Philippines tears itself apart

By A Lin Neumann
Southeast Asia Online
Feb 25 2006

MANILA - The Philippines is marking the 20th anniversary of its finest political hour with a demonstration that its democracy remains brittle, its political institutions on the point of collapse, its economy as corrupt as ever and its leaders embroiled in endless rounds of infighting.

On Friday, as already-splintered veterans of the so-called People Power revolt prepared to mark the occasion when masses of people and military rebels peacefully forced then-president Ferdinand Marcos to flee the country on February 25, 1986, embattled President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared a formal state of emergency - a chilling echo of the language and tactics employed by Marcos when he instituted martial law in 1972.

Arroyo claims to have uncovered a plot hatched by a collage of the political opposition, rebel communists and "military adventurists" to topple her government. Her emergency decree comes fast on the heels of reports about troop movements and suspicious activities of at least one army general linked to previous military attempts to overthrow the government.

The left and the right, Arroyo said, "are now in a tactical alliance and engaged in a concerted and systematic conspiracy, over a broad front, to bring down the duly constituted government". She also said, "The claims of these elements have been recklessly magnified by certain segments of the national media."

The declaration gives her government broad discretionary powers, including provisions that allow authorities to arrest without warrants, seize public utilities and, if deemed necessary, to shore up national security and censor the media. Arroyo has not yet spelled out her plans to enforce her already shaky grip on political power, but the decree sends a worrying signal for the future of Philippine democracy.

The state of emergency led to the arrest of one general linked to previous coup attempts, a few other arrests and a ban on protests and ceremonies timed to the People's Power anniversary. But when Corazon Aquino, the woman who succeeded Marcos, led a peaceful march through the heart of the business district, authorities backed down after a brief standoff with riot police and allowed several thousand protesters to continue.

Aquino is the closest thing the Philippines has to a moral leader, largely considered above partisan politics, and anger over Arroyo's move during a virtual national holiday celebrating democracy may open the door to a broader movement against her government. "I am not an icon of democracy," Aquino said in Tagalog to cheering supporters. "You are all, collectively, the icon of democracy."

Aquino, who also supported the ouster of Arroyo's predecessor in 2001, then said in English: "Mrs President, I ask you to make the supreme sacrifice of resigning." The crowd roared back: "Gloria resign!"

As important in some ways as Aquino were others in the crowd - she was joined by some of the country's leading businessmen, whose support for Arroyo has been steadily eroding. "The state of emergency weakens her," said Jess Estanislao, a well-known banker and former finance secretary, as he marched with Aquino. "This is the beginning of the end for Arroyo."

That may be wishful thinking, but Arroyo, who was installed in office in 2001 on the wave of another popular revolt against then-president Joseph Estrada's government, has been unsteady for much of the past year. The controversy surrounding her administration came to a head last year when she was secretly taped discussing the 2004 presidential-election vote count with an election official on the telephone. The tapes were made public under mysterious circumstances, and her political opponents have been trying to force her resignation ever since.

The latest turn of the political screw is further evidence that the once-high hopes for better governance and more democracy engendered by the first People's Power revolt in 1986, a peaceful four-day uprising that inspired similar actions worldwide, have now come almost completely undone. In the intervening years, in many ways, things have gone from bad to worse.

Following Marcos, Aquino's administration was beset by numerous coup attempts by a politically active and restive military. Traditional elites, some of whom had run afoul of Marcos, returned with a vengeance to resume positions of privilege and patronage. Back-door deal-making was the order of the day, despite Aquino's morally upright reputation.

Marcos died in exile, but none of his cronies, the same men who helped him systematically loot the country, were successfully prosecuted. The group Transparency International says the official thievery under Marcos made his regime the second most corrupt of the 20th century - outdone only by Indonesia's deposed Suharto.

Marcos' notoriously flamboyant and wealthy widow, Imelda, has never been convicted of any crime, despite facing hundreds of court cases. She remains a fixture on the social scene, as bejeweled and lacquered as ever, and her children are gearing up for political careers.

After a period of relative political calm and notable economic progress under Fidel Ramos' six-year term in the 1990s, political turmoil returned soon after former actor Estrada was elected president on a populist ticket. Corruption allegations hounded his government and fueled the "People's Power 2" rallies that eventually overthrew his administration - even though he was democratically elected and is still popular with the majority of poor Filipinos.

The result of what is now more than two decades of instability that began under Marcos and continued through coup attempts and the two popular revolts, the last something approaching mob rule, has been anemic economic growth, entrenched poverty, soaring birth rates and a political system captive to shifting loyalties and endless intrigues.

