Chapter Ten

Twenty-First-Century
Philippine Politics

PEOPLE POWER INSTITUTIONALIZED

The “spirit of people power” was institutionalized in the legislature with the
election of the first sectoral representatives to the House of Representatives
in May 1998. While slow to participate at first—only thirteen of fifty-two
seats reserved for party-list organizations were filled in this election—
reformists soon found reason to move into electoral politics. Although the
executive branch of the state was permeated by their discourse of “democ-
ratization,” “popular empowerment,” and even “revolution,” their reformist
agenda had stalled from lack of money. Massive government deficit,
mandatory paydown of foreign and domestic debt, and corruption hindered
the social welfare agencies that were meant to symbolize “state strength.”1
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and people’s organizations (POs)
themselves found resources growing scarcer as international donors turned
their attention to other countries. At the same time, NGO and PO fiscal
management came under question. Critics charged that growth in the NGO
sector—70,200 organizations were registered in 1995 with the Securities
and Exchange Commission—was not “matched by growth in professional-
ism.” NGOs were increasingly called upon to “apply accountability and
transparency—their buzzwords—to themselves.”2
The weakening of the NGO/PO movement was compounded by rivalries
and tension within and between NGOs, as well as between POs and their
mass bases, while conservative politicians further muddied the waters by
forming their own NGOs.3 Finally, “protest fatigue” and waning popular in-
terest in alternative politics made mass mobilization less effective.4 As a re-
sult, party-list organizations such as Akbayan (Citizen’s Action Party) and

266
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 267

Sanlakas (One Strength) began to focus more on electing candidates and ex-
panding networks, and less on protests and picket lines.5
The post-1986 restoration of electoral democracy had dampened the use of
violence to achieve political ends, helping reformist candidates backed by
church groups, NGOs, and POs oust entrenched political clans in some
provinces.6 Once in office, working through coalitions, reformists achieved
some notable successes. The 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act and the
2004 Anti-Violence against Women and Children Law are two socially pro-
gressive laws produced by “an odd assortment of partners,” including “polit-
ical families and even warlords.”7
But the institutionalization of populist politics through suffrage contains an
inherent paradox. The “logic of electoralism,” Benedict Anderson argues, “is
in the direction of domestication: distancing, punctuating, isolating.”8 Voting
deflects people from direct action. When the “educational” process of protests
and demonstrations is replaced by the individualized decision making of the
election booth, ties between NGOs/POs and their mass bases are undercut.
When reformist social forces no longer implement effective political educa-
tion programs, depoliticized voters again become vulnerable to traditional po-
litical ties and money politics (vote buying).
Two forces have defied this trend of demobilization. The first is the
Communist Party of the Philippines. The factional battles, executions, and
purges of the late 1980s gave way to a leaner movement in the 1990s under
the firm control of founder-in-exile Jose Maria Sison and his Philippines-
based allies. The New People’s Army, whose 1987 peak of 25,000 guerril-
las declined to 6,000 in 1994, grew back to 11,255 armed forces in 2000.9
Deepening rural poverty and increased migration of poor lowlanders to
mountainous areas was as much a reason for the CPP’s resurrection as its
claim to have cleansed itself of “deviationists” and “renegades.” The gov-
ernment indirectly contributed to CPP growth by transferring counterinsur-
gency operations to municipally controlled police and assigning the main
bulk of its forces to contain Islamic separatism in Mindanao. The party re-
mains weaker in urban areas, however; in a setting where coalition politics
and elections have become the norm, the CPP is hampered by its antipathy
toward rival leftist groups (many established by CPP expellees) and linger-
ing suspicion of contaminating the purity of “armed struggle” with electoral
politics.
The second exception to the waning of reform activism is the rise of reli-
gious movements. These include “old” movements such as the independent
Philippine church Iglesia ni Kristo (Church of Christ). Under the leadership
of the Manalo family, the Iglesia has played a quiet but often decisive role in
elections through its membership of one million. The Iglesia was joined in
268 Chapter Ten

Figure 10.1. NPA unit celebrating the anniversary of the Communist Party of the
Philippines (Ric Rocamora)

size and importance in the 1990s by the Catholic charismatic movement El

Shaddai, headed by former real estate agent Brother Mike Velarde (see box
10.1), and the Protestant group Jesus Is Lord, led by former Communist
Brother Eddie Villanueva. The political significance of these lay organiza-
tions is their strong presence and encouragement of bloc voting among the
“working poor and working class,” groups the Catholic Church is increas-
ingly unable to mobilize. El Shaddai, for example, although officially part of
the Church, holds its prayer rallies outside Church buildings and spiritually
outside the hierarchy’s control, a representation of “popular Christianity
which has been the bane of the institutional Church throughout most of
Philippine history.” The middle class is represented in this trend by the
Church-affiliated Couples for Christ, which professes “allegiance to tradi-
tional Catholic teachings.” Along with El Shaddai, Jesus Is Lord, and smaller
evangelical groups, Couples has entered the “democratic space” once domi-
nated by secular reformist forces with a “pro-family, nationalist and civic-
minded discourse.”10
Into this era of weakening reformism, rejuvenated oligarchs and commu-
nists, and assertive religious fundamentalists stepped Joseph Ejercito Estrada—
aging former action-movie star, city mayor, senator, and vice president—who
would reshape the face of Filipino populism during his abbreviated term as
president (1998–2001).
Box 10.1. New Paths to Salvation
A Visit by an Angel
“Sometime in February 1978, at the age of 38, Bro. Mike [Brother Mariano ‘Mike’ Z.
Velarde, El Shaddai servant-leader] was confined at the Philippine Heart Center for
Asia Hospital due to heart enlargement and heart blocks. He was scheduled to undergo
a major heart operation, but none of his five doctors could guarantee that he would
survive the operation. One night, an angel in the guise of a nurse came to his room and
told him, ‘Mr. Velarde, I’ve been watching you for the past three weeks. You are very
depressed and always in fear of a heart attack. Allow me to open that Bible beside you
and show you a way out of your predicament.’ Then the angel opened the Bible on 1
Corinthians 10:13 and gave it to him, saying, ‘Read this and contemplate on it and I
assure you, it will help.’ The verse read, ‘No temptation has seized you except what is
common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you
can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can
stand up under it.’ After reading the verse a number of times and meditating on it, his
fear disappeared completely and he felt a peace of mind. That night he was able to
sleep soundly. The next morning, he felt a new kind of strength and was filled with joy.
His doctors were surprised when they saw him walking along the corridors of the
hospital. They examined his heart thoroughly and was [sic] amazed to find out that his
ailment had been healed! The operation was thus no longer necessary. A week later, he
was discharged from the hospital. Further examination of his heart by doctors in a
hospital in Los Angeles, California, USA gave him a clean bill of health.
“Once, while he was meditating on the miracle that had happened in his life, he
asked God, ‘Lord, what must I do to live according to Your will?’ The Spirit of God
replied, ‘My son, bear witness to the salvation, love and miracle that you’ve
experienced. If you continue to do this, your fellowmen will know that the God
Whom you serve is indeed alive and faithful!’”
Purchase of DWXI Radio Station and First Financial Miracle
“In 1981, at the height of his real estate business expansion . . . Bro. Mike bought the
DWXI (1314 kHz) AM Radio Station from its owner-operators for P2 million, because
he needed the parcel of land on which it stood. Besides, the owners would not sell
the land unless the radio station was included in the deal. Later, the radio station
alone would cost him millions more to sustain its operations.
“That same year, Bro. Mike became a born-again Catholic. In his eagerness to know
more about the Lord Jesus Christ, he attended various prayer-meetings and studied the
Word of God diligently. . . . He began to give financial support for the Mass and
Healing Rallies of some charismatic groups that had started to flourish in the
Philippines. . . . One of these was the first Catholic Charismatic Mass and Healing
Rally held at the Araneta Coliseum, which was organized by the Quezon City
Catholic Charismatic Secretariat. Brother Mike gave P50,000 as a seed-of-faith
offering for that activity. That amount was his last ‘cold cash’ in the bank because his
real estate business then had come to a standstill due to the downward trend in the
real estate industry in the midst of economic crisis. . . . Worse, his bank loans had
snowballed to over P200 million because of runaway interests and penalties.
(continued)
270 Chapter Ten

