Monday's congressional, gubernatorial and local elections in the Philippines are being billed by some pundits as a referendum on the presidency of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Unfortunately they have been more than that. They have been to a significant extent an indictment of the whole Filipino political establishment, with its rival family dynasties, which has failed to deliver on the hopes of social and economic reform that followed the 1986 ouster of the deeply corrupt Marcos regime.
Twenty years on, the popular frustration is showing. Corazon Aquino, the wife of Marcos’ murdered political challenger, came to power on a tidal wave of belief that life would at last change for the better. It did not. Aquino was both a member of, and a prisoner of, the political and economic elite who had prospered under Marcos’ 21-year rule. Her successor in 1992, Fidel Ramos, was an equal disappointment. Six years later, voters sought to break the mould by choosing the former movie star Joseph Estrada as their president. Unfortunately Estrada had all of the corrupt vices of the political establishment without their polish and decorum. His three-year rule disgraced his office. He was forced from power to be succeeded by his Vice President Gloria Arroyo. Now she too has dashed the confidence of many of her supporters.
There are strong grounds for believing that Arroyo’s people fixed the 2004 presidential election. As a result, Filipino politics has been dominated for the last three years by opposition attempts to impeach the president for fraud. Though it seems opposition candidates may have won at least nine of the 12 Senate seats being contested, the president’s supporters are expected to maintain control of the House of Representatives. That means opposition calls for her impeachment will continue to be blocked.
Past Filipino elections have often been marred by violence. This week’s vote was no exception. One foreign observer compared the intimidation, bribery and ballot box manipulation he had seen as “worse than in Afghanistan”. Such a judgment ought to shock the political establishment. Apart from the long insurrection in Mindanao, the Philippines is a country relatively at peace. It ought to be able to conduct elections without the violence and brutality of a state like Afghanistan which had just emerged from years of traumatic civil war.
Unfortunately on past form, the political establishment, whose dynastic links reach right down through legislators and governors to mayors and village councilors, is unlikely to react to what many will see as a steady breakdown in confidence in the political process. The establishment’s hegemony has been challenged before and they have survived, whether in power or opposition. But this cannot go on forever. Voters cannot be treated merely as ballot box fodder. There needs to be substantive improvements to the lives of everyone, regardless of their political allegiance. Corrupt, partisan and inefficient leadership threatens the future of Filipino democracy.