The Philippines' economy is kept afloat largely on remittances from overseas workers with mainly menial jobs in more-developed economies. Those inflows amounted to a record US$10.35 billion last year, equivalent to a quarter of the country's exports, or about 12% of gross domestic product.

The current state of affairs raises questions among the political elite about the future viability of liberal democracy in the Philippines. "What is clear to me after 20 years is that democracy is not a prescription for economic progress. Not the way we practice it," said Teodoro Locsin Jr, one of Aquino's closest advisers and now a nominally pro-government congressman.

Indeed, so fractured is the political environment that none of the leaders of the first People's Power movement will appear together publicly to commemorate the events. Aquino, for one, is planning to attend a mass and a rally on Saturday at the shrine to "Our Lady of EDSA", a massive statue of the Virgin Mary erected near Epifanio Delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) in Manila, the place where nuns knelt in prayer in 1986 before the armored vehicles of Marcos' army to stop potential violence.

For his part, Ramos plans to preside at a flag-raising ceremony at another monument. Juan Ponce Enrile, who was linked to a series of coup attempts against Aquino, is boycotting the whole thing.

Even before her state-of-emergency announcement, Arroyo, the daughter of a former president and herself an anti-Marcos activist, was avoiding public commemorations of the event.

The depth of the infighting runs deep. Ramos, 77, who likes to view himself as a Filipino version of Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kwan Yew, has repeatedly demanded that Arroyo step down by next year and has called for a radical new constitution that would change the Philippines from a presidential to a parliamentary political system. "It is the only solution to our instability," he said in an interview.

Is Ramos involved in current plots? He won't say. "We are trying to keep everyone in the same ship," Ramos joked over drinks in his office after a long meeting with some of Arroyo's known enemies. "But not necessarily with the same skipper.

"Arroyo," he said, "is small-minded and self-centered." Her government, he believes, is corrupt and has lost its legitimacy. Noting the self-imposed exile of her husband, Mike Arroyo, after he was accused of involvement in a nationwide gambling syndicate, Ramos said, "The First Gentleman is the source of a lot of graft and corruption."

Politicians in the Philippines routinely rip into one another, so perhaps Ramos' comments should be taken with a pinch of salt. But the current political environment is as fractured as it has been in years. Whereas the struggle against Marcos had a palpable story line of good versus evil, the current free-for-all appears venal on all sides. Ever since Marcos fell, the Philippines has been exhausted by conspiracies, half-baked economic policies and endless political intrigue. Not to mention widespread disappointment.

What did Ramos expect when the revolt he began in 1986 succeeded? "Upwards, upwards, upwards," he said. Twenty years later? "We are sinking," he said.

A Lin Neumann is a veteran Philippines correspondent who witnessed the movement that led to the overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

Philippines: Power, not Gloria

By Herbert Docena
Southeast Asia Online

MANILA - If the Philippines' current political crisis was initially about the political survival of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, it has quickly turned into something much bigger.

While the fallout from a scandal last year involving the president allegedly coercing electoral officials could have been contained, a confluence of events has since paved the way for a standoff that has polarized domestic political forces. Arroyo's fate is now almost incidental. Beneath the coup plots, shadow plays and shifting alliances is the protracted and unresolved class struggle for power.

Democracy lite

After the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, Philippine conservative ruling elites aided by the United States moved quickly to reinstate the pre-dictatorship political system that had under Spanish colonial rule allowed them to entrench their economic dominance over society.

Smarting from the lessons of Marcos' dictatorship, and seeing that authoritarianism was not necessarily the most effective way to maintain their collective grip on power, the elite leaders restored civil liberties, but restricted democracy to mere electoral contests that - given the ossified distribution of wealth and power in the Philippines - remained structurally skewed in their favor.

Dubbed variably as "low-intensity democracy", "limited democracy" or "polyarchy" by academics, the post-1986 consensus became both the linchpin of stability and the source of legitimacy for Philippine ruling elites.

Through elections, the elite factions were able to manage competition among themselves while eschewing outsiders who lacked the resources required to challenge them at the ballot box. Those who won the elections were able to command obedience from the masses - not by force as in a dictatorship, but by reminding them that they (the leaders) were the people's choice.

Having dominated the state through the electoral process, the ruling elites have countered challenges to their rule by successfully thwarting persistent demands for a redistribution of power, wealth and economic opportunities.

One rough measure of the entrenched inequality: on the eve of the first "people power" uprising in 1985, the top 10% of the population took 37% of the total national income; the lowest 20% garnered a mere 5%. Twenty years later, judging by the latest available official data, the top 10% still controls a whooping 36% of the national pie, while the lowest 20% remains stuck at 5%.