“After giving the P50,000 seed-of-faith offering, with in [sic] God’s Word, he prayed
for a financial miracle. A week before the rally was held, a group of businessmen
approached him and bought part of his real estate holdings for P60 million! With joy
in his heart, he shared about the miracle during the Araneta prayer rally and started
telling people about that testimony in other prayer-meetings where he was invited to
attend. He recounted to them how God had returned his P50,000 seed-of-faith
offering a thousandfold!”
—From the El Shaddai website, http://www.geocities.com/elshaddai_
dwxi_ppfi/turning/turningpoint.htm (accessed October 15, 2004)

Movie Star Millenarianism

Estrada’s nickname is “Erap,” a reverse spelling of pare (pronounced PA-ray;
buddy). The nickname aptly described the new president—a pal to ordinary
folk, sharing the simplicity of their needs and aspirations and even their
lifestyle. Erap’s popularity was that of a street-smart leader who acquired
power through guts, sheer determination, and hard work. President Ramon
Magsaysay supposedly had this quality, but Estrada set himself apart with a
mocking hostility toward the “hypocrisy of political discourse.” Magsaysay
may have been called the “man of the masses,” but Erap actually talked like
the masses and “translated the prerogatives of power into the language of the
streets making them seem acceptable and normal.” He is, to continue jour-
nalist Sheila Coronel’s splendid description, “a charming rascal who expects
to get away with his rascality.”11 Erap is any Filipino’s (especially male Fil-
ipino’s) pare.
Estrada’s popularity did not spring from political charisma, however; he
developed his strong lower-class following from his original institutional
base in the movie industry. As a young actor, Estrada almost always played
the popular role of defender of the oppressed. As he grew older and moved
into politics, his movie career declined, but his fame did not. The reason was
television. In the 1990s, television networks, which had achieved national
coverage, aired his old movies and introduced him to a younger generation.
Inspired by the American entertainment industry, Filipino networks also be-
gan to mix information and entertainment programming. Their first experi-
ments were very profitable, and by the late 1990s, the top television con-
glomerates, ABS-CBN and GMA, had happily embraced “spicing up the
news and public affairs programs by injecting the elements of entertain-
ment—comedy, drama, showbiz intrigue, crime and the supernatural—to
keep the viewers glued.”12
The result was a leveling between news and everyday gossip that spread
throughout the mass media. Soon there was little difference between the treat-
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 271

ment of a free trade debate and a movie star’s love affair. Politicians who
sensed the growing importance of the new formula “turned to television to
maintain a high profile or boost their flagging popularity.”13 At the same time,
the marriage of news and entertainment turned newscasters into celebrities
and entertainment figures into political pundits, as movie and television stars
recognized their power to influence public opinion. As one business execu-
tive admitted: “A lot of your life is sometimes governed by what actors and
actresses do. Maybe they’re out there talking to people about moral standards
which might be followed by your kid!”14 The leap from moral to political was
relatively easy. To the criticism that movie stars lacked the skill to be politi-
cal leaders, many simply pointed to Corazon Aquino—the “mere housewife”
who brought down a dictatorship and restored democracy.
In 1987, Estrada was one of two anti-Aquino candidates who won a seat in
the Senate, where critics poked fun at his lack of contribution to the legisla-
tive process. But he turned many heads and gained the respect of nationalists
with his vote against renewing the U.S. military bases agreement and his fea-
ture film in support of that cause. Having fused his movie and political per-
sonas, Estrada became a presidential candidate at an opportune time. He was
not alone in appreciating the changing political climate: A bevy of movie and
television celebrities, newscasters, singers, and basketball players also cam-
paigned for provincial, city, and congressional seats in the 1998 and 2000
elections (see box 10.2).15
The movie star as politician was the face of Filipino populism in the 1990s.
The new populists differed from older politicians in several ways. In contrast
to Aquino’s popularity—tempered by her elite lineage and anchored in moral
rectitude—the new populists entertained crowds and lent pageantry to politi-
cal life. “Media populism” or “movie star millenarianism” had an entirely dif-
ferent electoral base as well.16 Aquino’s and Magsaysay’s support had tran-
scended class lines, while the voters favoring Estrada and other media
populists were overwhelmingly poor voters. Accordingly, Aquino and
Magsaysay used broad, all-inclusive political themes, while Estrada was anti-
elite in rhetoric. Finally, although neither type of populist displayed command
of complex policy matters, the new populists personalized the state without
seriously advancing any economic vision. Estrada simply assured the poor
that, if elected, he would use the state to serve their needs instead of those of
the rich or middle classes.17
Once he proclaimed his candidacy, however, Estrada attracted a coalition
as ideologically broad as those that had backed Aquino and Ramos. On the
conservative side, many joined on the basis of friendship, dislike of Ramos,
or older allegiances. Estrada especially relied on financial assistance from
former Marcos cronies Eduardo Cojuangco and Lucio Tan, as well as from
272 Chapter Ten

Box 10.2. Star-Studded Elections, 1998 and 2000

Name Position Sought Previous Occupation
Joseph Estrada President action star
Ramon Revilla Senator action star
Vicente Sotto Senator comedian
Robert Jaworski Senator basketball player
Noli de Castroª Senator TV anchor
Francis Pangilinanª Senator TV/radio host
Ted Failonª Congressman TV anchor
Teodoro Locsin Jr.ª Congressman TV host
Gilbert Remullaª Congressman TV reporter
Ronald Estellaª Congressman TV reporter
Ramon Revilla Jr. Governor, Cavite action star
Manuel Lapid Governor, Pampanga action star
Rio Diaz Governor, Negros Occidental TV host
Jun del Rosarioª Provincial Board Member TV reporter
Rudy Fernandez Mayor, Quezon City action star
Herbert Bautista Mayor, Quezon City comedian
Rey Malonzo Mayor, Kalookan City action star
Joey Marquez Mayor, Paranaque City comedian
Jinggoy Estrada Mayor, San Juan City action star
Vilma Santos Mayor, Lipa City movie/TV star
Alfredo Limª Mayor, Manila TV host
Edu Manzano Vice Mayor, Makati City action star
Concepcion Angeles Vice Mayor, Quezon City TV host
Philip Cezar Vice Mayor, San Juan City basketball player
Yoyoy Villame Councilor, Las Pinas City comedian/singer
Robert Ortega Councilor, Manila TV personality
Dingdong Avanzado Councilor, Marikina City singer
Sonny Parsons Councilor, Marikina City action star
Cita Astals Councilor, Manila comedian
Anjyo Yllana Councilor, Paranaque City comedian
a
2000 election. Luz Rimban, “Lights, Camera, Election,” I: The Investigative Reporting Magazine,
January–June 1998: 42; David Celdran, “The Cult of the Celebrity,” I: The Investigative Reporting
Magazine, January–March 2001: 31

the anti-Ramos Chinese-Filipino community. These wealthy donors compen-

sated for Estrada’s weak election machinery, enabling him to outspend his ri-
vals. On the reformist side, two groups were unabashed in supporting
Estrada’s candidacy: academics and former Communists who admired his
anti-bases vote. The former were eager to use Estrada to advance their own
governance ideas, reasoning that he had “no mindset to change because he
ha[d] no mindset.”18 The ex-Communists were drawn to Estrada’s anti-
elitism, believing that he “was really for the people.”19 A former CPP cadre
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 273

explained his decision to join Estrada: “This is the alternative to . . . waiting

for the new dawning of the new revolutionary elite.”20
Estrada’s campaign slogan was simple: “Erap para sa Mahihirap” (Erap for
the poor). On election day, he won an unprecedented 46.4 percent of votes
cast; his closest rival, House Speaker Jose de Venecia, received 17.1 per-
cent.21 After being sworn in as the country’s thirteenth president, Estrada
promised a government that would exercise transparency and professional-
ism, assured critics that he would disallow family involvement in his admin-
istration, and vowed to continue the economic reforms of the Ramos years.

