Filipino Politics: Development and Decay

David Wurfel The 1986 people power revolution that ousted Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and installed the gentle democrat Corazon Aquino is a story of archetypal appeal which has attracted international media attention. David Wurfel deepens our understanding of the development of democracy in the Philippines, offering the most comprehensive account of Filipino politics from 1945 to the present available in any language. Filipino Politics provides both a detailed history of the cycles of strengthening and decay of Filipino institutions and an up-to-date analysis of conditions that continue to threaten the creation of a stable popular government. David Wurfel is Professor of Political Science at the University of Windsor, Ontario. A graduate of San Diego State University, he received his M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and PhD from Cornell University. The editor of Meiji Japans Centennial: Aspects of Political Thought and Action (1971), he has published articles in several multi-contributor volumes.

1| The Historical Legacy

David Wurfel

To understand recent political change in the Philippines, we must appreciate the legacy of the past. For this purpose, I have divided Philippine history before 1972 into eight, very uneven periods. For the first five periodspre-Spanish, Spanish, revolutionary, American and JapaneseI emphasize those contributions to political culture, socio-economic structures, and institutions which are particularly relevant to the contemporary political system. For the three post-war periods1946-1949, 1950-1961, 1962-1972my emphasis is on events and trends whose historical legacy cannot yet be discerned. Pre-Spanish Era Before the Spaniards arrived, the inhabitants of the Philippines were a diverse agglomeration of peoples, almost all of Malay ethnic stock. As late the fifteenth century, hunting, fishing and shifting cultivation were the primary occupations, with sedentary wet rice cultivation practiced in only a few locations. The barangay, a kinship group of fewer than one hundred households, was usually the largest political unit and was headed by a datu or chieftain.1 Animism was the religion of the early Filipinos. Literacy was, for the time, widespread.

Some evidence of coalitions involving a great number of barangay was exaggerated in the official rewriting of history under the direction of Ferdinand Marcos (see Tadhana: A History of the Filipino People, vol. 2, pt. 1 [Manila,

The impact of China and India was of relatively little importance in the Philippines compared with the rest of Southeast Asia. Chinese traders had been visiting some ports since at least AD 1000, enriching both the local technology and the local vocabulary and Chinese settlers began to reside in the islands a few centuries later. Although the Indianized empires of Srivijaya, in Sumatra, and Madjapahit, in Java, which traded with the Philippines, may have been a channel for the introduction of Sanskrit-based writing systems, the people of the Philippines, unlike most peoples of Southeast Asia, never adopted either Hinduism or Buddhism. In the 15th century, however, Islam was introduced to Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, and with changes in religious beliefs and practices came new political and social institutions. By the mid-16th century, two sultanates had been established, and datus as far north as Manila had begun to embrace Islam. It was in the midst of this wave of Islamic proselytism that the Spaniards arrived in 1521. Filipino today cannot boast of great architectural reminders of the past to match Angkor, Pagan or Borobudur, nor are they beneficiaries of noble legends on which to found a nation. Nevertheless, this earliest period still affects Filipino politics today. One obvious example is leadership styles. In Mindanao, the definition of a good datu has probably changed little from pre-Spanish times: he or she serves as a focus of unity, maintains peace and restores social equilibrium within the group and provides for the material wants of followers.2 The peoples cultural expectations of leaders have changed surprisingly little over the centuries, even regarding the datus spiritual powers; many believed, for instance that Ferdinand Marcos was protected by an effective anting-anting or talisman. The mediation of disputes by a traditional leader assumes a body of customary law. Pre-colonial law has not survived formally in the Philippines as it has in Indonesia, but a substratum of values, a remnant of that once-comprehensive body of custom, persists, sometimes interfering with the acceptance of contemporary judicial decisions under civil law borrowed from Spain.3 Social conflict in the Philippines is also exacerbated by the obligation to avenge harm or insult to a member of ones family. This highminded intention became ritualized head-hunting in the mountains of Northern Luzon, but even many Christians Filipinos continue to justify revenge.4 The social and economic structure of the pre-Spanish Philippines has also left its mark on the contemporary scene. In any traditional society kinship is a dominant influence, and despite modifications adopted during the Spanish period, its pre-colonial essentials have survived intact. As for the family in most of Southeast Asia, so the Filipino family is based on reckoning the blood line and inheritance through both mother and the father, that is, bilateral kinship, with women being of approximately equal status to men.
ca. 1977], pp. 101 ff). See also F. Landa Jocano, Philippine Prehistory (Quezon City: Philippine Center for Advanced Studies, 1975). 2 See William E. Biernatzki, Bukidnon Datuship in the Upper Pulangi River Valley in Francisco Claver et al., Bukidnon Politics and Religion, IPC Papers no. 11 (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University, 1973). 3 See Richard W. Lieban, Cebuano Sorcery: Malign Magic in the Philippines (Berkeley; University of California Press, 1967), chap. 7. 4 See Edward Dozier, Mountain Arbiters: The Changing Life of a Philippine Hill People (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966). Revenge was ritualized among Muslims without the loss of heads. See also Thomas Keifer, The Tausug: Violence and Law in a Philippine Muslim Society (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972).

