Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will have much to crow about in her State of the Nation Address (SONA) tomorrow, especially with a national budget that has been in surplus for three months in a row and economic growth at 5.5 percent in the first quarter of this year. Those economic figures paint a rosy picture of the Philippines, but beneath the good news lie many troubling endemic factors that have failed to be resolved by the president.
First are the unresolved accusations of legitimacy that Arroyo has been battling ever since she took over the presidency in a People Power coup in 2001. The military has been a hotbed of discontent, with at least 170 officers now facing court martial proceedings for plotting the overthrow of the Arroyo administration. The coup attempt was foiled in February of this year when Arroyo called a state of emergency for one week and arrested key plotters against her. The emergence of a videotape showing Gen. Danilo Lim withdrawing his support from the president, is just one symptom of the persistent anti-Arroyo sentiment in the nation.
Second are the accusations of widespread corruption, which severely undermine Arroyo’s legitimacy. The 2004 presidential elections were marred by accusations of significant fraud and rigging, with Arroyo’s new military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr. accused of making sure Arroyo would win. Not only that, but the president allowed former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “JocJoc” Bolante, who was implicated in the illegal diversion of 728 million pesos in fertilizer funds to Arroyo’s re-election campaign, to leave the country unimpeded.
Thirdly, the president has tried to cling onto power by pushing for charter change. She has called for the constitution to be changed so that the Philippines can adopt a parliamentary system with her as the prime minister. Under this scheme, elections scheduled for 2009 would be canceled and she would stay on until 2011. Many Filipinos object to this shift, saying that too much power would be concentrated in the executive branch of the government.
The president must have felt the large public opposition to this shift in governance style as she will not be talking about charter change in her SONA. Instead, befitting her economics training, Arroyo will be focusing on the need to give more autonomy to local governments in terms of economic development to lessen the power of “imperial” Manila. This is not a new theme, but rather a tired one that many other presidents have talked about too. The unfortunate truth is that most of the power and money are still concentrated in Manila, and will probably continue to be so at least for the foreseeable future.
Arroyo has been able to remain in power so far as most Filipinos feel the alternatives are unacceptable and because they are too busy trying to make a living to be bothered with returning to the streets in protests against the president. Thus, the president remains in office out of default, rather than by overwhelming popular support.
Instead of spending $19 million over the next two years in battling the communist New People’s Army, Arroyo would do better to focus on the root causes of the continued popularity of the anti-government insurgency: poverty. The positive economic figures have not translated into a better life for the majority of poor Filipinos, who continue to struggle to make ends meet, and are increasingly forced to go abroad in search of work. Improving their lives remains the greatest challenge yet of anyone leading the Philippines, and Arroyo, despite her upbeat reports, has not been able to do so.