The Erap Presidency

Despite his election day promises, in less than half a term in office, Estrada
transformed the presidency from a respected symbol of the nation into a
rogue’s court of family members, “mistresses, bastard children, denizens of
show-business, gambling partners, business partners both established and ob-
scure,” and late-night drinking buddies who made major decisions regarding
affairs of state. Access to the president was everything following an executive
order requiring presidential approval for all contracts in excess of 50 million
pesos. Economist Emmanuel De Dios describes how “enfranchised deal-
cutters competed over who would be first to interpose themselves between
approving authorities and private contractors. The effect was something akin
to a feeding frenzy, as members of this privileged swarm sought to secure
niches for themselves.”22
Corruption under Estrada was distinct in “the leveraging of government as-
sets and authority to undertake deals that were ultimately mediated by the
market.”23 Examples of such innovative, market-oriented corruption include
the use of funds from government-controlled financial institutions to support
corporate takeovers, to rescue ailing banks and corporations, and to buy into
companies coveted by the president and his family. Estrada also used his in-
fluence to help a crony manipulate the stock exchange. To this should be
added old cases such as Estrada’s unabashed defense of the corporate inter-
ests of Cojuangco and Tan in the name of removing government interference
from the private sector.24
Estrada’s popularity dropped as stories of governance by “midnight cabi-
net” circulated. The stories were fueled by his bad relationship with the me-
dia, the failure of an anticorruption drive, and his administration’s slow im-
plementation of antipoverty programs. Critics began to refer to Estrada as the
second coming of Ferdinand Marcos, especially after he forced a critical
newspaper to shut down. Yet this was not entirely accurate. Most Estrada
cronies were “engaged only in small or non-mainstream business,” and the
274 Chapter Ten

interests of his families (official and unofficial) were not in primary sectors.
Estrada’s corruption therefore lacked the devastating effect on the economy
that Marcos’s had had.25 And although Estrada valued his friendships, he
eventually heeded the critics, distanced himself from his cronies, and tried to
act more presidential. And he did honor his promise to continue the market
liberalization programs of his predecessor.
In 1999, Estrada sought to project decisiveness by ordering the destruction
of Moro Islamic Liberation Front camps and the takeover of Jolo Island to de-
stroy the Abu Sayyaf Group. He and the Congress approved the return of
American military forces to the Philippines to train and advise the AFP in
these campaigns.26 To show his new commitment to governance, Estrada
gave his cabinet secretaries autonomy to run their offices without interfer-
ence, prompting the Far Eastern Economic Review to comment that he had
metamorphosed into “a savvy politician [who] had found a way to get things
done.”27 The performance of certain government agencies, some under the
management of ex-leftists, popular activists, and academics, did offset the er-
ratic leadership at the top. Despite limited funds and the surrounding corrup-
tion, the Department of Agrarian Reform, Bureau of Immigration, Civil Ser-
vice Commission, and Bureau of Treasury performed credibly.28
These improvements received unlikely reinforcement from an economy
that “sloughed off the ‘sick man of Asia’ label that had dogged [it] through-

Figure 10.2. AFP checkpoint on a road in Mindanao (Ric Rocamora)

 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 275

out the 1980s.”29 Signs of recovery included 2.2 percent growth in GNP in
the first quarter of 1999, agriculture’s “turnaround real growth rate of 2.5
percent against a drop of 3.8 percent in the same quarter” of the previous
year, and a $4 billion trade surplus following a 20 percent rise in exports led
by computers and electronics.30 The country’s international reserves rose to
nearly $15 billion, strengthened by a two-year IMF standby facility and
bond financing in the international capital market.31 But sustained growth
was still threatened by a ballooning budget deficit of 132.5 billion pesos in
2000.32
These modest economic and governance improvements were outweighed
by negatives. Estrada began to lose allies in the House, and Congress refused
to pass the next series of reforms needed to sustain economic recovery. The
political points won in early 2000 by taking a strong stand against Islamic
rebels were wiped out by the military’s lack of a decisive victory. Govern-
ment coffers were also hurt by the war in Mindanao: Unofficial estimates
ranged from $500,000 to $2.3 million daily, forcing budget officials to divert
monies from other programs.33
Finally, accusations of government complicity in drug smuggling and ille-
gal gambling led to Estrada’s downfall. Jueteng (pronounced WHET-ting), an
illegal lottery, is the centerpiece of the nation’s thriving informal economy.
Because millions of ordinary Filipinos regularly place a one-peso bet on a
combination of numbers hoping for a four-hundred-peso winning, jueteng can
net a local operator as much as 1.2 million pesos and provincial bosses about
4.8 million pesos monthly.34 Its profitability spawned a complex, nationwide
network of alliances between operators, politicians, and law enforcement
agencies. Political campaigns and poorly paid military officers alike have
come to depend on jueteng revenues.35
Because of its national span, any crack in jueteng’s highly centralized and
well-protected structure could have serious implications. In early October
2000, Ilocos Sur governor Jose Singson—a longtime Estrada crony, gambling
partner, and drinking companion—revealed that he had personally delivered
$8 million in illegal gambling money to the president over a twenty-one-
month period, plus an additional $2.5 million as the president’s “cut” of the
tobacco excise taxes allotted to his province. Singson went public after
Estrada allegedly tried to have him assassinated, although he had already de-
cided to reveal all when he learned that the president planned to set up a bingo
network to rival his jueteng organization.
With Singson’s revelations, anti-Estrada forces coalesced to drive him
from office. The alliance of conservative church and business sectors, “tradi-
tional” politicians from opposition parties, NGOs, middle-class associations,
and different factions of the Left brought back memories of the Aquino years.
276 Chapter Ten

The CPP, learning its lesson from 1986, made sure its legal organizations
acted with the anti-Estrada front. Of course, the president was not without his
own supporters. The core of Estrada’s alliance—former Marcos cronies, the
movie industry, provincial and town officials grateful for hastily released in-
ternal revenue allocations, Christian fundamentalist groups whose leaders
sought to evade Church control, and former Communists in government—
remained steadfast behind him.
Initial skirmishes began when the House of Representatives passed the first
articles of impeachment against Estrada, charging him with plunder, graft,
and corruption. In early December 2000, the Senate, where Estrada controlled
a majority, formed itself into a tribunal to deliberate the charges. Meanwhile,
the jueteng exposé and impeachment plunged the economy into crisis. The
peso had depreciated 22 percent from the start of the year, investments were
down 20 percent, and the scandal-plagued stock market continued to sink.
When pro-Estrada senators blocked prosecutors from revealing a critical
piece of incriminating evidence, the battle moved to the streets. On January
16, 2001, anti-Estrada forces—one million strong—gathered at the Edsa
Shrine. In a festive atmosphere, they vowed not to leave until Estrada re-
signed the presidency.