Challenged from outside, crumbling within
Despite its strengths, the post-1986 political system has been inherently unstable. Over time, the masses became less content with the economic results of representative democracy.

Twenty years after the people-power uprising, official polls find that 57% of Filipinos still consider themselves poor, slightly higher than the 55% who felt poverty-pinched in 1983. As much as 20% of the population is unemployed, and every day as many as 2,000 Filipinos leave the country to work abroad. Economic growth has clearly failed to trickle down, the promises of globalization notwithstanding.

This failure of consecutive democratically elected governments to deliver greater economic good - much more than allegations of cheating and corruption - has progressively eroded the legitimacy of the political status quo. But even as the current political system has led to an expansion of the disfranchised and fueled resentment, it has simultaneously extended political freedoms to the middle class.

Those freedoms have strengthened the movements calling for substantive as opposed to "low-intensity" democracy. The openness afforded by "democracy lite" has ironically allowed for the rise of a vibrant leftist movement. Despite its weakness and fragmentation, it has not been quashed to the same extent as those in neighboring Indonesia and Thailand, where capitalists rule the roost.

Increasingly challenged from peripheral political actors, political elites were also increasingly challenged by divisions from within. Historically, internal stability depended on consensus in putting their collective elite interests above the narrow interests of individual factions. This, however, has recently not been the case.

In January 2001, elite factions displaced by Joseph Estrada's presidency seized on widespread anger at alleged corruption inside his government and rode to power on the wave of another people-power-type uprising.

In an alleged rigging of the 2004 elections - and by being reckless enough to get caught speaking privately with supposedly neutral election officials - Arroyo won the ire of fellow elites. The other elite factions, for their part, have seized on the scandal and are now trying to knock her from power. But by adamantly standing her ground, Arroyo has further stretched the limits and contradictions of the established political order.

The divided front

The post-1986 political consensus is now under unprecedented strain. Weakened by internal wranglings, the once-united front of the ruling elites is quickly crumbling. With very little economic progress to show for the past two decades, the government is finding it difficult to exact consent from the middle and lower classes. It is in this larger context that the current political crisis is unfolding.

Beneath the confusing web of coalitions and alliances among powerful families, politicians, military factions, religious groups and civil-society organizations, the fundamental political division in the Philippines today remains that between those who want to preserve their position of dominance in society and those who want to dislodge them. Overlaid on this polarization is the divergence between those who want to salvage the post-1986 system and those who want to dismantle it.

The problem for the preservationist camp, however, is that its proposed solutions to the current crisis have all been dead ends.

To deflect calls for her ouster, Arroyo has been pushing for constitutional revisions that, among other recommendations, would change the government from a presidential to a parliamentary system, which critics argue could be even more easily manipulated by the elites. The ruling class has been concerned by the power that direct presidential elections gives to the masses, as demonstrated by the election of Estrada - who, while a member of the ruling class himself, appealed to the poor by stoking their class resentments and notably was not anointed by traditional elites.

The constitutional solution Arroyo proposes has not gained political traction, however, and is unlikely to overcome formidable opposition. Faced with threats both from other elite factions and from the left, Arroyo has resorted to authoritarian measures, further undermining the post-1986 system of "limited democracy". The reimposition of what amounts to martial law by the recent declaration of a "state of emergency" and other authoritarian proclamations signals the willingness of Arroyo's government to resort to force when all else fails.

The anti-Arroyo factions that also strive to salvage the current political order have likewise only shot blanks. Drawing its constituency from rightists and centrists, and those leaning center-left, this motley political grouping is represented by the Aquinos, the Catholic hierarchy, and the business class, as well as social liberals and democrats.

Most of them have come together under the banner of the so-called Black and White Movement. At first, they pushed for strict adherence to the constitutional order and initially called for the succession of Vice President Noli de Castro to the presidency. But this has since been abandoned because de Castro still supports Arroyo, and even people from within their ranks see him as too lightweight to safeguard their interests competently.

They later supported last year's impeachment proceedings against the president. After that move was blocked by pro-Arroyo legislators, who still dominate Congress, some of them have started pushing for special elections - in short, a continuation of the post-1986 system of electoral democracy, although without Arroyo at the helm.

In transition

On the other side of this jagged divide are those who seek to dismantle the system altogether. Though they have different motivations, tactics and political alternatives, they have come around to a common conclusion: their solutions would require an extra-constitutional intervention and would not be bound by the parameters of the post-1986 political system.

