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More than 50,000 protesters marched on Feb. 29 on Ayala Avenue, the
heartland of the Philippines’ premier business district, with two
basic demands:
One, the truth about the ZTE National Broadband
Network deal and whether President Arroyo and her husband Miguel
Arroyo took kickbacks from the overpriced contract.
Two, the resignation, if not outright ouster, of
President Arroyo.
The gathering, billed as an interfaith rally,
drew together for the first time in public the disparate opposition
groups led by former Presidents Corazon Aquino and Joseph Estrada,
the militant Bayan party, the business elite, bishops and other
religious leaders. It was the biggest show of dissent against
President Arroyo, who now comes down in history as the most corrupt
leader the country ever had.
In 1986 and in 2001, such display of People
Power succeeded in ousting Ferdinand Marcos and Estrada.
This time though, it is doubtful whether People
Power can remove a sitting President like Arroyo who has displayed
remarkable grit and guts, and many say, shamelessness, in bucking
growing demands for her removal.
The main reason is that People Power didn’t
deliver. It didn’t result in good governance. It did not produce
economic freedom for the people. Today, despite recent robust growth
rates, the Philippines remains one of the slowest growing economies
in Asia.
And the main reason People Power couldn’t
deliver is the economic and political structure, which is under the
stranglehold of no more than 160 families—out of 16 million
families. For People Power to succeed, there must be a revolution, a
real one, which would mean violence—to destroy the oligarchs,
destroy the political warlords, destroy their respective
machineries. Can that be done?
Not in our lifetime.
Political scientist Benito Lim cites four
ingredients behind the success of the first two people power
movements:
1. Military support; 2. Religious groups were
united; 3. Non-governmental organizations were united; and 4. There
was only one candidate: Corazon Aquino in the first, Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo in the second.
Those ingredients are not present in the current
situation:
1. The top military leaders still support
President Arroyo. If there is military opposition it comes from
junior officers, who are unfortunately in prison; 2. The church is
divided; 3. NGOs are divided; and 4. There are too many candidates.
The larger perception about People Power 1 and 2
is that they succeeded in changing the government, but did not
succeed in installing a government that would address the problems
of the people, such as poverty, and governance.
Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the
Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines expressed the same
sentiment. In a letter published in his blog, he relates: “Sadly,
People Power 2 installed a leader who lately only has been branded
as the ‘most corrupt’ and our government is rated ‘among the
most corrupt governments’.”
Comparing the performance of the Philippine
economy with those of its neighbors proves the failure of people
power in improving the lives of citizens. The Asian Development Bank
said in a study that in 1960 the Philippines had a per capita gross
domestic product (GDP) of about $612 (in 2000 U.S. dollars), ahead
of Indonesia’s $196 and Thailand’s $329. By 1984, Thailand’s
per capita GDP of $933 had overtaken the Philippines’ $908.
According to the study, per capita GDP grew by
an average of 2.7 percent during 2000-2006. At this rate, the
Philippines will not be able to catch up with Thailand, whose per
capita GDP grew by an average of 4 percent during 2000-2006.
Nowhere is the failure of people power more
evident than in reducing poverty. In 2003, about 13.2 percent of
Filipinos were living on absolute poverty, which means they earn $1
a day or less.
China and Vietnam started with higher poverty
levels than the Philippines during the early 1980s, but they quickly
reduced their absolute poverty rates in the early 2000s, to 10.8
percent for China and to 8.4 percent for Vietnam. Both Malaysia and
Thailand have virtually eliminated absolute poverty in the 2000s.
The ADB describes the decade of the 1980s, when
the first people power was launched, as a “lost decade” of
growth for the Philippines because of its failure to attract the
massive wave of relocating direct foreign investments during that
period.
Former President Fidel V. Ramos, one of the key
players in People Power 1, who saved the Arroyo presidency from
collapse at the height of the “Hello Garci” scandal in 2005,
still supports President Arroyo, but his recent words were beginning
to sound ominous, if not militant:
In a speech during the February 22 People Power
1 anniversary, Ramos said: “History might yet call for us again to
make further sacrifices to offer our lives on the altar of our civic
ideas. We now know that we must struggle. We must endure. We must
sacrifice.”
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