Figure 10.3. Mobile phone–driven anti-Estrada protests (courtesy of the Philippine

Center for Investigative Journalism)
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 277

The composition of “Edsa 2” ranged from core “veterans” of the 1986 Rev-
olution to members of Couples for Christ and Iglesia ni Kristo, who did not
hesitate to demand a role on the “coordinating committee.” As expected,
Estrada rebuffed the protestors, and his supporters staged their own show of
force in a similarly large rally. The impasse was broken on January 20, when
the AFP leadership withdrew its support and Estrada had to abandon the pres-
idential palace.36 Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was immediately
sworn in as president and Edsa 2 was widely praised as “a massive exercise
in direct democracy after the institutions of impeachment had failed.”37

Edsa 2 versus Edsa 3 (Poor People’s Power)

On April 25, 2001, the government arrested Joseph Estrada on charges of
plunder, violation of the antigraft law, perjury, and illegal use of an alias. The
perceived discourtesy of the arresting authorities angered the ex-president’s
supporters, who mobilized up to three million people at the Edsa Shrine, a
gathering notable for including “no Church symbols [and] no Church per-
sonnel.”38 After four days of speeches and rallies, about three hundred thou-
sand people broke away from the main group and marched on the presiden-
tial palace, where they fought a bloody street battle with police and military
forces. Declaring a “state of rebellion,” President Arroyo ordered a full
military-police counterattack. By May 1, the “rebels” were in full retreat,
with five killed and more than a hundred arrested. Edsa 2 groups declared
victory over “the mob” with a “triumphant Mass” at the Edsa Shrine, sym-
bolizing their recovery of the sacred site.39
While easily routed, “Edsa 3” had reverberations that shook the new gov-
ernment. State officials and anti-Estrada intellectuals insisted that the pro-
Estrada mobilization was not an example of people power because its vio-
lence contradicted the peaceful nature of people power. But Arroyo
supporters could not dismiss the importance of the class divide: Edsa 3 was
predominantly a poor people’s movement, while Edsa 2, despite the presence
of pro-poor groups, was mainly urban middle class and elite in composition.40
Portraying Edsa 3 participants as “a drug-crazed mob that was brought and
made to do what they did by . . . leaders who were not there” did little to dis-
pel this uncomfortable reality. While it was true that the violence was incited
and funded by anti-Arroyo politicians, “poor people’s power” was clearly a
manifestation of lower-class grievances against the nation’s comfortable
classes.41 Despite a decline in poverty in the late 1990s, the gap in quality of
life and power between the classes was growing.42 Emmanuel De Dios and
Paul Hutchcroft explain Estrada’s ouster in this context: “What for [Edsa 2
activists] was a step toward rational and impartial government, represents for
278 Chapter Ten

[Edsa 3 supporters] a return to a heartless dispensation and an affront to the

already powerless.”43
As a result of Edsa 3, the optimism that followed Edsa 2 was short-lived,
replaced by apprehension and questioning of the value of people power as a
political act. Even Estrada’s critics had second thoughts about the wisdom of
resorting to popular uprising. “People Power as a method of political change
and of ousting leaders,” wrote journalist Amando Doronila, “has made Fil-
ipino democracy volatile, unstable, and unpredictable. More dangerously, it
has brought Philippine democracy to the edge of mob rule, even if exercised
in the name of social change.”44
Edsa 2 and Edsa 3 also saw a shift in the constellation of political forces that
influenced the country’s political direction. On the one hand, reformist NGOs
and POs that supported Estrada’s ouster were not united in their support of
Arroyo. As the alliance that brought them together unraveled, they won fewer
cabinet positions in the new administration, and in public discourse they were
challenged for the right to represent “the people” by the more disciplined CPP
(which had kept its legal fronts autonomous from the alliance). On the other
hand, the new president was clearly beholden to military officers (active and
retired) and traditional politicians. The former were directly or indirectly re-
sponsible for two of the country’s four political transitions since 1986. AFP-
watcher Glenda Gloria notes that the dependence of weak civilian govern-
ments on the military “puts regimes in a most vulnerable situation” and “the
military’s access to arms” affects appointments. An attempted coup in July
2003 (the Oakwood Mutiny) only increased this dependence.45
The resurrection of the traditional politician was exemplified by Governor
Singson. While trapos had been active players in 1986 and did in fact domi-
nate the Aquino and Ramos governments, their prominence was treated with
some disdain and suspicion. Singson, in contrast, was proclaimed a hero. This
admitted high-level operator in the illegal economy, this warlord who ruled
his province with an iron fist, this quintessential backroom dealer, became the
man of the hour—praised by fellow trapos, the new regime, the Catholic
Church, and even some NGOs and POs. Those who raised the issue of his
background were roundly shouted off the stage. Singson’s apotheosis sug-
gested that despite the rise of media populism, trapos and strongmen control-
ling patronage networks and votes would not be so easily disposed of.

DREAMING A “STRONG REPUBLIC”

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo—trained economist, daughter of President Diosdado

Macapagal, and veteran politician—“became head of state not because she was
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 279

the unanimous choice at EDSA 2 but simply because, as vice president, the con-
stitution said she was next in line,” a succession that was eventually approved
by the Supreme Court.46 Her careful handling of Estrada’s detention and a pub-
licity offensive portraying her as “pro-poor” partly defused lower-class anger,
but it was only with the general elections of May 2001 that she achieved a ma-
jority in the legislature and the support of local officials. These did not come
without a price, of course. Creating a congressional majority required compro-
mise and the dispensing of pork barrel funds. These compromises alienated
NGOs and POs, who accused her of pursuing her own political survival “at the
expense of civil society and progressive forces.”47 The poor apparently had not
forgiven her, either, electing Estrada’s wife and his former police chief (Panfilo
Lacson) to the Senate and several of his cronies to the House of Representa-
tives. This meant that Arroyo’s legislative agenda would encounter some re-
sistance.
Economic recovery was more important than ever, and some positive signs
followed the resolution of the political crisis. Pressure on the peso eased, and
the decline in the GDP share of agriculture and industry was mitigated by real
growth in the service sector, especially after Congress passed the Retail Trade
Liberalization Act opening that subsector to foreign investment.48 GDP
growth bounced back to 4.4 percent in 2002 (after dropping to 3.0 percent in
2001). Remittances from overseas Filipino workers also picked up after a
late-1990s plateau.49 While the government still engaged in deficit spending,
reduction targets were set and the ratio of spending to revenue collection fell.
Spending cuts, unfortunately, left social welfare hanging in the balance.
Poverty reached 40 percent (up from 31.8 percent in 1997), and social indi-
cators such as education, health, and domestic unemployment and underem-
ployment remained troubling.50 Government’s ability to deal with these social
problems continued to be hampered by debt servicing, which consumed more
than one-fourth of the national budget in 2002.
In any case, modest economic accomplishments were again overshadowed
by continuing political turmoil. Despite lifting the death penalty moratorium
for kidnappers, abductions continued unabated.51 In June 2001, after the Abu
Sayyaf Group kidnapped sixteen people from a central Philippine resort, sen-
ior military officers were accused of helping the group escape a besieged po-
sition in Basilan in exchange for a cash payment. This controversy led to ex-
posés of corruption in the AFP’s procurement system and its inability to deal
with the Abu Sayyaf Group.52 Other corruption investigations by independent
journalists implicated senior government officials in the government insurance
system, Department of Justice, and power and waste management sectors.53
To dispel the growing impression of weakness, Arroyo announced, in her
July 2002 address to the nation, her goal of building a strong republic.54 She
280 Chapter Ten

followed up with a number of attempts to assert the state’s regulatory power

and put its own house in order. Government lawyers charged the Lopez fam-
ily conglomerate with overpricing its electric power services and revoked (on
the grounds of rigged bidding) a contract signed by the previous administra-
tion with a foreign firm to build and operate a new international airport ter-
minal.55 Arroyo also instituted “lifestyle checks” on government personnel,
targeting bureaucrats in the notoriously corrupt Bureau of Internal Revenue
(BIR) and Bureau of Customs, and ways were explored to minimize graft in
these offices (see box 10.3).
Arroyo’s anticorruption drives signaled her intent to make the state “au-
tonomous of dominant classes and sectors, so that it represents the people’s
interests.”56 But these well-publicized actions backfired in some instances,
only serving to highlight the real limitations of state capacity. BIR bureau-
crats made clear their intention to stonewall reform by slowing collection ef-
forts and appealing to patrons in Congress, while Arroyo’s newly appointed
BIR commissioner was sued by his own officers when he “tried to move them
and uproot their patronage networks.” After a bomb threat at his office, he re-
signed, and Arroyo backed away from overhauling the entire revenue collec-
tion system.57 Court cases against the airport contractor and the Lopez family
became bogged down in the judicial system, and the president did little to