On one end of this spectrum are those who feel that so-called "limited democracy" cannot be relied on to preserve order; its openness has only been exploited by so-called "communists" and by corrupt elites. This camp includes rightist civilian and military factions who want to establish a military or civilian-military junta, as well as factions inside the Arroyo government who are advocating repressive measures beyond those formally allowed under so-called "low-intensity" democracy.

Another point on this continuum is the tactical alliance among elite anti-Arroyo opposition groups, most of them right-wing groups linked to Estrada, but also including well-known personalities with leftist backgrounds, some associated with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). Grouped under the Solidarity Movement, they are calling for a "transitional council" that will be composed of opposition politicians and some leaders of the party.

The politicians apparently see this as a way to regain power and restore elite democracy under their command. The CPP, for its part, presumably sees this as a chance to infiltrate the highest echelons of the state, even as it continues to implement its military strategy of encircling cities from the countryside and seizing power through armed insurrection.

Another section under the left's banner is the Laban ng Masa (Fight of the Masses) coalition. They are calling for a "transitional revolutionary government" (TRG) - without conservative elite forces represented in the leadership. This umbrella coalition brings together a diverse group of leftist political forces: Leninists together with autonomous social movements and non-governmental organizations, Maoists together with left-party formations that do not see the seizure of the state as the priority, socialists, left-liberals, greens, and others.

Most of the political blocs included here broke away from the CPP in the 1990s, and the coalition is the highest level of tactical and political unity they have achieved since then.

According to the coalition, the TRG's wild aim is to institute economic and political changes that have so far been resisted by the elites, such as land reform and the reversal of neo-liberal economic policies such as privatization and free trade and "structures of popular empowerment". Elections will then resume once their conditions are met, including the suspension of the constitution and the ones mentioned above. The TRG concept has been met with trepidation in the haciendas, in the business district, and at the US Embassy in Manila.

'American approval'

As different groups and factions scramble for power, the US Embassy has become a very popular destination. "What everyone is trying to do," confided one of the cabinet secretaries who recently resigned and joined the anti-Arroyo movement, "is to get American approval." Even the government has no illusions as to what the embassy can do: "If the Americans decide to drop support of the Philippine president, it crumbles," the president's former chief of staff, Rigoberto Tiglao, has acknowledged. [1]

That has been borne out historically. The Philippines was a US colony until 1946, but even thereafter Washington regularly intervened politically by financing preferred candidates and groups, conducting widespread covert operations, and helping to stage-manage elections.

In 1950, a US National Security Council document stated that among the United States' goals in the country was the maintenance of "an effective government which will preserve and strengthen the pro-US orientation". In 1972, the US supported the declaration of martial law because, as a US Senate report put it, "Military bases and a familiar government in the Philippines are more important than the preservation of democratic institutions."

When Marcos finally became more of a political liability than an asset to the US, Washington immediately transferred its support to the anti-Marcos elite factions, attempted to unify them, and ensured that they would call the shots in the anti-dictatorship movement.

All these were critical strategies to guarantee that the outcome of people power would not be inimical to US interests. How exactly the US is playing its hand during the current crisis may not be known for years to come. Since the crisis began, however, US officials have repeatedly stated that they would oppose another "people power" incident.

Tired but wiser

Unless Arroyo voluntarily resigns or goes along with counter-elite plots to preserve the current political order, another people-power-type uprising is still what most of the groups seeking the president's ouster are leveraging to force a political transition. Whether the outcome of another popular uprising will be special elections, a transitional council or a transitional revolutionary government is still unclear. Until now the two critical elements for past successful uprisings are still apparently missing: the support of the military and hundreds of thousands of people on the streets.

In the military, cracks are showing. The government may have foiled recent coup movements by some military factions, but it has not put an end to the restiveness inside the barracks.

And the fissures in society are increasingly being reflected in the chain of command. A nationalist, and some say progressive, bloc composed mostly of junior officers, is reported to be emerging. But as outside the barracks, the military is divided between those who are committed to defending the existing political order and those who want to reconstruct it. The question is, who will strike first and who will remain standing?

So far, the only political force that has been able to fill the streets on a sustained basis, though on a limited scale, is the organized left. Some analysts attribute the general public's refusal to join them to a so-called "people power fatigue", and view this as implicit approval of Arroyo and the existing political system.

The other explanation, however, is that the people are not tired, only wiser: having seen how the previous uprisings only led to the replacement of one elite faction with another, and witnessing no real change in their economic well-being, they may be loath to support another merry-go-round at the top. But if the right combination of factions and personalities were to coalesce, for better or worse, another popular uprising is not inconceivable.