Slash and burn or kaingin was the dominant agricultural mode in the pre-Spanish era, involving the destruction of forests for short-term cultivation of a particular plot, exhausting its fertility; the farmer then moved on to repeat the process. This ancient practice continues to be regarded as legitimate by many cultivators today, even though government prohibit it, for the Philippines is rapidly exhausting its forestry resources. The relationship of class structure to land ownership is partially a legacy of the preSpanish era as well.5 The datus supervision of the use of communal lands of the barangays and the recognition of the cultivators right of usufruct but not of alienation survive among Muslims in some areas. The origin of the bloody struggle between Christians and non-Christians in Mindanao is the clash of two distinct sets legal customs. The social relationship that tied leadership to the political economy in pre-Hispanic times was, as now, that of patron and client, a combination of cultural and functional linkages. The datus land rights were meaningless without loyal cultivators, and so a leaders status and power came to be measured primarily in terms of the number of clients or followers he had. For the ordinary man, the protection of a powerful patron was essential social securityand a psychological security as well. Clearly, strong leadership could emerge under this system. But in the bargain between patron and client benefits flowed both waysnot the stuff of which absolutism is easily made. Mutuality, plus the tendency toward consultative decision making barangay elders, has led some Filipinos to regard the barangay as the cradle of Filipino democracy.6 President Marcos attempted to use this perception to his own benefit. Spanish Era The Philippines became predominantly Catholic instead of Muslim in the 16th century because the Spaniards, after early disappointment in their search for spices and gold, turned single-mindedly to evangelism. The first permanent Spanish settlement in the Philippines was at Cebu in 1565; Manila was founded in 1571. By the end of the 16th century most of the coastal and lowland areas from Luzon to northern Mindanao were under Spanish control. For over three centuries, the Philippines was governed by a peculiar blend of civil, military and ecclesiastical authority. The governor-general had appointive powers over the church, and the archbishop had the status of lieutenant governor and sat on numerous boards and councilsan arrangement that often produced more conflict than cooperation. The Spanish friars, members of the great religious orders, constituted the overwhelming majority of the clergy.7 Iberian Catholicism, which completely dominated education, taught by precept and example that the church itself had the right to play a major, if not, controlling, role in social, political and economic life. Local elites, mostly descendents of former datus, were dominated by the curate. The legacy of Spanish rule is pervasive in the Philippines today. The establishment of a single administration claiming authority over the entire Philippines defined the boundaries of what is now regarded as the Filipino nation. At the same time, the Spaniards imported into the Philippines the medieval European bitterness between Christendom and Islam. Muslims in Mindanao and Sulu resisted Spanish dominion more effectively than their animist neighbors to the north, so the Spaniards launched
5 6

See William H. Scott, Class Structure in the Unhispanized Philippines, Philippine Studies 27 (1979), 137 -59. For examples, Raul Manglapus, Philippines: The Silenced Democracy (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1976), pp. 50-51. See also Renato Constantino, A History of the Philippines (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), p37. 7 See John Phelan, The Hispanization of the Philippines (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959), and Nicolas Cushner, Spain in the Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University)

an intermittent (and reciprocated) holy war. The history of conflict between Christian Filipinos and Morosthe Spanish term for Filipino Muslims, equating them with North African moorsthroughout the Philippines in the melodramatic Moro-Moro play. In this dramatization the Muslim bad guys were always defeated in the end. Perhaps the most profound and in some ways tragic impact of the Catholic policy of partial assimilation was the destruction of cultural self-confidence among the more assimilated elites. So much of preSpanish tradition was either destroyed or forced to hide behind Iberian facades that the consciousness of Malay cultural roots was largely lost.8 Few Filipinos were allowed by the friars to imbibe deeply from the mainsprings of Spanish culture, however, so that the hybrid which emerged was poorly integrated and lacked strong links to either Europe or Asia.9 The Catholic church as an institution became so richthe religious orders were the islands largest landownersthat it developed powerful techniques for protecting its interests. A centralized civil bureaucracy was also a potent institutional legacy. It was not unusual, for instance, for a municipal official to go on a weeks journey from Manila to have to obtain central government approval to hang a new door in his town hall. This local expectation of central intervention survives, as does the assumption that officials will line their pockets whenever they have a chance. Many offices were routinely sold. The governor-general and his province heads were officially permitted to engage in commerce, but their profits were always far in excess of prescribed limits. No conceptual distinction existed between the public welfare the officials private benefit, a confusion that survives today. In a broader perspective the Spanish period saw the beginning of modernization, yet Spains socioeconomic effect in the Philippines was largely unintended.10 The only major planned economic change was the rapid transfer from shifting to sedentary cultivation, which began in the early 18th century, promoted by the friars to concentrate the population around the great stone churches they were building. By the 19th century, sugar had become the prime export, though largely a result of private British investments in the building of sugar mills, and it had a greater impact on elite composition than any other crop. Its rise was closely associated with the emerging importance o the Chinese mestizos, who expanded landholdings to grow sugar most rapidly in Negros, often gaining possession of land through money lending. They also acquired rice lands in the rich plains of Central Luzon.11 Elites of all racial backgrounds strengthened their control of land and acquired the wealth that would make it possible to provide higher education to their most talented sons, the ilustrados. Many prominent families in the contemporary Philippines first acquired wealth and status in the 19th century, when the racial composition and economic base of the national political elite was being determined. Land grabbing by this elite frequently fueled social unrest, which helped set the stage for the Philippine Revolution.

8 9

See Renato Constantino, Neocolonial Identity and Counter-Consciousness (London: Merlin, 1978), p. 30). Natives were discouraged from learning Spanish, thus giving the bilingual friars a crucial rule. See Eliodore G. th Robles, The Philippines in the 19 Century (Quezon City: Malaya, 1969), pp. 219 ff 10 See John Larkins excellent Philippine History Reconsidered: A Socio -Economic Perspective, American Historical Review 87 (June 1982), 606 ff. 11 See Antonio S. Tan, The Chinese in the Philippines, 1898-1935: A Study of Their National Awakening (Quezon City: Garcia, 1972, chap. 3. Also Edgar Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life, 1850-1898 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965).

