tenants, and agricultural Quite often it has been those who had no interest in applying the radical clauses of agrarian reform laws who were officially charged with implementing them (mayors who are also landlords, for example).
Furthermore, the omnipresent capitalist market does not favor the small producers. Modern agriculture involves big investments. The price of fertilizers and pesticides has been increasing faster than profits from the harvest. The peasants have no control over the market. The traditional social structures and the expanding capitalist market have combined to maintain the dependence of the poor strata, in particular through debt.
To break the conservative power of the rural elites and the logic of the capitalist market, laws and programs from above have never been sufficient in the Philippines. There are a lot of people today who know experience in the provinces. And so that peasants and agricultural workers display skepticism about such things. (6)
A real agrarian reform is not going to be imposed by decree. It will have to be won by mass struggle. In order to keep agrarian reform from getting bogged down in the traditional social structures and from being diverted to the profit of agribusiness, it has to be carried out by revolutionary methods.
It is on this point obviously that the weakness of the "revolution" of February 22-26, 1986, is most glaring The provinces did not get time to move a muscle. Even in Manila, where the population got a taste of the experience of "people's power" - the might represented by hundreds of thousands of demonstrators - this power was not structured by bodies representative of it, by mass committees.
Moreover, what is true for the countryside also holds for the urban centers, where poverty has reached unbearable levels, as attested by the Without an independent, radical mass struggle, the transformations promised by the new government will never become a reality.
The activity of the revolutionary forces (8) and the organized mass movement will be decisive in deter mining what benefit the poor strata will derive from the overthrow of Marcos. The role of the neighborhood associations, unions (9) and peasant movements (10) cannot be
In a "central statement," the May 1 Movement (Kilusang - KMU) has said that its components "recognize the Aquino government as the product of the sovereign will of the Filipino people and support the democratic reforms that it has
But at the same time the represent the immediate interests of the poor masses themselves, as well as five more general ones, that "the fight to uplift the economic and political rights of the impover ished and repressed Filipino workers be our urgent task." (11) It must be pointed out that on tribune! March 18, 1986 in 1985 in the city of Manila alone, there
Child prostitution is notable in a dozen regions (including the environs of
'le Monde diplomatique, January 1986: "Un autre combat pour la survie aux Philippines. Au coeur de la misere
In a future article I will come back to the evolution of the Philippine left.
birth of the peasant move. ment in the Philippines (KMP),
Kilusang Mayo Uno Central Statement, three typed pages, March 1986.
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
The legal political parties big bourgeois parties alternated in power - the
Liberal Party and the Nationalist latter in 1965 in order to assure his election to the presidency.
he destroyed the two-party system.
Under martial law, his own official
Society Movement (KBL).
the major legal parties, tary organizations, are the follow-
The United Nationalist and
Democratic Organization (UNIDO).
Formed in August 1980, UNIDO is a grouping of about a dozen political groups, generally conservative, including the leftovers from prominent members are
Laurel (vice president, prime minister, minister
(minister of the budget) Ernesto
Maceda (minister of natural resour-
It remains to
UNIDO, which is a coalition, will become a real party.
was on its ticket that Marcos was
Salvador Laurel, and the latter broke in 1979 with Marcos become, a year later, the principal representative of UNIDO.
The Liberal Party. Benigno
Aquino was its secretary and Gerardo Roxas, its chairperson.
Under martial law, this party split with a progressive wing represented by the former presi
Jovito Salonga (who today is at the head of a presidential committee for clean government). The right wing is identified March 21 there were 38 strikes recorded in the country, actions essentially over salary demands or calling for the departure of the Marcos partisans still remaining. Between March 21 and April 1 the 22,000 Philippine employees at the American bases also struck.
The people's revolutionary fight, the struggle to transform the society, is also an anti-imperialist fight to break out of the dependence in which the country has been kept. Moreover, there is no doubt about Washington's readiness to intervene. The most recent events have been the occasion for a full-fledged press campaign in the United States aimed at rehabilitating the principle of active intervention by US imperialism - in the name of democracy, of course - in
International Viewpoint 21 April 1986
Estrada Kalaw, a former senator who ran on the UNIDO ticket in 1984, despite the call for boycotting the elections from the party chairperson, Salonga, who was then in exile in the United States.
The Philippine Democratic Party - Combat (PDP-Laban). This out of the fusion of two organizations opposing Marcos. The Laban was formed Marcos in 1972. In 1978, he was released in 1980, and then assassi nated in 1983. The other compothe Philippine Party, founded in February 1982, strongly influenced by the soof Catholic origin. Aquilino Pimentel from the province of Cagayan de Oro (present minister of local administration), Ramon Mitra, a Palawan (minister of agriculture and food).
Regional movements: The Homobono Adaza in the province of West Misamis; the Concerned Citizens Party (CCP) of Cesar mayor of Zamboanga (Mindanao), who was assassinated Marcos, is today in the midst of
Juan Ponce Enrile (minister of defence) was a member of this party. Now it is led by Jose Rono
(former prime minister under the Marcos regime). Party (PNDP). Formed on March 15, 1986, by Blas Ople (former of labor under Marcos and a leader of the KBL). It has revived the name of the old Nationthe countries of the Third World.
This campaign to shape public opinion has at times taken on extranotes, as in the statement of David J. Steinberg, president of Long Island
"American objectives in the Philippines have not changed since the turn of the century, when the United States took possession (sic) of the Islands: America wanted to establish and preserve a stable, pro-US society. It also sought to enhance its geopolitical position military power ..while encouraging to develop and their democracy. ... Condescending as it may appear today, William Howard en ho tel a kind of stile
.. Rudyard Kipling implored Americans to take up 'the white man's burden' in the Philippines... Whether was what the historian Richard Hofstadter called 'the voice of God' intoning Manifest Destiny that urged us on, or only 'the carnal larynx of Theodore Roosevelt,' America imperially imposed its might on a devoutly Roman Catholic society ...
"People have long been debating the perplexing questions about when, if ever, it is appropriate to intervene in the affairs of others. Events in the Philippines raise this question ... Whatever actions the United States does or does not take now, it cannot help but influence events in the Philippines ... America should accept these facts and not be embarrassed to use America is still a proselytizing democracy. It still believes that it is a city on a hill, a new Jerusalem, 'the last best hope of mankind.' Even more significant, many Filipinos also believe this ... Surely America still has an obligation to loan its kin a ladder." (12)
This almost unbelievable rhetoric says a lot about the ideological climate that the interventionists are trying to
- in the name of democracy international of this offensive aimed at legitimizing US intervention appears clearly in an article written by Charles Krauthammer for the Washington Post Writers
"Notice how few people, American or Filipino, seem bothered by all this interference in the affairs of other countries? And rightly so. In friendly countries ruled by dictators, it should be the policy of the United States to meddle on behalf of a 'third force,' a democratic alternative to a pro-American despot on the one hand and to Communist insurgents on the other."
What is true for the Philippines should be true for Chile also - and Nicaragua. The "semi-interventionists, those who support American action denounce it in Nicaragua (and vice versa) are told:
"Why not come clean and admit this principle: that out of strategic and moral necessity the United States should and will intervene in the world to promote democracy wherever it can and when it can do so without unbearable cost or risk. It has started to face its responsibilities in the Philipdemocrats around the world have the right to ask: Why not here, too?" (13)
point is false in this "common sense" argument. It is not
12. International Herald Tribune', February 4, 1986
13. 'International Herald Tribune', February 7, 1986.
7
BRITAIN
Washington that freed the islands
Philippine from
•Marcos but the people. By their mass mobilizations,