Philippine Politics and the Rule of Law

Abstract

Friends of Philippine democracy breathed a sigh of relief when incumbent president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo turned back the challenge of populist movie star Fernando Poe, Jr., in the May 2004 elections. The reaction was understandable: Poe’s principal allies and political platform were inherited from actor-turned-politician Joseph Estrada, whose corrupt and incompetent run as president ended abruptly amid popular demonstrations in 2001. The Filipino electorate’s rejection of a return to celebrity demagoguery alleviated fears of immediate political collapse, but business as usual is unlikely to resolve the problems which have long plagued Filipino democracy. Estrada had won the presidency in 1998, triumphing in the cleanest and most decisive election that the country had ever seen. MacapagalArroyo was elected vice-president on a separate ballot with an even larger mandate than Estrada’s. Less than three years into Estrada’s sixyear term, the economy was failing, crime and insurgency were rampant, and allegations of presidential corruption filled the media. The Philippine Congress filed articles of impeachment; when political machinations in the Senate derailed the trial, popular demonstrations in Manila—at least one of which was addressed by a senior military officer—drove Estrada from office. The process was hardly democratic, but it was accepted as necessary, at least among Manila’s upper and middle classes, and Macapagal-Arroyo became president on 20 January 2001. 1 Macapagal-Arroyo used her first three years in office to continue economic-reform policies that President Fidel Ramos had first launched back in the mid-1990s. She put the economy back on a modest growth track, and emerged as a major supporter of the global war on terror, Steven Rogers is a journalist who has lived in the Philippines for more than twenty years. His article on Muslim separatism in the Philippines, “Beyond the Abu Sayyaf,” appeared in the January–February 2004 issue of Foreign Affairs.