Revolutionary period The narrowest definition limits the revolutionary period to the time between 1896, when the Katipunan first raised the flag of revolt against Spain, and 1899, when the Philippines was annexed by the United States. More broadly, it reaches from 1872, when the execution of prominent native priests first stirred nationalist sentiment in the new Filipino elite, until 1901, when General Aguinaldo surrendered in his (by then hopeless) struggle against the Americans and the United States established civil government. The aspirations of native and mestizo elites were broadened by increasing opportunities for secular higher education. Growing profits from export agriculture went to the rural elite, allowing their more ambitious sons to study in Europe, a prospect facilitated by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The spirit of nationalism was abroad in the continent, and the young Filipinos were thoroughly infected.12 Jos Rizal, novelist, poet, historian and medical doctor, was a fifth-generation Chinese mestizo and the most brilliant nationalist intellectual. The immediate demand of students was participation in selfgovernment, at least for the elite; they made no mention of Philippine independence. Periodic waves of Spanish reform and repression followed in the wake of changing governments in Madrid, increasing the dissatisfaction of the ilustrados. Jose Rizal returned home in 1892 and organized a moderate reformist movement, La Liga Filipina. What triggered the Revolution, however, was leadership with less wealth and less education. Andrs Bonifacio, a Manila warehouse clerk imbued with native spiritism, but also under heavy Masonic influence, organized the Katipunan or Highest and Most Respectable Association of the Sons of the People, committed to independence. Spanish discovery in August 1896 forced Bonifacio and his Tagalog followers to flee to the countryside and launch open rebellion. The Spanish colonial regime, wrongly suspecting ilustrado complicity, arrested many and executed Rizal. The martyrdom of Rizal became the most potent symbol of the growing revolutionary movement. In August 1897, a hard-pressed Emilio Aguinaldo, who had seized revolutionary leadership, signed a cease-fire with the Spanish, who paid him a handsome sum and exiled him to Hong Kong. Aguinaldo returned to the Philippines earlier than anyone expected after the outbreak of the SpanishAmerican War and Admiral Deweys victory in Manila Bay. In the early phases of the struggle, the United States wanted Filipino help. Believing he had US support, Aguinaldo re-organized his followers and renewed the attack on demoralized Spanish forces. The ilustrados for the first time joined the struggle, but this elite, committed only to the political goals, abandoned the social goals of the Revolution, which had originally included seizure of the friar estates. They were practical men, and with the Spanish colonial regime tottering on the brink of collapse, they saw in the Revolution prospects of political success and protection for their economic interests.13 Aguinaldo declared the independence of the Philippine Republic on June 12, 1898, with its capital at Malolos, just north of Manila. A Congress soon met, dominated by lawyers and other ilustrados, and the revolutionary regime began to administer a large part of the islands. Meanwhile, the Spaniards had surrendered to the Americans, and whatever promises had been made to Aguinaldo were quickly forgotten. President McKinley decided to annex the Philippines, and in February 1899, the Treaty of Paris, confirming that annexation, was narrowly ratified by the US Senate. Fighting
12 13

See John Schumacher, The Propaganda Movement (Manila: Solidaridad, 1973). The historian who first forcefully raised the issue of class interests in the Revolution was Teodoro Agoncillo. See his Revolt of the Masses: The Story of Bonifacio and the Katipunan (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1956) and Malolos: Crisis of the Republic (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1960)

had already broken out between frustrated Filipino nationalists and American expeditionary forces. Filipino peasants fought a guerrilla war for more than 2 years, tying down more than 125,000 American troops (4,234 were killed). This uneven struggle cost the lives of almost 200,000 Filipino soldiers and civilians.14 Parallels with war in Vietnam seventy years later are more profound than American atrocities, the guerrillas use of sharpened bamboo, and angry debates in Congress, but unlike in Vietnam, the Americans ultimately pacified the country, by winning over the elites of wealth and education. These elites were offered an early chance at self-government. Recent Filipino historiography has intensified our awareness of the importance of this era for subsequent developments. During the Revolution, a sense of nationhood had emerged for the first time at the elite level. This emergent nationalism was the first step in rebuilding the cultural self-confidence destroyed by the Spanish. It started with the acquisition of a much deeper understanding of European cultural roots, but Jos Rizal also addressed himself to the task of rediscovering the Malay heritage, and in this he was widely emulated by Filipino writers nearly a century later. The ideological content of Filipino nationalism had also begun to take form during the Revolution. True to Masonic influences, anti-clericalism became a persistent but not unalloyed strain in Filipino political philosophy. (We must recall that the nationalists opposed Spanish, not Filipino, clergy.) Though the Malolos Congress formally separated church and stateby the narrowest vote possiblethe revolutionary experience did not establish a tradition barring Filipino clergy from politics. Father Gregorio Aglipay, leader of the schismatic Catholics, was appointed vicar-general of the revolutionary army by General Aguinaldo. Perhaps the major clue to the political thought of the Filipino elite was the Malolos Constitution.15 It posited a government built on both European and American experience, committed to individual rights based on natural law. Its philosophical underpinnings came from the 18th century Enlightenment. American Period The First Philippine Commission, headed by Cornell University president Jacob Schurman, was created for fact-finding purposes (though its report that Filipinos wanted ultimate independence had no immediate impact on policy). The Second Commission, headed by William Howard Taft, was to establish civil government, which it did in July 1901, with the commission acting as both legislature and cabinet. Taft became the first governor-general. In 1907, an elected legislature was authorized, and the commission became an appointive upper house. The newly formed Nacionalista party, advocating negotiated independence, dominated the legislature as it would for the remainder of the American period. In 1916 constitutional arrangements were further altered; Congress enacted the Jones Law, which created an almost fully elective bicameral legislature. The electorate was expanded to include all literate males. Only defense and foreign affairs remained exclusive American prerogatives, and outside education, effective American control of Philippine policy and administration ended before 1920, less than two decades after it had begun. By 1921, less than 6 percent of civil servants were Americans, and by 1927, 99 percent of public school teachers were Filipinos.16

14 15

See Leon Wolff, Little Brown Brothers (New York: Doubleday, 1961), p. 360. See Cesar A. Majul, The Political and Constitutional Ideas of the Philippine Revolution (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1967) 16 See W. Cameron Forbes, The Philippine Islands, 2(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1928), chap. 21.

