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March 8 is International Women’s Day. The Philippines should be
singularly proud that in the advancement of women’s rights and
welfare, it is neither No. 2 nor No. 3. It is No. 1. The Philippines
is a matriarchal society. The men are under the saya, henpecked. For
that, I blame the men.
In terms of political rights, Filipino women are
probably the most advanced in Asia. In terms of economic rights,
they are the most advanced, too. The women are the treasurers and
managers in 16 million households in this country. True, other Asian
countries have a higher ratio of women in the parliament than
Filipinas in our Congress. The legislature, however, is only a small
consolation prize. The biggest prize of them all is the presidency.
We have had two women presidents, both of them serving terms far
longer than any male president, except Ferdinand Marcos.
Marcos ruled for 20 years, as a strongman and
a dictator. Corazon Cojuangco Aquino reigned for six years, four
months and three days, from Feb. 25, 1986 to noon of June 30, 1992.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will be president for nine years, from
Jan. 20, 2001 to June 30, 2010. She served 42 months of what should
have been Joseph Estrada’s 72 months of presidency, from June 30,
1998 to June 30, 2004. Elected under a cloud in May 2004, she has
six years of her own presidency.
Remarkably, both Cojuangco-Aquino and Arroyo
were never elected president when they assumed the office of the
presidency. In fact, Cory went straight from plain housewife to
chief executive, without the benefit of an election. There is no
record that Cory won the February 1986 snap election. Hers was a
power grab. Arroyo had the decency to get herself elected senator
twice (topping it the second time) before being elected vice
president in 1998. Still, when she assumed the presidency from
Estrada in January 2001, hers was also a power grab.
Remarkably, too, both Aquino and Arroyo brought
the Philippines to its gravest political peril. No less than nine
coup attempts were lodged against Cory, two of them the most violent
ever—August 1987 and December 1989. Arroyo has had about
six—including those simmering in the mind of Armed Forces Chief
Hermogenes Esperon. Three anti-Arroyo coups were almost
crippling—Oakwood, Garci or Hyatt Ten and Manila Peninsula.
If anything, the coups strengthened, rather than
weakened, the hand of the military. Both Cory and Gloria had
troubled presidencies. Popular in the beginning, they immediately
lost the sheen of their early glory days.
In Cory’s case, the coups made her very
prayerful. She prayed every night that when she woke up the
following morning, she would still be the commander-in-chief. Gloria
Arroyo probably does the same thing by now. Under women chief
executives, the Philippine presidency, supposedly one of the most
powerful in the world, is in the palm of the military.
In this sense, Cory and Glory are less than the
strong leaders their adoring fans would like to portray them. They
are weaklings before the might of the military. For that, Cory is
largely to blame. She allowed this provision in the 1986 (disguised
as the 1987) Constitution that says the armed forces is the
protector of the people. That is a redundancy that did not need to
be writ in stone in the Constitution. Because of the “protector of
the people” clause in the basic law, the military behaves like the
modern-day guardia civil, apparently civil on the surface, but
scheming, power-hungry, and corrupt underneath. In the three
longest-serving presidencies the Philippines ever had, Marcos,
Aquino and Arroyo, you could see the dirty hand of the military.
Yet, the military has yet to defeat two of the
world’s longest insurgencies, the communist New People’s Army,
whose rebellion is now on its 39th year, and the separatist Muslim
insurgency which is now on its 36th year. Battle-tested, the
military doesn’t learn its lesson.
Will the Armed Forces ever crush the NPA and the
MILF? Not in our lifetime. If ever they did defeat the NPA and MILF,
the armed forces would lose its reason for being—except perhaps to
be engaged in high-handed politics.
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