Note
1. Raymond Bonner and Carlos H Conde, "In Manila, US drawn into fight". New York Times, July 23, 2005.

Herbert Docena is with Focus on the Global South, a research and advocacy organization.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

Goodfellas with Tagalog subtitles

MANILA - Don't show up at the gate in Greenhills without an invitation. There's a chance you might get shot.

Welcome to the 21st-century face of social apartheid - in the Philippines and all over the developing world. Greenhills - as well as Forbes Park - is where the few Filipino "haves" and "haves more" live. Asia Times Online, tipped by a local businessman with a sense of humor, showed up there without an invitation. The visibly nervous guard working for private security agency Padpco, caressing his shotgun, wouldn't let us in without a sticker in our car. Could we take pictures? No way: we would have to write a letter to one Sy Crisanto, the president of Greenhills Association. It was also impossible to reach Pablo David, the barangay (district) chairman. "But if you have a relative living inside, he might sponsor your visit," the guard said.

Before the incident degenerated into checkpoint-in-Fallujah mode, we were allowed in for a quick drive, with an official in our car, and after we'd agreed to no pictures. The guy with the shotgun was edgy: "Open the trunk. Do you have a bomb?" Sy Crisanto and the other 300 residents of Greenhills have every reason to be cautious. If the average Filipino takes a peep at Greenhills, he might start entertaining funny notions.

Greenhills is no different from any affluent gated community in the developing world: sprawling houses, Mercedes-Benz and sport-utility vehicles in the driveways, 26 armed security guards, security cameras. But there are two significant differences, as far as Southeast Asia is concerned: the green signposts sport names of US presidents - Taft, Roosevelt, Adams; and a disproportionate amount of residents are Chinese-Filipino.

Dudek is a little out of place in Greenhills. He's working on the construction site of a new Chinese-Filipino mansion. Dudek needs three hours by bus to go from his home to work, and another three hours to go back. That's P60 (a little over US$1) a day. His salary is P200 a day. So most days he is forced to sleep in barracks on site, and he seldom sees his family. He complains about the low pay, but it's better than nothing: it took him months just to find this job.

To check out the perfect microcosm of the country, many Filipinos recommend a visit to the sprawling, 6,000-hectare Hacienda Luisita, bought in 1957 by the filthy-rich Cojuangco landowning family from the original Spanish owners. Haciendas are all the same - in Latin America or in Southeast Asia. Greenhills is certainly more relevant. Here, 300 residents - on a small piece of land in the heart of Manila - make their own rules. And the rules absolutely exclude the rest of the city, not to mention the rest of the country's 84 million Filipinos.

It's a family affair

Almost everything one needs to know about who's in charge in the Philippines is included in The Rulemakers, a recent publication by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and written by Sheila Coronel, Yvonne Chua, Luz Rimban and Booma Cruz.

As the dynamic Coronel, the center's executive director, puts it, the key to the whole equation is in the Philippine Congress. "The typical Filipino legislator is male, middle-aged, and college-educated, most likely with a degree in law. He has previously held a local government post and is a member of a political family ... There is one chance in two that he is related to a former legislator. He is also into business and has multiple income sources ... He is well off, with a net worth (most likely understated in his statement of assets) in the P10 million range [almost $200,000]. The likelihood is that the longer he stays in Congress, the richer he becomes ... The typical representative or senator therefore is not the typical Filipino, who is likely to be 35, with a few years of high-school education and an annual family income of about P150,000 in 2000 [less than $3,000]".

Philippine politics is the ultimate family affair. In Landlords and Capitalists, political scientist Temario Rivera revealed that 87 families controlled the top 120 Philippine manufacturing companies from 1964 to 1986. Sixteen of these families were involved in politics, and most were part of the landowning elite. According to The Rulemakers, most of the representatives in the Philippine Congress over the past century have come from only 134 families. The names are recurrent: Aquino, Duran, Ramos, Cojuangco, Dimaporo, Enrile, Espinosa/Martinez, Garcia, Imperial, Laurel, Lopez, Marcos/Romualdez, Osmena, Roxas, Veloso.

In the mid-1960s, political scientist Dante Simbulan came up with the concept of "modern principalia", referring to the educated, landed Filipino aristocracy, who behaved like agents of the Spanish colonizers and of course monopolized local office. The modern principalia is still in Congress - and just like before they monopolize political office as well as economic power.