Education had a relatively high priority during the American period.17 The school population expanded 500 percent in a generation, and educational expenditures came to consume one-half of government budgets at all levels. Indeed, educational opportunity in the Philippines was greater than in any other colony in Asia. As a consequence of this pedagogical explosion, literacy doubled to nearly 50% in the 1930s and English, the language of instruction, was spoken by 27% of the population, a larger percentage spoken than any one of the native dialects. American economic policy in the Philippines was more diverse in its aims and less successful in its accomplishments. Although the great friar estimates were purchased by the government and resold to Filipinos, and public land policy did keep out great American plantations, nothing was done to stop the accumulation of land by Filipino landlords. The Payne-Aldrich tariff of 1909 opened up free trade between the Philippines and the United States, stifling the growth of Filipino manufacturing and stimulating export agriculture.18 The Filipino elite, its political and economic power enhanced, continued to press for independence under the leadership of Sergio Osmea, speaker of the House, and Manuel Quezon, president of the Senate. Entreaties to the US Congress failed to bear fruit, however, until the onset of the Great Depression. Then American congressional liberals, who had long believed in Filipino independence, were joined by trade unions who wanted to keep out cheap labor, dairy interests who were fighting margarine based on coconut oil, and the sugar beet industry, which was hurt by the import of low-cost Philippine cane. After complications in reaction to elite in-fighting in the Philippine legislature, in 1934 Congress passed and President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Tydings-McDuffie Act.19 The act provided for a ten-year Commonwealth, during which the United States would retain jurisdiction over defense and foreign affairs, would review Philippine Supreme Court decisions, and would have the right of intervention in case of emergencies. Filipinos would adopt their own constitution subject to the approval of the US president. A constitutional convention was quickly elected and framed a draft that borrowed heavily from the Jones Act and the US Constitution; the draft was approved by plebiscite and found easy acceptance in Washington. The Commonwealth was inaugurated on November 15, 1935, with Manual Quezon as president and his erstwhile rival Sergio Osmea, as vice-president. The American period, despite its brevity and because of its recency, has left a political legacy in the contemporary Philippines perhaps as great as that of the Spanish era. The expansion of political participation was perhaps the greatest change. In 1907, the first elected legislature in Southeast Asia was chosen by an electorate limited by property qualifications. Thirty years later, all literate adults, with literacy tests that were rather generous to the voter, had the right to vote.

17

For research revealing that American educational policy was less purposeful, less consistent and less successful than what earlier accounts convey, see Glen May, Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900-1913 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1980) 18 See Vicente Valdepeas and Gemelino Bautista, The Emergence of the Philippine Economy (Manila: Papyrus, 1977), chap. 5. 19 For a fascinating account of the complex factional struggle within the Philippine elite see Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929-1946 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), chaps. 9 and 10.

Filipino nationalism was also heavily colored by American influences. Rizal, the moderate, was confirmed in his status as national hero by the American-run school system. The legitimization of a party striving for negotiated independence helped keep more radical nationalists in the background, and most of the economic elite profited so handsomely from close economic ties with the United States that economic nationalism was a faint cry indeed. Whereas the 19th century Filipino elite imagined themselves Spanish liberals, in the 20th century, Filipino leaders identified closely with Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Another change in political values, particularly Filipino society, resulted from the American period: the rising acceptance of separation of church and state. The weight of colonial policy reinforced the position of the Masonic anticlerics. The institutions introduced during the American period which loomed largest on the post-independence scene were political parties, until after the United States established civil government in 1901; the opportunity for legal, open parties to espouse nationalism and even independence, also to organize support and elect candidates, had a profound effect on the character of Philippine political life. The early introduction of parties and elections in the Philippines had both positive and negative consequences for political development. Election of national legislature in 1907 brought together leaders from every province in a geographically representative national elite, and over time a peaceful election contest came to be regarded as the legitimate means for choosing national political leaders. Indigenous values entered the political process through parties and elections to a degree not possible in the bureaucracy and other formal institutions modeled on western lines. The negative consequences of the early introduction of parties and elections were not immediately apparent. By the 1930s, however, it was clear that the party system had merely strengthened the political hold of dominant, landed families, which had used quasi-feudal techniques to gain an electoral following and could hold national power through a system of one-party dominance. At the national level, as a result, mass interests could not be articulated; the end of the American period saw violent confrontations between the authorities and disaffected peasants. The institution of a strong presidency was also a mixed blessing for subsequent Filipino political development. The presidents role under the Commonwealth was modeled after that of the governorgeneral, as well as that of Franklin Roosevelt. Quezon made even more of the position, and a harbinger of things to come, there were occasional charges of dictatorship against him. Certainly, the potential for dictatorship existed in the office that Quezon helped mold. An independent judiciary and a professional civil service were also instituted under American rule. American policy grafted elements of common lawnot including the juryonto Spanish civil law tradition. Keen legal minds and incorruptible jurists helped build the considerable prestige of the higher courts. The civil service was dominantly Filipino by 1913, and political intervention in the appointment of lesser officials soon became frequent. Nevertheless, good pay and a vigorous esprit de corps helped maintain an admirable professionalism among higher civil servants, though it was a professionalism that accepted subordinance to political leadership to a degree uncommon in Southeast Asia.