Figure 10.4. “Police and Citizens: Shoulder to Shoulder for a Strong Republic” (Donna
J. Amoroso)
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 281

speed them along. Her vacillation renewed criticisms that she “would rather
have safe, if sticky, compromises”—classic trapo behavior.58
Critics on the left labeled her “strong republic” a ruse to bring back dicta-
torship. Continuing Estrada’s policy against armed southern Islamists,
Arroyo approved a “visiting forces agreement” with the United States in
2003 that allowed longer-term visits by American troops; this act arguably

Box 10.3. Improving Revenue Performance

“Since 1986, the government has embarked on tax policy reforms designed to simplify
the country’s tax structure. These tax reforms are focused on lowering rates and
broadening the tax base. However, numerous tax exemptions and fiscal incentives
provided under various laws have undermined the tax policy reforms. Clearly, there is
a need to rationalize these tax exemptions and fiscal incentives in order to plug the
tax leakage and make tax obligations transparent. Presumptive taxation for hard-to-tax
groups such as professionals and small businesses can also reduce the discretionary
power of both taxpayer and tax assessor and make tax calculations simpler and
clearer. Tax simplification and elimination of special exemptions can help curb
opportunities for corruption, reduce the compliance cost of honest tax payers, and
increase the overall efficiency of the economy.
“An area where reforms could yield the highest return is in revenue administration,
particularly institutional and administrative arrangements. A major proposal in this area
is to grant the BIR some degree of autonomy and shield it from political interference.
With greater autonomy, the BIR can have more flexibility in its human resources and
budgetary decisions, allowing it to attract good people and manage human resources
on the basis of skills and performance.
“Together with greater BIR autonomy, a system of internal and external checks
should be strengthened. Strong and credible internal audit systems, covering
financial, procedural and management functions, complemented by effective external
audit provisions should be in place. As in other countries, perhaps it would help to
create anti-corruption units within the bureau. The Commission on Audit should be
given access to BIR to undertake its revenue audit function. Congress should also
actively pursue its oversight of the BIR as mandated under the Tax Code of 1997.
“Civil society involvement in revenue oversight should also be promoted. A private-
sector led Taxpayers Foundation can be organized to: (a) serve as a venue for
taxpayers’ complaints against unscrupulous BIR personnel, (b) file appropriate charges
in court, (c) conduct continuing taxpayer education, and (d) assist small- and medium-
scale taxpayers in their dealings with the BIR.
“Excessive contact between taxpayers and tax personnel opens opportunities for
corruption, hence this should be minimized or avoided. Among the instruments that
can be helpful in this regard are: (a) the use of third party information for tax
assessment, (b) automation or computerization, and (c) privatization of selected
functions of tax administration.”
—Congressional Planning and Budget Office, “Special Study:
Getting Out of the Fiscal Bind,” June 2002: 10.
282 Chapter Ten

skirted a constitutional provision banning the presence of foreign troops on

Philippine territory. Soon after, U.S. troops began to assist the AFP in pur-
suing the Abu Sayyaf Group. While the collaboration was well received by
most Filipinos, including those in Muslim Mindanao, in Manila it provoked
intense criticism. And when she pledged support for the American “war on
terror” in advance of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, critics ranging from
the CPP to nationalist academics branded her a “puppet,” exacerbating her
strained relationship with reformists.59
The year 2002 ended with the news that government had overshot its
budget deficit target by 71 percent because of poor tax collection.60 A de-
spondent Arroyo announced on December 30—the anniversary of Jose
Rizal’s execution—that she would not campaign for her own presidential
term in the May 2004 election and would instead devote the remainder of her
time in office to policy implementation free from “the influence and interfer-
ence of narrow sectional interests.”61 Her decision not to run was received
with warm public support, and her approval ratings began to rise.

The 2004 Election: Machine Politics versus Media Populism

Arroyo’s critics and political opponents did not relent in their attacks, how-
ever, continuing to allege widespread corruption by the president, her family,
and her allies.62 By November 2003, acquiescing to pressure from allies and
angered by attacks on her family, the president announced her decision to
“defer” retirement and “offer [her]self to the electorate in 2004.”63 This re-
versal confirmed her critics’ suspicions, but a clear alternative candidate and
philosophy of governance was lacking. Four major candidates ran against Ar-
royo in 2004—Paul Roco, her popular former secretary of education; Panfilo
Lacson, the “law and order” candidate with murder charges hanging over his
head; Brother Eddie Villanueva of the Jesus Is Lord movement, who became
the middle-class “protest” candidate when Roco dropped out for health rea-
sons; and aging action-movie star and political novice Fernando Poe Jr., who
emerged as the most serious challenger.64
It looked to be a contest between an incumbent’s political machine and a
media populist with no known political positions except friendship with the
disgraced former president Joseph Estrada. As Poe took an early lead in
the polls, business leaders, academics, and political commentators feared
the worst, and reformist NGOs and POs became increasingly irrelevant
to the contest. Many of the latter opted to support Arroyo without lobbying
for the inclusion of their agenda into her platform. Those in Poe’s camp did
not even bother to fashion a sophisticated argument for him (as they had for
Estrada), because their presence was hardly recognized by the candidate
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 283

himself. The growing attractiveness of the party-list system and the CPP
threat also dictated that reformists pay greater attention to contesting sec-
toral seats in Congress.65 (CPP positions carry weight in national debates
via a sympathetic national media, and its party-list organizations would
succeed in electing all six of its candidates to the House of Representatives
in 2004.)
Arroyo depended heavily on the electoral machinery of her coalition of po-
litical allies nationwide; Poe, who had no such machinery, used his movie star
persona—the quiet hero—to attract voters. Both candidates chose news
anchors–turned–senators (proven vote-getters) as their vice presidential run-
ning mates and took full advantage of relaxed election rules that allowed
maximum use of all forms of media.66 Oddly enough, Poe turned out to be the
less effective campaigner. His personality (taciturn and humorless), political
inexperience (leading to frequent upheavals in his campaign team), discom-
fort with the media (which he alternately shunned and snapped at), and near-
total lack of policy articulation cost his initial lead in the polls.67 Arroyo cam-
paigned vigorously throughout the country, speaking the local language in her
native Visayas and several other regions, reminding voters of the “avalanche
of financial support and development projects” her government was provid-
ing, exercising political muscle on wavering local officials, and dispensing
campaign funds to local candidates.68 Her well-managed attack on Poe’s in-
experience and an agreement with the CPP to allow her party to campaign in
NPA territory in exchange for supporting Communist party-list candidates
also helped tilt the race in Arroyo’s favor.69
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was elected by a margin of 1,123,576
votes out of roughly twenty-five million cast. A postelection analysis in the
Philippine Daily Inquirer pointed to the Arroyo team’s astute combination of
old and new strategies, an indication that media populism would henceforth
be a crucial part, but not the sole determinant, of electoral politics. According
to writer Tony Bergonia, “The campaign strategy involved unbridled access
to government resources, the hiring of an expert pollster, brilliant use of opin-
ion surveys, a deal with a popular TV personality and innovations to tried and
tested campaign devices.” Bergonia points to how “the normal delivery of
government services [was used] as a campaign tool without making it look
like what it really was—an attempt to capture votes.” For example, road
maintenance in Metro Manila created 250,000 jobs by using labor-intensive
rather than capital-intensive methods, and student loans were disbursed by
the Student Assistance Fund for a Strong Republic. Bergonia’s sources told
him that “Ms. Arroyo’s strategists found nothing irregular in the so-called
governance projects since the state funds used had already been allotted and
were not realigned from other existing projects.”70
284 Chapter Ten

