Weak Institutions Fan Filipino Turmoil

By Ronald Meinardus

These days, the political class in the Philippines is too preoccupied to be concerned about governance. Everyone’s attention is focused on what one commentator has termed “the worst crisis any administration” has ever experienced. The opposition is orchestrating turmoil and openly calling for the ouster of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. To achieve this goal, the president’s foes have discharged various poisonous attacks.

Following allegations that her husband, son and brother-in-law are entangled in corrupt practices involving illegal gambling, audio recordings surfaced that, according to the opposition, substantiate claims that the president cheated her way to power in the May 2004 elections.

As the opposition is not inclined to wait for the next presidential elections, which are five years away, three alternative scenarios for bringing Arroyo’s presidency to a premature end are being debated: resignation, impeachment by Congress or a popular uprising supported by the military.

With neither resignation nor impeachment considered to be a realistic option, the extra-constitutional formula has once again advanced to the forefront: “The vocabulary of political change in the country has been defined by two words - coup and people power,” observed columnist Amando Doronila in a recent commentary.

Most observers agree the situation today is not ripe for yet another popular uprising. While many Filipinos are unhappy with the president, who is very unpopular, the outrage needed for a political explosion seems to be missing.

“People are either weary of protests or apathetic to it all,” says one observer. As is often the case in extra-constitutional processes, the call for “people power” does not stem from the “people”, but from self-appointed leaders without a popular mandate.

When the Filipino masses rose in 1986 against the tyranny of Ferdinand Marcos, the whole democratic world joined the celebrations. “People power” became a synonym for democratic and peaceful transition, and the Philippines was hailed as a global trend-setter. Compared with 1986, the popular uprising in 2001 that brought the incumbent to power had far less splendour. It took place in a constitutional and democratic framework and was hardly aimed at a dictator.

Once again, major political forces in the Philippines are advocating extra-constitutional methods to rid the country of what they term a corrupt and illegitimate leader.

On a more general note, this situation exposes a fundamental weakness of the Philippine political system and its institutions. The issue of the legitimacy of the electoral results of May 2004 stands at the centre of the political turmoil. Up to this very day, the opposition has not conceded defeat, insisting the president only won because of massive cheating. With all legal efforts exhausted, the opposition has politicised the struggle. A heterogeneous cluster of individuals and groups reaching from the far left to the far right is confronting the president. Their only common characteristic is an aversion to the president. They have neither produced a rallying figure capable of replacing the president, nor have they come up with a programme of government. The anti-Arroyo coalition is a negative, one-purpose campaign.

Whether this is enough to mobilise the Filipino masses is questionable. To be successful, the least the kind of movement some armchair revolutionaries are dreaming of should do is produce a joint political blueprint for a better future. The lack of such a blueprint enforces the widespread suspicion that the whole commotion is less about political direction and principles than it is about personal ambitions.

In the midst of all the turmoil, the president has announced her intention to initiate the process to change the constitution, altering the government from its present presidential form to a parliamentary federal system. Many observers see this as an attempt to deflect public attention away from the negative headlines the scandal was producing.

To raise the constitutional question during this delicate time was premature. The problem is not the constitution, but a lack of respect for the basic law. It is debatable, also, whether a shift from the presidential to a parliamentary system would improve the political situation. While it would strengthen parliament, it would at the same time weaken the executive.

To solve its myriad problems, the Philippines needs strong political leadership. I am not convinced that a leader presiding over a potentially fragile parliamentary majority would be better equipped to get things done than a chief executive with a popular mandate.

In addition, for a parliamentary system to work, you need an institutional framework with a functioning electoral system and strong political parties. Compared with other democracies, both the electoral and party systems of the Philippines are feeble and in dire need of reform.

Hardly anyone remembers today that in 2001 the political parties agreed at a summit to enact legislation aimed at creating strong platform-based and publicly financed political parties. Up to this day, nothing practical has come of it. This shows that the political class is really not genuine in its desire to strengthen the political parties as democratic institutions.

There is also a lack of political sincerity regarding electoral reform: today’s turmoil is basically a consequence of the inadequacies of the electoral system. Had the 2004 elections been computerised and not conducted through what observers at the time described as an “archaic” system of manual counting, today’s allegations of cheating and rigging would simply be baseless.

It is disturbing, but also revealing, that hardly anyone is campaigning for election reform today. This leads to the conclusion that many in the political class seem content with an outdated electoral system that is not only open to manipulation but also extremely destabilising.

Dr. Ronald Meinardus was the former Resident Representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in the Philippines and will leave Manila late September for a new posting in the Middle East. He writes a blog at www.myliberaltimes.com