The social change intended by American policy might have been as important as institutional reforms for the political life of the country. That policy aimed at greater equality of opportunity, by building more public schools, opening up public land to homesteading, promoting cooperatives, and establishing a public university. The belief became widespread that there was a chance to move from rags to riches. The demand for higher education was so great, in fact, that private universities made a profit. By the end of the American period an urban middle class, both properties and salaried, had appeared. However, the primary beneficiaries of American educational, commercial and agrarian policies were those who already had superior wealth and education, men whose political power grew rapidly under American tutelage. Japanese Period The plans laid in 1935 for the peaceful political transition to, and gradual economic preparation for, independence were shattered by the Japanese attack of December 8, 1941. Within a month Japanese forces had occupied Manila. President Quezon and Vice-President Osmea were evacuated to establish a Commonwealth government-in-exile in the United States. The Philippine Executive Committee, under Quezons Executive Secretary, administered civil affairs for the Japanese for more than a year. In October 1943, an independent Republic was proclaimed under Japanese auspices, with former Supreme Court justice Jos Laurel as president. Most of the elite who collaborated with the Japanese including nearly half of the 1941 Congressbelieved they should be credited with the highest sense of patriotism. But those thousands of Filipinos who fought and died on Bataan or subsequently in the hills and mountains throughout the archipelago in the struggle against the Japanese Army were even more convinced of the righteousness of their cause. They fought in part out of loyalty to the United States but primarily to defend their homeland. Probably because Filipinos had for some time enjoyed selfgovernment and were on the threshold of independence, the resistance to the Japanese was more widespread in the Philippines than in any other Southeast Asian colony.20 One legacy of the Japanese occupation was immediately evident, as peasant rebellion in Central Luzon capped a tradition of peasant unrest in that region. After the Japanese invasion, radical leadership formed the Hukbalahap, the Tagalog abbreviation for Peoples Army against the Japanese. The Huks were determined enemies of exploitative landlords as they were of the Japanese, and thus began nearly a decade of armed struggle between peasant-backed Communist-led guerrillas and government forces. The quality of administration was also deeply influenced by the wartime experience. During the occupation public morality was stood on its head: to lie and cheat and steal from a Japanese puppet regime became an expression of patriotism. Inflation, moreover, was severe in the last months of the occupation; simply to feed their families, for many civil servants ethical restraints crumbled. Post-war Politics, 1946-1972 The United States transferred sovereignty on July 4, 1946, and the Philippines thus, for the second time, became an independent republic. For a quarter-century thereafter, the Filipino political genius could
20

For the fullest discussion of these different perspectives see David Steinberg, Philippine Collaboration in World War II (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967).

express itself, less fettered by external restraints and within a stable constitutional framework that allowed considerable individual freedom. As in many other modernizing polities after independence, the state grew faster than the society in the Philippines. In 1930, the national government had 29,420 employees including public school teachers and a budget of P78 billion; in 1960, there were 361,310 employees and a budget of P1.33 billion. The bureaucracy in that period had increased more than 1,100%, compared to a population increase of little more than 100%; the budget grew over 800% in constant pesos. Between 1960 and 1972, the budget again more than doubled in constant pesos, to P4.03 billion and by the latter year, government employees numbered over 500,000, a 52% increase. (Government employees, as a percentage of total employment remained, however, at 4.1%). Total government expenditures as a percentage of the gross national product rose from 6.6% in 1947 to 13.2% in 1972though it remained lower than in many less developed countries.21 Budgets and civil lists expanded primarily because of the growing demands made upon them by an increasingly articulate populace (a major demand for government jobs), one consequence of the fact that Filipinos also became more educated. According to official figures, literacy grew from 49% in 1939% to 83% in 1970. The average Filipinos exposure to mass media grew at an even faster rate: only 1% of homes possessed radios in 1939, but by 1968 the proportion had reached over 60%. The proliferation of organized interest groups, especially during the 1950s and 1960s, was another indication of political mobilization. Above these underlying trends, however, postwar change was marked by turning points that defined periods in the Philippine political economy, or sub-periods in a larger historical view.22 The first period, 1946-49, has generally been characterized as picking up the pieces after the war. The physical volume of production by 1949 had nearly reached prewar levels, but this rehabilitation was achieved only with over a billion dollars in US aid and the continuation of many characteristics of a colonial economy. The Bell Trade Act prolonged free trade between the Philippines and the US until 1954. An amendment to the Philippine Constitution, a pre-requisite of US rehabilitation assistance, gave US citizens parity with Filipinos in the exploitation of natural resources until 1974. These economic links were solidified by military ties. The 1947 Military Bases Agreement allowed the US to keep over two hundred bases, large and small, and to run them essentially as American enclaves.
21

See George Ranis et al. Sharing in Development: A Programme of Employment, Equity and Growth for the Philippines (Manila: National Economic and Development Authority and International Labor Office of the United Nations, 1974), p. 247; Hilarion Henares, Jr. With Fervor Burning (Manila, 1965), p. 81; and Rosa Tidalgo, Labor Absorption in the Philippines, Philipppine Economic Journal 15, 1 -2 (1976), 202. 22 For the earlier part of the 1947-72 period see Jose Abueva, Ramon Magsaysay: A Political Biography (Manila: Solidaridad, 1971), and Frank Golay, The Philippines: Public Policy and national Economic Development (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1961). For the whole period, see also William Pomeroy, An American Made Tragedy: NeoColonialism and Dictatorship in the Philippines (New York: International, 1974); Stephen Shalom, The United States and the Philippines: A Study in neocolonialism (Philadelphia: ISHI, 1981); Peter Stanley, ed., Reappraising an Empire: New Perspectives on Philippine American History, Harvard Studies in American East Asian Relations no. 10 (Cambridge, 1984), chaps. 10 and 11; Dapen Liang, Philippine Parties and Politics (San Francisco: Gladstone, 1970); and Renato Constantino, The Making of a Filipino (Quezon City: Malaya, 1969), chap. 12.