The campaign team engaged an in-house pollster to survey voter approval

on key issues and “gauge to what extent voters would follow the endorsements
of such figures and groups as Jaime Cardinal Sin, ex-President Corazon
Aquino, the Iglesia ni Cristo and the Catholic group El Shaddai.” (Pacts with
the religious groups delivered many votes and continued to pay off when vote
counting in the House of Representatives was subject to repeated delaying tac-
tics and Arroyo’s victory looked vulnerable to opposition protest. In early June
the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines endorsed the election and
its results: Arroyo called it “an answer to her prayers.”)71 Bergonia emphasized
the media popularity brought to the campaign by vice presidential candidate
Noli de Castro (a new strategy) and, finally, alleged the preparation of a “very
massive operation to commit fraud” if the local political machines failed to
“get the votes and perform magic” (a very old strategy).72 This allegation was
vigorously denied by the president’s office, though few Filipinos doubt the ca-
pacity of any successful politician to commit election fraud.

Arroyo’s Challenge: Economic Governance

With her political coalition winning majorities in the Senate, House of Rep-
resentatives, and provincial and municipal governments, Gloria Arroyo se-
cured the opportunity to govern for six years unhampered by the taint of ille-
gitimacy she faced while completing Estrada’s term. Yet Arroyo’s promise to
create a “strong republic” will no doubt encounter bureaucratic opposition
and resistance from Congress, which, although containing more reformist
members, continues to be dominated by patronage politicians. Due to the
manner of her election, Arroyo will herself remain beholden to these politi-
cians, while reformists struggle to revive a mobilizing capacity to strengthen
their bargaining power inside state institutions.
Her short- and medium-term priority will be the economy. In the July 2004
State of the Nation address, Arroyo labeled the budget deficit and tax collec-
tion the most pressing problems facing the nation. She called for business to
“adopt an attitude of tax acceptance” and Congress to pass a package of tax
laws to increase revenue by eighty billion pesos per year. To reduce spending,
she promised to abolish thirty agencies under the Office of the President (in
addition to the eighty already eliminated), attack corruption, eliminate redun-
dant offices, and encourage early retirement.
Public reaction was swift, demanding first that government improve tax
collection and rein in corrupt BIR officials before asking citizens to pay more
taxes and, second, that Congress accept the reduction or elimination of the
discretionary funds that fuel patronage—pork barrel—“the most visible sym-
bols of corruption in government.” As the country’s leading newspaper edi-
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 285

torialized: “So long as the pork barrel exists, any cost-saving campaign and
any anti-corruption drive will be meaningless, and any new tax measure will
be an undue imposition on the people.”73 (See box 10.4.)
The month following Arroyo’s address, a group of prominent University of
the Philippines economists expressed “doubt whether the President’s message
has been truly understood and internalized by the political elite and public.”

Box 10.4. “The Unmistakable Stench of Institutionalized Corruption”

“The dust is beginning to settle on one of the most divisive, acrimonious and bitter
electoral exercises this country has ever seen. . . . Those who voted for President
Macapagal-Arroyo despite the three difficult years just past, did so in the hope that if
she had a true mandate she would finally be able to steer the country toward a brighter
future. Only a competent and well-meaning president with a clear mandate can
possibly lead us through this difficult time when collective national sacrifice will have
to be the rule of the day . . . before . . . economic recovery can even begin to emerge.
“Cognizant of this, many thinking Filipinos like me are ready to make sacrifices. But
we must also see that our leaders, especially our legislators, are likewise willing to
share in our collective sacrifice. So far however, other than jockeying for juicy
committee chairmanships and fighting over offices, all we have heard from the
majority of our honorable legislators is empty talk about ‘burden sharing.’ None of
them has yet categorically announced that they are willing to make one of the biggest
sacrifices of all: giving up part of their pork barrel.
“Depending on the source of information, each representative receives an
estimated P70 to P100 million a year in pork barrel funds while a senator receives
about P200 million a year. Multiply this by 236 representatives (party list excluded)
and 23 senators and you arrive at the mind-boggling figure of P28 billion a year!
“This in itself is bad enough, particularly in the light of our alarming budget deficit
and the dismal legislative output. . . . But things really get unbearable when one reads
reliable investigative reports saying that as much as 45 percent of this amount ends up
in the pockets of legislators.
“True or not, exaggerated or not, it cannot be denied that the term ‘pork barrel’ or
the more palatable ‘Countrywide Development Fund’ carries with it the unmistakable
stench of institutionalized corruption. . . .
“Cynicism, distrust of government and a general lack of hope are the predominant
sentiments that weigh heavily on our people, enveloping our country in a thick, dark
cloud. Unless the President and her men can break through this cloud, effective
governance will be virtually impossible. The ‘Pork Barrel Sacrifice,’ painful though it
may be, might just be the sword that can cut through this cloud. . . . Anything short
of this sacrifice would send the disturbing message that it is ‘business as usual’ for our
elected leaders. At this particular time in our nation’s history, when we are being
primed for higher taxes, higher utility rates, higher prices and tough times ahead, all
for the sake of our country, ‘business as usual’ . . . should have absolutely no place in
governance and will only spell disaster.”
—Minguita Padilla, “Business as Usual?” commentary,
Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 29, 2004
286 Chapter Ten

The UP School of Economics report argued the imminence of a fiscal crisis

and the superficiality and/or wrongheadedness of some solutions being dis-
cussed. This influential report was widely disseminated and set the agenda for
public policy debate at the start of Arroyo’s term.74 It also made admirably ex-
plicit the often implicit contract between state and society in its discussion of
causes and proposed solutions. As so often in the past, a crisis helped illumi-
nate the state’s relationship with the various forces both within it and in soci-
ety at large.
The UP report first establishes the problem: At the end of 2003, the Philip-
pine national government debt was 3.36 trillion pesos, or 78 percent of GDP.
More important to the analysis, total public sector debt (explained below) ex-
ceeded 130 percent of GDP. Service on the debt, an automatic appropriation,
consumed 27 percent of the year’s national budget. All these numbers are
trending upward, but the authors argue that yearly increases in the level of
debt have not been caused by rising interest rates or higher government
spending. In fact, even as government moved from mid-1990s balanced
budgets to budget deficits, spending by its agencies “declined significantly
. . . and is now at its lowest level in a decade.” Such fiscal discipline was “not
a sign of strength—rather one of despair.” For, aside from debt servicing,
“large chunks of the national budget are already pre-empted by salaries,
maintenance and operating expenses, and the internal revenue allotment to lo-
cal governments, leaving little room for infrastructure spending and other de-
velopment needs.”75
The authors acknowledge that 43 percent of the debt increase from 1997 to
2003 was caused by budget deficits and attribute these largely to “failure of
the tax structure and bureaucracy.” The success or failure of revenue collec-
tion is measured as a percentage of GDP; the Philippines’ tax effort “fell from
a high of 17 percent of GDP in 1997 to only 12.5 percent by 2003.”76 Includ-
ing both tax and nontax revenue, the Philippines’ tax effort was 19 percent of
GDP; this was about the same as Thailand and better than Indonesia, but
much weaker than Malaysia (23 percent) and Singapore (37 percent). The tax
effort of developing countries as a whole averages 18 percent of GDP, while
that of industrialized countries averages 31.2 percent.77
Naturally, corruption in the BIR and judicial failure to pursue “large tax
evaders” contribute to falling revenue, but the report also points to “serious
structural flaws” that can be laid more broadly at the feet of the executive,
Congress, and taxpayers themselves:
An inflexible and unresponsive tax structure, mortally weakened by the legisla-
tive failure to adjust specific taxes (e.g., taxes on petroleum, beverage, and to-
bacco); the excessive grant of incentives and exemptions (e.g., from the BOI
[Board of Investments] and for special economic zones); the failure to provide
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 287

for administrative rules to plug revenue leakages (e.g., failure to ensure that fi-
nal taxes on loans and deposits withheld by banks are actually remitted to the
government); and an unabashed surrender to lobbying, as illustrated by the VAT
[value-added tax] exemptions given by Congress to doctors, lawyers (and law
firms!), and even show-business.78