This land is my land

The motto shared by this modern principalia seems to be "shop till you drop" - an inflation of Gucci, Prada and Ferragamo bought at Makati's top mall, Greenbelt, coupled with the usual torrent of Mercedes and Lexus. Conspicuous consumption is the norm. Congresswoman Emily Lopez, a former model and second wife of the scion of the Lopez clan that owns the ABS-CBN television network, boasts her proud ownership of millions in jewels and paintings. Danilo Suarez was famous for driving to Congress with a different car for each day of the week. Bobby Tuazon, executive editor of the independent website Bulatlat, says there are currently only six progressive members in Congress. Coronel sums it all up: this is "a Congress of millionaires that makes laws for a poor country".

The Philippine Congress used to be landlord territory. Nowadays, still 40% of its members own agricultural land. But they used to be 58% in the early 1990s.

The Cojuangco landowning family - which has wisely branched out into manufacturing, real estate and services - has been in Congress for four generations. But power based on landowning has now dwindled, to the benefit of manufacturing, services and trade (agriculture still accounts for roughly 20% of the Philippines' gross national product). True, in many provinces the descendants of the caciques still rule. Coronel says they are now "a mongrel class - landlord-comprador turned capitalists, real-estate developers, and bankers".

Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco Jr may be the ultimate haciendero mega-capitalist - "and notorious anti-labor", adds Bulatlat's Tuazon. A former congressman himself, Cojuangco has concocted a formidable political network, all the more impressive because he fled the country to Hawaii with former president Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and only returned home in 1989 - as a political pariah, but a very flush one anyway. Cojuangco, who has only Marcos as a serious rival among the top 10 all-time looters of the Philippine state, amassed at least $1.5 billion in corporate assets during the Marcos dictatorship, diversifying from coconut and sugar to agri-business and banking.

When Joseph Estrada was ousted from power in 2001, Cojuangco preferred not to flee. After all, one week after Estrada's inauguration, he had taken possession again of his beloved San Miguel Corp, the giant food and beverage conglomerate and the largest corporation in the country - which he allegedly bought using coconut farmers' money. And thanks to Estrada, Cojuangco had eluded land reform with dodgy schemes, a feat that earned him the qualification - by Estrada - "godfather of land reform".

His cousins in the other branch of the Cojuangco family are the owners of the famous Hacienda Luisita - where some workers earn the fabulous salary of P90 (a little more than $1.50) a day: the law says the minimum wage is P200 a day. Their answer to land reform was to make a mockery of the law at a time when the House Speaker was none other than a family member, Jose "Peping" Cojuangco Jr. Close to Hacienda Luisita is the sprawling Hacienda Tinang, a sugar estate once owned by the Aquino clan, sold to the De Leon family, and then partitioned among dozens of members of mostly the De Leon family (who else?), plus a few investment bankers, socialites, businessmen and friends and relatives of politicians, all belonging to wealthy families, as the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism has shown. This privileged bunch paid an average P450,000 (little more than $8,000 by the current exchange rate) for the estate, an absolute bargain for plots of land that should have been awarded to people who were really entitled to them: landless tenants, farm workers or tillers. This is a graphic example of how "land reform" in the Philippines really works.

The Philippines does have a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), established under former president Cory Aquino (she's also a Cojuangco by birth). The government of current President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo claims that 5.8 million hectares have been distributed to 2.7 million beneficiaries, or 72% of the forecast total. For starters, no one seriously believes in this 72% - and people are very much aware of Hacienda Tinang-style schemes. Moreover, the program should have been completed in 1999. And accusations of shady deals have been flying non-stop for 15 years. Arroyo, in the inaugural speech for her six-year term starting in 2004, didn't utter a single word about land reform or rural poverty. The Philippines Center for Investigative Journalism stresses that "ideally, CARP would correct centuries-old injustices by giving land to the landless. In the Hacienda Luisita case, however, land remained in the hands of the landowner: in this case, in the hands of the president's family" - a reference to the Aquino-Cojuangco clans.

The Rulemakers also shows how a mix of the Aquino-Cojuangco clans has generated a disproportionate amount of legislators dating back to 1890. And since Philippine politics is family politics, there is no room for trophy wives. Like shoe-fetishist Imelda, the wife of Marcos, and wife-turned-president Cory Aquino, politician's wives work as political confidantes, collect campaign contributions, manage political networks and, in the case of Aquino, even become president. The public face of the Aquino family is now the ubiquitous TV host, skin-whitening endorser and self-proclaimed actress Kris Aquino, currently gracing Philippine cinemas in a ghastly thriller, Feng Shui. She wants to become - what else - a senator.

