MANILA, 3 March 2006 — It doesn’t really matter whether President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ends the state of emergency in the Philippines this week, next month or not at all. Coup plotters will not stop plotting, disgruntled soldiers will not suddenly unite behind the government and the battle for power among the ruling elite will not cease.
“Nothing has gone away,” said Nick Bibby, strategist at Barclays Capital in Singapore, adding that Arroyo may now have even more trouble pushing economic reforms and meeting ambitious fiscal targets. “It’s a very, very tough environment. The government has to move away from this spin of positive headlines to actually start delivering. If they don’t do that, then the risks are they will get punished by the markets.”
After crying wolf many times, Arroyo seems to have convinced foreign investors and Filipinos that this threat was very real. Still, critics and many analysts see the president’s reaction as excessive and suspect her of inflating the alleged conspiracy by communists, political enemies and “military adventurists”.
Financial markets quickly got over their shock, sending the peso and stocks back on the upward course they had enjoyed since last being jolted in mid-2005 by allegations of vote-rigging and graft that pushed Arroyo’s presidency to the brink of collapse.
But questions remain over how long last Friday’s declaration of emergency rule will last and what will come next. Torn between an economic team worried about damage to reforms that have shown signs of progress and security chiefs wanting more time to mop up, Arroyo said on Wednesday she would review her order by this weekend and lift it as soon as possible.
History suggests a rough road ahead. The plot against Arroyo joins a list now well above a dozen since the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was chased out of the country by a “people power” revolt 20 years ago, including bloody attempts in 1987 and 1989 to overthrow President Corazon Aquino. In 2003, Arroyo put down a bloodless, one-day mutiny by elite troops complaining about corruption but security analysts say she buys the loyalty of key generals with revolving-door promotions.
Prospero de Vera, professor of public administration at the University of the Philippines, said Arroyo faced the dilemma of inflaming the situation with more arrests or playing up the plot to try to consolidate her power, particularly over the military. “We are in for a long period of uncertainty,” he said.
Even though a communist insurgency, fueled by poverty and corruption, still rages after 40 years and 40,000 deaths, many see Arroyo’s invocation of the “red menace” as a red herring. Erin Prelypchan of risk consultancy Pacific Strategies & Assessments expected that emergency rule would end within days but the powerful instigators of the plot would be left alone.
“Cleaning house on the left to appease the military wouldn’t preclude going after the people whom she’s most afraid of, so either she’s made some kind of unholy deal with the opposition or she’s afraid of them,” Prelypchan said. “There’s no culture of accountability here. It’s all kind of pathetic and cyclical.”
Arroyo, an economist and daughter of the incumbent president beaten resoundingly by Marcos in the 1965 election, has won guarded approval from investors with her efforts to bring in more revenues and cut government debt of nearly $76 billion. But higher taxes, persistent corruption, the allegations of wrong-doing and her own aloof manner have not endeared her to the masses. Clashes between Arroyo and senators in the upper house of Congress have stalled passage of the government’s 2006 budget.
Luckily for her, the opposition has not come up with any palatable alternatives since the death 15 months ago of action movie hero Fernando Poe Jr, who protested to the end that Arroyo cheated him of victory in the 2004 presidential election. Opinion polls show that Filipinos are weary of the turmoil of “people power”, coup plots and political bickering, but many feel apathetic about the prospects for change.
“I guess we’re waiting for the big people at the top to do something,” said one playschool teacher. “I just want to get on with my life and not have things go to the streets all the time.”