The political elite that presided over this neocolonial rehabilitation was still made up mostly of great rural landowners, headed by General MacArthurs protg Manuel Roxas. Roxas feared the threat of the Huks and, instead of listening to their demands for political participation and agrarian reform, attemptedunsuccessfullyto crush them. Vice-President Quirino assumed office after the death of Roxas in 1948 and was temporarily more responsive, but he decided that he had to use fraud and violence to win the presidential election of 1949. By 1950, the Philippines had a corrupt, unpopular regime, faced with a growing peasant revolution; meanwhile, the opportunity for easy economic growth through rehabilitation was fast disappearing. Political institutions had declined in effectiveness as compared with 1941; despite economic growth this was a period of political decay. In 1950, the US government, fearing a new Chinese Communist threat, and the Filipino elite, recognizing the existence of crisis, together launched some important changes. To crush the Huks, the United States expanded military advice and assistance but at the same time pressed for agrarian and labor reforms to improve regime legitimacy. The Philippines was allowed to impose import and exchange controls, which had an impact similar to still prohibited tariffs on United States imports and marked the beginning of import-substitution manufacturing. Tax collections were also improved. These reforms marked the beginning of the second post-war sub-period, 1950-61. Despite the policy changes he had agreed to, and the influx of American advisers, Quirino, a suave, politically experienced, but slightly ineffectual former school teacher, was not regarded by American officials as a leader adequate for a time of crisis. By late 1950, he had been persuaded to appoint as his secretary of national defense a tall, extrovert congressman, Ramon Magsaysay, who would be Americas boy in the Philippines for the next seven years. By early 1953, with constant advice and clandestine assistance from the CIAs Col. Edward Lansdale, Magsaysay had left the cabinet and gained the presidential nomination of the opposition Nacionalista party. His warm handshake and willingness to campaign in the villageswith an American helicopterplus his well-earned reputation for honesty and effectiveness in the Department of National Defense, won Magsaysay a landslide in the 1953 elections. His administration marked the first serious, if modest, effort to carry out land reform in the Philippine, but with the end of the Huk rebellion the elites sense of urgency about peasant demands waned, and implementation lagged. Magsaysay also attempted to spur economic growth, with a major expansion of government credit, and greatly increased social service expenditures. But his most important contribution was the lending of his great personal popularityhis charismato the institutions of government. Political participation broadened; younger, middle-class elements entered the political elite; the legitimacy of political institutions revived. It was a period of development, at least until the late 1950s. Nevertheless, even before Magsaysay died in an airplane crash, Filipino nationalists were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his almost slavish loyalty to the United States. Although the Laurel-Langley Agreement of 1955 began the gradual phasing out of free trade, the application of the principle of parity to American businessmen in the Philippines was actually expanded. Magsaysays successor, Carlos Garca, fostered nationalist sentiment; Filipino First was a popular slogan. Despite pressure from the International Monetary Fund, President Garca refused to liberalize import controls and thus jeopardize

new local manufacturers. In fact, the Garca administration may have marked the zenith of the national bourgeoisies influence within the political elite. In 1961, Vice-President Diosdado Macapagal gained the Liberal party nomination and, apparently with the help of considerable American money, defeated Garca in national elections. Exporters regained influence in the 1962-72 period, which also witnessed the rising star of Ferdinand Marcos, who became Senate president in the new Congress. True to his campaign promises, Macapagal lifted foreign exchange and import controls, in cooperation with IMF advisers, and devalued the peso. In the face of lagging economic growth such policies were hailed as a new panacea by the sugar bloc, but Filipino manufacturers were hurt and industrial unemployment rose. Macapagal, even though he campaigned as a poor boy responded to the growing demand for agrarian reform with too little too late. Macapagal had already lost some of his support when he faced Senator Marcos, the Nacionalista presidential candidate, in the 1965 campaign. Marcos, much the more skilled at political manipulation, won with money and nationalist slogans while maintaining close communications with the Americans. The transition from Macapagal to Marcos, an impeccably constitutional transfer of power, was followed by increasing frustration with existing political institutions, both because of corruption and because of governments failure to deal with pressing problems. At the same time, however, the introduction of new, high-yielding varieties, the Green Revolution, increased the production of rice, the basic food staple. This period, from 1961-1972, saw a mixture of development and decay, slipping toward the latter. At least one political leader saw the dangers ahead. Jovito Salonga, in 1964 a member of the House of Representatives, said:
In the Philippines, democracy is on trial. It will face an even greater crisis in the coming years. The revolution of rising expectations will mount with ever-increasing intensity. Popular education, the accelerated tempo and volume of mass instruments of communication such as the radio, the newspaper, the movies and television, the sharpening appeal of mass advertisingall these tend to create wants and needs unknown to our forefathersThose who see the tragedy of our condition are simply awed by the overwhelming problems that bear down on the nationthe problem of massive poverty, of the deterioration of morale in public service, the lack of social discipline,the increasing incidence of graft, the lack of respect for law and authority, and the revolution of rising frustrations. You ask mewhat can be done, what is needed?...We need strong leaders, dedicated leaders. Yes, but they must be leaders devoted to the ideals of a free societyFor unless they are of democratic persuasions, strong leaders can easily become brutal, 23 savage despots.

In the late 1960s with the breakdown in the patron-client system, which began in Central Luzon, spread to other parts of the country, some peasants even mobilized for political militancy against their onetime patrons. Unemployment among college graduates and radical political activity among students were on the rise, while a small but vocal group of economic nationalists in Congress blocked legislation to encourage foreign investment. Economic planners, sometimes called technocrats, became increasingly frustrated by the political obstacles to rational policy making and generally agreed on a
23

From a speech to League of Women Voters of the Philippines, May 3, 1964, in Jovito R. Salonga, Land of the Morning: A Collection of Speeches and Lectures (Manila: Regina, 1967), pp. 68-69.

high priority for greater foreign credits and more foreign investment.24 Their positions were thoroughly compatible, of course, with those of foreign, especially American, businessmen, who admired the firstrate intellectual capacities of the American trained technocrats. Technocrats and many foreign businessmen alike came to believe that electoral politics handicapped rapid economic growth. The election of 1969 was a devastating blow to the electoral process. The campaign presented informed citizens with a more lackluster choice than at any time since independence: Senator Sergio Osmea, Jr. and President Marcos were well-known to the public (Osmea had previously run for vice-president), but both were flawed by serious charges of corruption, and neither offered either charisma or clear-cut policy alternatives. Under the circumstances it was perhaps inevitable that the incumbents money and threats of violence would bring success. After the election, radical protest escalated in rural and urban areas. New political forces pressured leaders and institutions to respond to demands for reform in both the political process and socioeconomic policy.25 In the 1971 congressional session, for example, massive and relentless pressure by the Federation of Free Farmers, with support from other peasant and labor organizations, pushed through significant improvements in land reform legislation.26 Furthermore, in the local elections of 1971, though increased violence had helped preserve the ancien rgime in many municipalities, reform groups threw out the established leadership in other places and launched significant social and political change, often with the backing of an aroused and organized Catholic laity. In the senatorial races of the year, the opposition Liberals, with much less money than the Nacionalista, captured six of eight seats. Philippine Free Press, the widely read weekly, opined that the people are clamoring for reform.27 Although Philippine democracy had often failed in the past to promote interests of the majority, the system in the early 1970s appeared to be on the threshold of substantially improving its performance. Powerful economic interests, however, wanted to see policy move in a very different direction. The Context for Declaring Martial Law In context of socioeconomic and political flux, President Ferdinand Marcos faced the imminent loss of power, because of the constitutional prohibition against more than eight years in office. The idea of his wifes candidacy in 1973 was quickly shot down. No other certain method for Marcos to retain dominance was available. Yet, the spectacular accumulation of wealth by the First Family depended on a network of proxies which could not be sustained without the reinforcement of political power. Some observers believed that Marcos was not the only potential threat to Philippine democracy. Senator Benigno Ninoy Aquino, Jr. , another man with overwhelming political ambition, had told
24

Gerardo Sicat, New Economic Directions in the Philippines (Manila: National Economic Development Authority , 1974), p. 49. 25 See, for instance, comment by Fr. Horacio de la Costa in The Philippine Economy in the 1970s (Quezon City: University of the Philipppines and Private Development Corporation of the Philippines, 1972), p. 55. On student protest see Lim Yoon Lin, ed., Trends in the Philippines (Singapore University Press, 1972), pp. 9ff. 26 See Manila times, May 20 and August 3, 7, 8 and 10, 1971, and Edward Kiunisala, Land Reform at Last, Philippine Free Press, August 28, 1971, p. 2. 27 Edward Kiunisala, The Winners, Philippine Free Press, November 20, 1971, p. 2.

journalists before 1972 that he would declare martial law if he became president.28 Aquino, the son of a former cabinet member, was elected to the Senate in 1967, having already announced his aim for the presidency. He was possessed of a combination of brilliance, vigor, and cunning which could be compared only with the qualities of Marcos. Every competent observer, before martial law was declared, expected Aquino to be the successful contender for the presidency in 1973, especially as he had the backing of the Lopez clan, the nations wealthiest family, it is believed by many that Marcos was behind an attempt to assassinate Aquino and Liberal party colleagues in the Plaza Miranda bombing of 1971. On that day, Aquino was unexpectedly delayed, but some of his fellow senators at the political rally were maimed for life and several less prominent persons were killed. The president blamed the incident on the Maoist-led New Peoples Army but was never able to apprehend a culprit (Much later, a top-ranking Communist defector claimed that the NPA was indeed responsible). By 1972, most observers concluded that Marcos planned to become prime minister under a new constitution that would not limit the tenure of the office. His liberal distribution of cash to delegates to the recently convened Constitutional Convention (the Con-Con) did secure endorsement of the parliamentary system. But while Marcos could, with envelopes of peso bills, influence the vote, he found it more difficult to get the delegates to conclude their work. By August 1972, some delegates were openly discussing the advisability of adjourning until after the 1973 election, to avoid politics, which would have meant that the 1973 elections would have to be held under the restrictions of the 1935 constitution. The progressor degenerationof the Constitutional Convention was thus an important factor in determining the timing of martial law. The military must also have been uneasy about a ConCon Committee report placing a constitutional restriction on the size of the defense budget.29 A Supreme Court decision in August 1972 certainly hastened the great event. The US ambassador scurried to see the president when the court invalidated the titles of Americans who had purchased privately-owned land after 1946 (believing that such purchases were permitted under the terms of the Parity Amendment and the Laurel-Langley Agreement). The judgment required even those Americans who had legally acquired public land to dispose of their property before July 1, 1974. Key American corporations were affected.30

Some analysts believe it was at this point that Marcos finally decided to prepare for martial law.31 An American demand for executive action on land ownership created new opportunity, but in a sense the president had been preparing for years. He had cultivated the military assiduously and had carefully name fellow Ilocanos to many top command positions to assure greater personal loyalty. In August 1972 his plans seemed to accelerate. Bombings were more frequent: a department store, a telephone exchange, an electric power station, the Con-Con lavatory. Marcos always blamed the Maoists, but no
28

Reported in Reuben Canoy, The Counterfeit Revolution: Martial Law in the Philippines (Manila: Philippine Editions, 1980), p. 62. 29 See Manila Times, December 10, 1971. 30 See Republic of the Philippines vs. William H. Quasha, G.R. No. L-30299, August 17, 1972. 31 See T.J.S. George, Martial Law: How it Happened, Far Eastern Economic Review, September 30, 1972.

culprit could be caught. Politically sophisticated Filipinos were more and more inclined to believe that Marcos was preparing a justification for martial law.32 On September 12, Marcos told his National Security Council that a state of rebellion existed: the defense establishment feel it could be easier for them to meet this threat if they can utilize some kind of authority other than ordinarily authorized... and we are studying the matter.33 The next day, Senator Aquino revealed to the press that a plan had been prepared for military takeover, claiming that he had received the information from ranking officers. He may have thought that a public statement would forestall the implementation of such a plan. But he probably hastened it instead. The Proclamation of Martial Law On September 20, 1972, President Marcos went into prolonged conference with the armed forces high command, of whom allexcept the vice-chief of staff, Gen. Rafael Iletoendorsed his proposals. The proclamation was signed that evening, but Marcos apparently felt he needed one more incident to justify implementation. On the night of September 22, Defense Secretary Enriles car was allegedly ambushed, though Enrile later admitted it was all staged. Immediately after the ambush was announced, hundreds of prominent and thousands of not-so-prominent persons were arrested, including, of course, Ninoy Aquino. On the evening of September 23 the president explained his action on television. The US Embassy insisted that it had no prior knowledge of the plans for martial law, but in fact, Marcos had not acted without assurances of US approval. After several discussions with Ambassador Henry Byroade on the implications of martial law, with the ambassador implying a negative reaction in Washington, Marcos sought a clearer message in early August. Byroade went to Washington for consultations with Nixon and Kissinger and returned to report that if martial law were needed to put down the Communist insurgency, the president would have US backing. Unbeknown to Ambassador Byroade, Marcos telephoned Nixon directly and received a similar response. After the fact, the Pentagon was enthusiastic; the queries from Americans to Filipino officials both before and after were primarily about the impact on US businesses.34 In retrospect, the proclamation of Martial law appears to have been produced by the convergence of three growing conflicts: between power-holding elites and increasingly discontented masses; between foreign investors and economic nationalists, exacerbated by impending demise of parity in 1974; and within the power elite, especially between Marcos and his two most potent competitors, Benigno Aquino and sugar baron Eugenio Lopez.35 Nationalists within the economic elite found that their awareness of the dangerous potential of the first conflict dulled their ardor for the second, allowing Marcos to use as allies against his foes both US business and a large portion of leading Filipino
32

A former adviser turned sharp critic later confirmed that interpretation. See Primitivo Mijares, The Conjugal Dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (San Francisco, 1976). 33 Quoted in George, Martial Law. 34 Raymond Bonner, Waltzing with a Dictator: The Marcoses and the Making of American Policy (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 6, 96-99, 108-109. 35 See Shalom, p. 161.

entrepreneurs. It is therefore probably inaccurate to cast Marcos as simply a tool of American corporations.36 Conclusion American interests were important, but the interaction of intra-elite competition and organized mass pressures go a long way to explain the patterns of Filipino politics for more than fifty years. This interaction was shaped by three long-term trends. First, the economic interest of the politico-economic elite were becoming more diversified by the rise of Filipino commerce and manufacturing, and with diversity came the potential for deeper and more persistent intra-elite conflict, especially after exchange controls were imposed in 1948. Second, mass mobilization grew steadily as a result of education, media exposure, urbanization, and the organization of agrarian discontent. Third, despite the continuing importance of hierarchies of patron-client relations, which did much to structure the pattern of both intra-elite competition and elite-mass relations, the salience of such hierarchies was eroded by the first two trends mentioned. The first trend was interrupted, however, whenever mass movements were especially threatening: the Sakdals in the 1930s, the Huks in the 1940s and 1950s, and the expansion of student and rural unrest in the late 1960s. Factions in the ruling elite then tended to coalesce more tightly, subordinating or even abandoning intra-elite conflict. This tendency was most obvious when the Nacionalista party reunited under Quezon in 1934, and when Magsaysays charisma overwhelmed party differences in the 1950s. When Marcos achieved a tighter coalition in 1972, however, he had to use force, because elite interests had become more diverse. Each of these three periods of tighter elite collation saw a spurt of social reform designed not to change the economy system but, by amelioration, to save it. Between these three brief periods intra-elite completion was the theme of Filipino politics, with a corollary concern for building support through patronage. As mass mobilization increased, however, token social reform became less satisfying to peasant and worker organizations, so that forceful limitations on political participation eventually became essential from the standpoint of the ruling elite. The need for such limitations was intensified by the low-wage requirement of export-oriented industrialization, increasingly popular in Asia from the late 1960s. It is in this historical context that declaration of martial law can best be understood. Except for families affected by the arrests, most people initially reacted to Martial law with relief. The crescendo of crime and violence and the growing uncertainty had been ended, and it was possible to walk at night on the streets of Manila without the fear of molestation. Collection of the more than halfa-million privately held firearms was vigorously pursued in the immediate wake of the martial law declaration. Nevertheless, some observers were surprised at the at the lack of immediate public protest against the imposition of martial law. The explanation lay in the skill and vigor of Marcos two-pronged policy. First,
36

See Robert Stauffer, The Political Economy of a Coup: Transnational Linkages and Philippine Political Response, Journal of Peace Research 11 (1974), for a somewhat different view.

he had arrested almost everyone inclined to lead or capable of leading organized opposition, and those not arrested feared for their freedom. Second, in initial pronouncements about the policies of his New Society, President Marcos appeared to be dealing with the very problems to Jovito Salonga had earlier pointed, problems that all Filipinos were eager to see resolved. Thus, the early public reaction was not only relief at the end of crime and violence but hope that the New Society would deliver the needed social, economic, and political reformbased on the assumption that restrictions to freedom of expression and association were temporary. In sum, the short-term reactions were what the president had expected. The longer-term consequences of the declaration of martial law were more complex. For the first time, however, the power of the central government allowed the ruler broad opportunities for altering the direction of political and socio-economic change. How those opportunities were used and for what purposes are questions to be addressed later in this book, along with an examination of public responses over the years. To assess the martial law years accurately, however, we must first review the pre-1972 political system and the cultural and socio-economic environments in which it operated.