The chop suey gang

As for the ultra-wealthy - and very discreet - Chinese-Filipino tycoons, they have always preferred to remain in the shade and fund their own congressmen. But post-Marcos some taipans have sprung up, such as Sherwin Gatchalian, the son of the Filipino king of plastics, and stockbroker Harry Angping. But no Chinese-Filipino taipan comes close to matching Lucio Tan, the ultimate embodiment of the Filipino dream: from janitor to the nation's wealthiest man - and one of Asia's Top 50. He made his fortune with tobacco, built a diversified empire, merged from being the ultimate Marcos crony to a supreme in-the-shade arm-twister of the House and the Supreme Court, and practically made president Estrada. Tan, additionally, has excellent relations with Beijing - something that largely explains the $1 billion in investment and soft loans that Arroyo brought from her recent trip to China.

Another invaluable volume by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, Investigating Estrada: Millions, Mansions and Mistresses, published in 2000, before Estrada was ousted from power, documents in minute detail the many facets of Estrada-Tan cronyism. Economist Solita Monsod paints Tan as "the role model for the worst kind of conduct as far as our national economic objectives are concerned. He signals that you can evade taxes and get away with it, pay the courts and get the judges to decide in your favor, get good lawyers and delay your cases. The messages that are given by the kind of treatment he gets from the government are the antithesis of what we need for sustainable development."

Martin Scorsese would have loved this larger-than-life version of Goodfellas with Tagalog subtitles. Lucio Tan bet heavily on Joseph Estrada in the 1998 presidential election: at least $37 million, plus total cooperation by his nationwide business network. And he won - big. With his pal Joey running the country, the biggest tax-evasion case in recent Philippine history, slapped on him by former president Fidel Ramos, simply disappeared. Tan's deep-in-trouble Philippine Airlines was protected from competition by Estrada. And on top of it, he was handed the Philippines National Bank by Estrada on a silver platter.

Manila's coterie of resident Sinologists cannot list enough reasons for a Filipino politician to seek a Chinese connection - as Estrada did. Chinese businessmen "swim between the rivers". They are not a political threat. They ask - or feign to ask - nothing in return for their largesse. They quickly share their fortunes with close friends and godfathers. They spend fortunes on the campaign trail. They keep their word - even when it's not on paper. And most of all they keep their mouths shut.

Dressed for success

A certified member of a Filipino political family needs, for starters, loads of money. Elections are a costly affair - for local standards. A Congressional campaign in Metro Manila cost as much as $500,000 in 2004. In rural provinces, it's much cheaper - less than $200,000. Once in Congress, however, families are impeccably positioned to expand their business empires, manipulating the state as a cash cow: they can get loans, franchises, monopolies, tax exemptions, subsidies, cheap foreign exchange, the works. And as they get wealthier, they become formidable election machines.

If you start as a movie star, then you've really got it made. Ramon Revilla was a lousy actor, but he got three Senate terms just because of his pop icon status. Sultry talk-show host Imee Marcos, Ferdinand's daughter, is also in Congress. In 2002, Congressman "Jules" Ledesma IV - a descendant of a wealthy sugar-planter clan also related to the Lopez family, owner of the ABS-CBN network - married knockout movie star Assunta de Rossi in his hacienda on live TV.

Which leads us to marriage, another surefire way to improve your capital. When, in 1954, Benigno Aquino Jr married Corazon Cojuangco, the most powerful political clans in the Tarlac region were united. Also in 1954, when ambitious congressman Ferdinand Marcos married Imelda Romualdez, a powerful clan in Ilocos united with a powerful clan in the Visayas. It was a great Marcos coup: Imelda's cousin Daniel at the time was House Speaker and her uncle Norberto was a former Speaker.

As for the eternal House Speaker Jose de Venecia (1992-98, then 2001-04, and now 2004-10) he also has to thank the Lord for his marriage: it was his first wife - the daughter of political godfather Eugenio Perez - who kick-started his political career.

It also helps to drape yourself in popular myth - as Marcos did, casting himself as a World War II hero who won 32 medals. In the mid-1980s it was discovered all the medals were fake. So what? Shoe fetishist Imelda still shows them off. Disgraced president Joseph Estrada got the job selling the myth of a man of the masses. It took millions of Filipinos a corruption scandal and an impeachment for them to start measuring the gap between Estrada's public Robin Hood image and his private life of sleaze, thuggery and extra-dirty politics.

Being in the Philippine Congress also means golden showers of "free money" - which everyone can spend at will (and without paying taxes). Congressmen as a rule make as much - if not more - than business executives.

The majority of bills approved in the House are of only local interest. The result, as The Rulemakers points out, is "a chain of perverse behavior". Virtually no one gives a damn about the common good of the country: "Broader development and reform goals are forgotten, further entrenching a system that mires the people in poverty and traps legislators in the role of fighting for spoils." It's unlikely Arroyo's government will muster enough Nietzschean will power to change the story.

