The Philippines: Managing Reform in a New Democracy

Abstract

Three years into office, the Aquino government continues to grapple with the most overriding challenge facing the Philippine nation: how to ensure ecologically sustain able rapid economic growth with equitable wealth distribution and rural development in an atmosphere of domestic political stability and tranquillity. On the face of it, its three-year gains, though modest, have been meaningful, particularly in the political arena. New democratic insdtutions have been put in place, creating a fledgling but workable system of checks and balances to protect the bom-again democracy from executive excesses. The Congress, notably the Senate, has emerged as an active foil to executive power, while the judiciary is no longer a malleable tool of an overpowering Executive. The media is so free that some say it has become licentious. The people in general are no longer scared to speak out against actions of the leadership. Yet Western-style democratic institutions alone are not sufficient basis for the long period of socio-political stability that the Filipinos, their neighbours and foreign investors alike want in the country in order to sustain the economic turn-around which has followed the downfall of the Marcos dictatorship. While the government can claim to have led the country to greater political stability than was the case any time during the past eight years, restoration of democracy is but one of the key changes promised by Cory Aquino in the course of her momentous campaign for the presidency and the subsequent snap elections. Broadly stated, Aquino's reform promises included, apart from returning the country to democracy, steps to halt the slide of the country into deeper poverty and bring about an economic recovery to the hardest hit areas, the countryside and the urban slums, where government presence was sorely needed to prevent people from joining the leftist rebels or the Muslim secessionists. In an important campaign speech on 16 January 1986, Aquino declared that upon restoration of a democratic government under her leadership, she would work on several key areas of reform. These included agrarian reform, decentralization of the government with emphasis on strengthening local government units, getting government out of business by privatizing public corporations and other government controlled companies, educational reform, putting a halt to the deterioration of the economy, and bringing about a moral regeneration in the country. Report cards put together by the media at the end of 1988 and the beginning of 1989 (the most comprehensive being that of the Manila Chronicle)1 generally gave the