The report attributes a further 37 percent of the debt increase to “non-

budgetary accounts” and “assumed liabilities and lending to corporations.” Such
off-budget expenditures represent the difference between national government
debt (generated by “activities involving regular branches and agencies”) and to-
tal public debt. This difference stems from the operation and liabilities of gov-
ernment-owned or -controlled corporations such as the National Power Corpo-
ration (NPC), the Public Estates Authority (manager of public lands), and the
bodies responsible for social security and public-sector employee insurance. The
government is also involved in commercial banking and in manufacturing, real
estate, and media companies. The accounts of these corporations are meant to be
separate from the government’s, but we have seen how, in the post-Marcos era
of cleanup and restructuring (of the Central Bank, for example), government as-
sumed the liabilities of many failed corporations.
This practice continues, especially where the delivery of vital public ser-
vices such as power is concerned. When the NPC, for example, was unable
to sell bonds abroad to cover operating losses, “the national government . . .
bought the NPC debt paper, then proceeded to borrow abroad on its own ac-
count” to further finance this unprofitable institution. The report points out
that unprofitability is not due solely to mismanagement but is often imposed
by the government itself when “for political reasons, [it] decided to reduce
power-rate charges.” Whatever the cause, when government assumes corpo-
rate debt, “what ought to have been liabilities only of these corporations and
the clients they serve become transformed into debts of the national govern-
ment and of all Filipinos.”79
Observers agree that the growing debt has had a tremendous negative impact
on Philippine growth by restricting the ability of government to make strategic
investments in its people (education) and economy (infrastructure). And the
problem is self-perpetuating, “with successive credit downgrades raising the
cost of borrowing.” But the UP report argues that the trend is unsustainable for
much longer and, further, that any of a number of external factors—higher
global interest rates or falling overseas workers’ remittances—could quickly re-
sult in debt default and a full-blown fiscal crisis marked by “sharp peso depre-
ciation, most likely aggravated by capital flight, severely contract[ed] trade . . .
a deep recession and unemployment.” Nor, it argues, can the problem be solved
by budget cuts “without provoking large dislocations and inviting social unrest”
or be outgrown: “When has the economy ever demonstrated the ability to
288 Chapter Ten

achieve, much less sustain, GDP growth of 7–8 percent annually?” Corruption
is not solely to blame and so its elimination would not comprise the whole so-
lution; in any case, the authors question “whether the time exists for such re-
forms in administration to play out before the fiscal time bomb explodes.”80
Instead, the UP report calls for a package of measures that spreads the bur-
den among the branches of the state, the private sector, and the general pub-
lic. These include (1) cutting nonbudgetary expenditures by half, forcing gov-
ernment-owned and -controlled corporations to adopt sound business
practices, and retreating from “politicized price-setting”; (2) moving national
government expenditures from deficit to surplus by first optimizing existing
laws—automatic updating of excise taxes and audits on self-reported in-
come—and later phasing in tax increases (VAT, petroleum) and new taxes
(car registration, new vehicles); (3) cutting local government unit (LGU) al-
lotments by a quarter, from 40 percent to 30 percent, which the president is
authorized to do for a three-year period by declaring an “unmanageable
public-sector deficit”; and (4) cutting pork by half and increasing government
credibility by using some of the savings on publicly visible infrastructure
projects, the rest on deficit reduction. Once the deficit has been stabilized, the
report recommends rationally downsizing government bureaucracy; com-
pletely replacing the revenue agencies; pursuing a new round of privatization;
rationalizing and reducing future tax incentives; establishing “credible regu-
latory bodies” to set power rates, transit fare, and tolls; and making LGU rev-
enue allotments “conditional on the quality of spending or as matching grants
to supplement new local revenues.”81
The UP School of Economics recommendations are not beyond debate.
Another line of thought is represented by Walden Bello (of the NGO Focus
on the Global South) and Lidy Nacpil and Ana Marie Nemenzo (of the NGO
Freedom from Debt Coalition) in their rejoinder, “Overdue, Selective, Not
Daring Enough.”82 They take issue with the UP report’s neglect of tariff re-
duction as a cause of declining revenue, noting that the UP authors are all sup-
porters of trade liberalization. Bello and colleagues, who cite the departing re-
marks of former finance secretary Jose Isidro Camacho in support of their
position, back recent executive orders freezing or raising tariffs on selected
agricultural, fishery, and manufactured products and call for the accelerated
reversal of liberalization throughout the economy.
Most fundamentally, these critics question why the UP economists do not
face the issue of foreign debt head on. Since 1986, opinion has been growing
that Corazon Aquino erred in not attempting to restructure the debt at the very
time the Philippines, emerging from a larcenous dictatorship, was most likely
to win concessions from its creditors. In fact, some of the UP authors were
among the early critics of the “model debtor” policy, by which “repaying the
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 289

debt on the terms demanded by the creditors became the national economic
priority, with development taking a backseat.” Although in agreement with
many of the UP-proposed measures, Bello and his coauthors believe that
“never ending and rising payments to foreign creditors” are the major reason
the Philippines is facing fiscal crisis. But where the UP report sees default on
international debt as unthinkable, Bello, Nacpil, and Nemenzo point to Ar-
gentina, which, they argue, collapsed in 2002 due to its “good debtor” policy,
after which it redirected its “resources . . . into investment rather than debt
service.” They want the Philippines to follow the example of the Argentine
president, who offered his country’s creditors 20 to 25 cents on the dollar and
still received a new IMF loan: “To our creditors, many of whom have been
paid many times over for the original sum lent us, we can say, loosen your
terms to, say, 50 cents to the dollar now or you will get a bankruptcy that will
drag you along with it.”
But beyond its specific recommendations, which can and should be debated,
the value of the UP report lies in its recognition that “modern government—in
principle anyway—is based on a contract in which people agree to be taxed in
exchange for protection, justice, infrastructure and services provided by the
state.” Violation of this contract has caused a “tacit but undeniable tax revolt
by citizens appalled that taxes are used to support feckless, unresponsive gov-
ernment.” The authors therefore put the onus on government to begin to fix the
problem, but acknowledge that all state branches and social forces will have to
show unprecedented unity: “Congress, the President, local governments, busi-
ness, professionals, and people at large, all effectively possess some veto
power over the outcome, since by refusing to cooperate, they could scuttle the
package.”83
The fiscal crisis faced by the Philippines in the early twenty-first century
highlights a recurrent pattern that can be traced back to the mid-nineteenth
century—the need to improve state capacity in order to cope with economic
change. Then, too, the state faced dilemmas raised by globalization and the
movement of international capital and then, too, sought to strengthen revenue
collection and other primary functions. In the 1930s, when worsening agrar-
ian relations led to peasant rebellion, the Commonwealth reinforced state ca-
pacity in the name of “social justice.” The pattern recurred in the import-
substitution phase of the postwar Republic, as well as on the eve of martial
law. As the years passed, however, expectations of responsive government
grew, reformist and radical social forces protested the skewed distribution of
rewards, and the solution grew more complex.
Some of the other themes we have traced through the history of state for-
mation in the Philippines—the shape of executive and legislative institu-
tions, insiders and outsiders, the role of religion—also have contemporary
290 Chapter Ten

manifestations. We close the book by sketching four such issues of current

import as introductions to further reading or research.