As to where the elites stand at the moment, analysts broadly agree they now are congregated into roughly four groups:

1) The traditional elite - the Ayalas, Aquinos, Lopezes, De Leons, Osmenas and a few other families that were snubbed by Marcos;

2) The "sons of Marcos" who blossomed handsomely during the dictatorship - tycoons Lucio Tan, Danding Cojuangco and former president Estrada, for instance;

3) The anti-Marcos camp, which includes former president Fidel Ramos and ultimately his protege Arroyo; and

4) A group of gung-ho parvenus that includes shady businessmen Dante Tan and Mark Jimenez. These are the people who actually rule the country.

Got pork, will travel

Senator Panfilo Lacson - who did a study of the pork-barrel system - may be one of the few Philippine legislators publicly to describe pork-barrel funds as "a very corrupt and corrupting system in our political institutions". In 2003, Lacson announced he would give up his "pork" allocation for the year - almost $4 million. He urged other senators to do the same. Nobody paid attention. Now, because of the country's alarming fiscal and budgetary crisis, finally there's a House and Senate drive to scrap pork altogether in 2005.

Still, there's a crucial problem. Even if money is not used, according to budget secretary Emilia Boncodin, it does not revert to the bleeding national treasury: it stays with the relevant government agency, which then identifies projects it wants to fund. This legislation also has to go.

According to Lacson, less than half of Filipino taxpayer money goes to actual projects. He even figured a complete breakdown of the kickbacks: 20% goes to the legislator who comes up with the idea; 14% goes to the contractor; 10% goes to the district engineer and other officials at the nefarious Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH); 5-10% goes to the governor or mayor; 2% goes to the barangay captain; and 2% goes to the government bureaucrat supposedly in charge of these public funds. Lacson says even the billboards all over Manila that advertise a given project are overpriced. One of these billboards, by the way, reveals the face of Arroyo the real-estate developer: she is promoting Residencias de Manila - still one more Greenfields-style gated community. Lacson is one of the few legislators denouncing corruption on a monumental scale as one of the key reasons that explain the appalling state of infrastructure in the Philippines. All over Manila it's easy to see unfinished or extra-shoddy construction projects. No wonder, most of the money disappeared in bribes.

Where's my cut?

When he became president, Estrada had an ambitious Caring for the Poor program. He wanted to reduce the number of Filipino poor from 24 million in 1997 to 17 million by 2004. The problem is that two-thirds of the funds were under the control of the House. The whole thing turned into a mess. According to a World Bank study, the program even invented a new class of poor: "the political poor, who are chosen by the political establishment".

Why did that happen? Because the really poor were not well connected enough. Only a few knew a congressman or senator who could recommend their household to be included in the government program. And of all this mass of non-connected, many thought they could only advance their interests if they paid a few bribes. This means only the well-connected Filipino poor in Congress get to see the fruits of pork acting to the benefit of their communities.

In the absence of all hope, the poor gamble. Jueteng is the biggest and most public racket in the Philippines. Jueteng is a variation of a Chinese numbers game in which you have to pick two numbers between 1 and 37. Once the lucky pair is drawn, the winnings vary wildly, depending on the bets. It's a complex network of cobradores (collectors), cabos (headmen) and operators, protected by another network of civilian, military and police officials, even judges, from the local level to the national level. The whole thing is illegal, but everybody and his neighbor seem to be involved. Once again, Estrada went where no one's ever been before: he invented jueteng room service, centralizing the collection in the presidential office. He may have pocketed as much as $10 million in gambling payoffs.

How could such a gangrenous system change? Coronel of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism welcomes the current crisis: "We need a national trauma. It's the only way to forge ahead." There's hope from people like the party list group Bayan Muna - which has spun off into Gabriela, a woman's group; Anakpawis, a workers' party; and Migrante, a migrant workers' organization. Bayan Muna fights for human, labor and peasants' rights. One of its leaders, Satur Ocampo, a former reporter of the Manila Times and one of the few progressives in the House, now rubs elbows with sultry Imee Marcos: Ocampo bitterly fought her dictator father in the 1970s and '80s.

Ocampo says his party has no secret agenda: "Our program is to empower - in a real, not rhetorical sense - the workers, peasants, fishermen, indigenous peoples, urban poor and other oppressed sectors, as well as women, youth, students, professionals and small entrepreneurs." Whether he and a few others make a difference may pave the way for a Philippines that will cease to be a vast collection of dirt-poor islanders ruled by a gang of Goodfellas.


(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved