The May 2010 national election has given the Philippine bourgeois state,,in a manner of speaking, a new lease on life after almost a decade of
being dragged into a crisis of legitimacy and the mire of big corruption
scandals by the previous regime of Macapagal-Arroyo. Widely perceived
and accepted, at least for the moment, as credible, this election saw the
new President, Noynoy Aquino, winning by a big margin over his rivals,
with votes coming from across all classes and sectors.
The regime change has brought to power a broad alliance of ruling class
factions, at the core of which are leading players in both EDSA I and EDSA
II. The other allies are no less important and powerful like a new bloc in
the AFP and PNP officer corps, Danding Cojuangco, the Iglesia and new
recruits from sections of the big business chambers. More regional and
provincial and city elites are signing up as new turncoats before Congress
opens in late July.
More significantly, the United States government as well as those of the G-
7 countries have expressed new enthusiasm in supporting the new regime.
The new US envoy even went to the extent of discarding protocol and
whatever qualms US proconsuls have about Philippine sovereignty to greet
Aquino before the Philippine Congress proclaimed him as the president-
elect. China followed suit. The US would be pleased. Aquino appointed to
the key Cabinet portfolios of foreign affairs, finance, economy and defense
persons with long and close association with US and/or global capitalist
institutions.
It is the big popular vote that Aquino garnered which has given him the
cloak of a popular mandate. The myth woven around his famous parents
bolstered his brand appeal of incorruptibility and disinterestedness in
power which bourgeois media moguls successfully conveyed to the middle
class and the masses who were long fed up with the scandalous corruption
and greed for power of the incumbent president. Later in his campaign,
Aquino linked the issue of corruption with poverty to draw mass support
from his rivals Estrada and Villar who were harping on the latter issue. His
slogan of “ Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap “ is a propaganda coup
but it is also one of the most disjointed and misleading slogans of our time.
Everything considered, the regime change brings together a mix of three
important elements which are crucial in determining Aquino’s hold on
power and his capacity to bring the country to the direction he wants.
These are: 1) a legitimacy that springs from a credible election; 2)
support from a broad array of ruling class factions; and 3) a huge popular
vote.
The two uppermost issues which Aquino has zeroed in during his campaign
and after getting elected are big-time corruption and poverty. There
are yet no expressed strategies coming from his camp to address these
problems. But his ascendancy to power may well be situated in a context
wherein both US and other global capitalist interests and sections within
the domestic ruling circles who are now in his first circle of power have
long been putting pressures on Philippine elite leaders to modernize their
State rule so as to make it efficient and effective for both global and
domestic capital operations and for the strategic geo-politico-military
interests of the United States.
A reasonable prediction can be made that Aquino will adopt this kind of
modernizing framework in working out his anti-corruption and anti-poverty
agenda. The big question is : will this work ?
Socialists cannot even say : It’s Tall Order. Surely, our time-tested
analytical instruments and historical experience will give us a totally
different answer.
We can presume that Aquino’s anti-corruption drive will hit hard at the
GMA faction. He ought to, in the first place; that is his No. 1 promise
during his campaign. In a way, the precedent of an incarcerated Estrada
will help him, although this too ended in an ignominious compromise.
Worse, despite this precedent, subsequent events show that the crime of
plunder has become much bigger at the highest levels of officialdom.
It is impossible for Aquino to stamp out big-time corruption unless he
strikes at the heart of the Philippine oligarchy’s patrimonial power relations
with the Philippine State. Yes, the oligarchy whose bigger and leading
representatives are behind him during the campaign and those who joined
him after he got elected. It will demand from him the task of breaking
decisively the base of rent-seeking and privilege: the political dynasties,
the semifeudal enclaves, the warlords, institutionalized corruption like
the pork barrel, executive discretionary powers over the budget and
manipulated public bidding of contracts, and the culture of nepotism,
kumpadre system and paybacks made in the name of utang na loob.
Poverty eradication, even a critical and sustained poverty reduction, will
be even more impossible for Aquino and his regime. At the outset, he has
reaffirmed his loyalty and adherence to the capitalist globalization order
by his appointments to key Cabinet portfolios and his pronouncements in
favor of foreign investments. For example, his promise of decent jobs
and good pay has better chances of getting realized if the Philippines
industrialize and modernize its agriculture based on redistributive
reforms and appropriate technology. The shackles with which the present
international division of labor bind the Philippines to a marginal position
and assign Philippine labor to low-income and contractual jobs here and
abroad must be cut.
Moreover, these above-mentioned features of classical modernization
must be accompanied by a steady expansion of the domain of direct public
control over state mechanisms and the markets – an empowering process
which the bureaucracies of the bourgeois democratic or the authoritarian
socialist polities stifled. With Latin America leading the way, this now
constitutes a major socialist revolutionary theme for our period. In
contrast, the bourgeois globalization modernizers now in Aquino’s circles
have nothing to offer but bureaucracy and the market as the way out of
corruption and poverty.
The other possibility is for the new regime to just plod through the murky
waters of Philippine politics and economics, doing one patchwork after
another. This will surely have dire consequences for our country but not
necessarily for the new regime. For those among us who think that this
will bend the winds of fortune to our side, they may be in for another
big disappointment. Now aboard the new dispensation are people and
institutions who have access to other institutions, resources, technology
and skills extremely useful for socio-cultural engineering which can make
it appear and make people feel that things are moving and are turning out
alright even if they don’t. Or dissipate mass anger or a popular outrage or
crisis points for the regime and the ruling system.
This technology of contemporary governing has long been with us. We
have seen giant examples of this. While democracy was being sung
everywhere after EDSA I ala Te Deum, bombs were raining over the
countrysides, human rights violations continued to rise and the precursors
of the extra-judicial killings of today were rampant and non-stop for
months on end. Under Ramos, the country was made to believe that
we were on our way to being a Tiger economy until the bust arrived
just before he ended his term. Estrada’s term was cut short but we
were regaled nonetheless by his huge “ para sa mahirap” extravaganza.
GMA Part I was richly adorned by the mantra of institutionalized civil
society participation in governance, transparency and accountability and
modernizing governance only to end up with the nightmare that was GMA
Part II.
On big trimedia, the nation witnessed the magnificent and magical EDSA I
myth revival campaign to back Aquino’s candidacy. Villar may have spent
billions for his trimedia blitz but he had no myth to cultivate. Now with
State power and resources, the Aquino II regime will roll into action ideo-
cultural spectacles several times more enthralling than what was witnessed
during the election campaign. The task of revealing the deeper class truths
of our society and the better world to which Filipinos are entitled to will be
more formidable given the array of topnotch mythmakers, spin doctors and
intellectual hacks ready to defend bourgeois rule and the dominant system.
Appreciative inquiry will tell us that we should also count our blessings.
How can we disagree with that? Autonomous people’s organizations have
flourished, the social movements have risen to test the limits of the spaces
won during the long and trying period of the anti-dictatorship struggles, a
deeper patriotic reawakening has broken through the iron-clad enclosures
of the US-moulded military and police establishments, progressive
journalism and art, music, and cinema have continued to breathe amid
the constraints of mainstream media and art moguls, and new and more
dynamic Left and progressive forces are coming out of the old shells and
getting enriched by relating to a growing global justice movement and an
inspiring Latin American socialist resurgence.
Indeed, we have moved forward but at a moment when we anticipated a
leap, a rude awakening however was to happen to us when we saw face
to face our collective failure to oust the bankrupt regime of GMA. To ever
think that the leap took another route just as a famous journalist wrote
that it was People Power again manifested again through an election will
be to too much of a hype, an exaggeration of the transformative potentials
of a political event, an abandonment of the time-tested class, ideological
and political perspectives to determine those potentials.
The oust GMA movement is a call for extra-constitutional change, one that
is easily superior than a bourgeois electoral mode especially if that mode
such as the Philippine variant is corrupted by fraud, violence and money.
The former is superior to the latter in the sense that it qualitatively allows
more leeway and scope for effecting political and social change because
they need not be worked out within the established constitutional or legal
structures and processes.
The failure of the Oust GMA movement means that proletarian power is
weak, that the multi-force, multi-class combinations it carried is weak, that
the middle class and the working masses were not ready to risk themselves
for an extra-constitutional change, and that the leadership offered by the
military rebels and their civilian allies for such venture was not acceptable
to them.
How about the 2010 regime change? It is done through the electoral
mode and this means that the scope and breath of change is restricted
by the established constitutional structures and processes. How much
of proletarian power is manifested here? D and E (income categories)
votes were divided between Aquino and Estrada, with the latter getting a
significant share of the total. It is the ABC votes which decisively went for
Aquino. C votes are still working class but we wonder what their message
was, unlike the Estrada votes which said that poverty is more important
as an issue than corruption. Another significant factor to input is the Left
and progressive constituency votes. They were divided among Aquino,
Estrada and Villar with a small intellectual segment going for Teodoro.
The influence of proletarian power as expressed through mass votes of the
class is weakened by its division. The more significant indicator, the votes
generated by the organized Left forces show that the latter are insignificant
in the recently held presidential polls. The senatorial, the partylist and
the local polls are likewise interesting. But this paper limits itself to regime
change, and that means in our presidential system, the presidential
election.
It is not surprising therefore that Aquino did not get somebody from the
Left or close to the Left to join his Cabinet. He may have promised Risa
Hontiveros a Cabinet post but that is one year from now, and in Philippine
politics that may be ages from now.
What awaits socialists and radical progressives is one big hell of a fight
with a bourgeois rule that has gained a broad consensus of ruling class
factions combined with a popular electoral consent. We have to face the
challenge, really shape up and do our very best.
Ric Reyes