CURRENT ISSUES

Presidential versus Parliamentary Government

At times of transition or crisis—during the Philippine Revolution, in the
Commonwealth period, in the aftermath of dictatorship—Filipinos have de-
bated the merits of different institutions of representative government. These
debates have revolved around questions of executive versus legislative
power, bicameral versus unicameral legislature, and presidential versus par-
liamentary government. The latest push for institutional reform, springing
from the clear limitations of people power as demonstrated by Edsa 2 and
Edsa 3, finds many in public life advocating the replacement of U.S.-style
presidential government (which balances power between the executive, leg-
islature, and judiciary) with a unicameral parliamentary government (in
which a prime minister emerges from the leading party or parties in the leg-
islature).
Most of the arguments in favor of constitutional change fall into two cate-
gories: improvement of state capacity or increased government responsive-
ness. Together, advocates believe, they add up to a case for a type of govern-
ment that would be more effective and more representative of all Filipinos.
We will outline three of these arguments and counterarguments before turn-
ing to a fourth, related issue.
The first argument for change—based on state capacity or efficacy—is that
the current bicameral system has failed, producing “endless gridlocks and
impasses.”84 Even when a president enjoys majority support in the House of
Representatives, bills must be “debated twice [and] approved twice.” One
congressman complained in late 2003 that a thousand local governance bills
legislated by the House still languished in the Senate. Hilario Davide, as a
member of the Aquino-appointed constitutional commission in 1986 (cur-
rently chief justice of the Supreme Court) endorsed this view: “[Unicameral
parliamentary government] is not only efficient and less costly to maintain,
but it is also simpler, less time-consuming, and invites minimum conflicts and
controversies, thus facilitating speedy legislation.” More recently, departing
finance secretary Camacho warned: “We have a very high debt that is not sus-
tainable unless we do something, and right now there is something wrong
with our political system. It is too slow and is not equipped to deal with this
kind of problem.” He advocated either a unicameral parliamentary system or
a highly centralized state with a powerful chief executive.85
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 291

The second argument takes aim directly at the upper house as a manifesta-
tion of unbounded elite dominance of the political process. Columnist
Manuel Quezon III points out the “risk in having senators elected at large:
senatorial campaigns . . . available only to the very rich, or the very popular.”
Because the Senate is the “training ground” for the presidency, this argument
has gained urgency with the rise of media populism, which carries the addi-
tional threat “that the quality of the senators might rapidly deteriorate.”86 The
third argument speaks to the problem of unseating a leader such as Joseph
Estrada, who was demonstrably inept and corrupt and whose Senate allies un-
dermined the course of his impeachment trial. Under the presidential system,
the electorate must wait for the term of the president to end, whereas under a
parliamentary system, proponents argue, the ruling party would be forced to
clean its own house and/or call an election. With no upper house of (in this
case, obstructionist) senators facing election only once in six years, the entire
system would be more responsive to the people. In short, the parliamentary
system would provide “a system of removing bad leaders” short of uprising.
Although these points have merit, various counterarguments can be made.
Gregorio Tingson, another constitutional commissioner, argued that the Sen-
ate fosters “national unity and consciousness” in a way that the House of Rep-
resentatives, “merely based on the respective districts of the members,” can-
not. And the slower legislative process is in fact purposeful, helping Congress
“steer clear of hasty legislation.” Past experience confirms this, as Quezon
writes:

The justification for the restoration of the Senate in 1941 was based on the ex-
perience of the country under a unicameral legislature from 1935–1941, which
revealed the tendency for the herd mentality to erupt among assemblymen, re-
sulting in stampedes by the members of the National Assembly. . . . A Senate
would act as a brake on the enthusiasm of congressmen, while at the same time
provide an opportunity for the training of national leaders required by a young
country like ours.87

Political commentator Neal Cruz fears that the loss of checks and balances
between the three branches of government will actually cause corruption to
worsen. He questions how “the same politicians and public officials” will
solve the country’s many problems simply by “shifting to a parliamentary sys-
tem,” arguing that “the key is not the system; it is the people.”88 Andrew
MacIntyre’s comparison of four Southeast Asian countries addresses this issue
of institutions versus personnel from the perspective of the reform process it-
self, noting that it is the same actors who would design, carry out, and be gov-
erned by proposed changes to the system (see box 10.5). And former finance
secretary Roberto de Ocampo articulated the concern that institutional reform
292 Chapter Ten

Box 10.5. Institutional Reform

“Institutional reform is difficult. New political frameworks do not fall from the heavens
and slide directly into place. They are the product of debate and struggle—often
violent struggle. They are ideas about how politics should be organized that are
articulated, promoted, entrenched, and then defended by a coalition of actors seeking
to advance certain interests. . . . Redesigning the basic rules of national politics can
be an especially difficult category of institutional reform. This is not simply because
the stakes are so high, but more subtly because politicians are frequently both the
subjects and the objects of change. Unlike the process of reforming many economic
institutions, such as trade unions or major trade laws, changing formal political
institutions often means that politicians are the primary actors in the redesign of rules
that are to govern their own behavior.”
—Andrew J. MacIntyre, The Power of Institutions: Political Architecture and
Governance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 105–6, 107

“would distract the leadership and the public from undertaking more crucial
economic reforms.”89
Some defenders of the existing system fear legislative control over the ex-
ecutive branch, specifically valuing the role of the presidency. Although not
denying that presidents have depended on and mastered patronage politics,
they note that at various times in Philippine history, presidents have been cru-
cial in strengthening the state in the name of reform.90 This position has been
weakened in the last decade by the experience of the Estrada presidency,
when people were both reminded of the sordid years of the Marcos dictator-
ship and taught what could happen to the presidency in the hands of an in-
competent politician.
Finally, the most substantive argument made in favor of constitutional
change sees it as a way of reforming political parties that are now instruments
of elites with limited mobilizational capacity. In this view, the Philippines’
central institutional problem is the lack of program-based political parties—
those emphasizing policy over personality and governing principles over pa-
tronage. Political activist Joel Rocamora identifies the advantage of the par-
liamentary custom of proportional representation:

If voters choose between parties instead of individual candidates, it will lessen

the intensity of personal and clan contests which are the main sources of violence
and money politics. Parties will then be required to strengthen the organizational
and programmatic requirements for electoral victory. Minimally, parties will be
forced to distinguish themselves from each other enough for voters to make
choices. The shift in the center of gravity of organizational work away from in-
dividual candidates will force parties to strengthen themselves organizationally.91
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 293

Rocamora notes that because parties today have no programs, “policy-

making in the legislature and the executive is mainly a matter of deal mak-
ing,” an endless cycle of patronage.92 Program-based and disciplined politi-
cal parties, it is hoped, would have less need for backroom deals to win
elections or pass laws.93 Rocamora and political scientist Paul Hutchcroft fur-
ther argue that this change would help to structure political competition to-
ward the realization of aggregate rather than particularistic interests.94

Muslim Separatism
The long-standing conflict between the national government and Christian Fil-
ipino majority, on the one hand, and the Muslim armed separatist movements,
on the other, has ceased to be a flashpoint in today’s politics. The 1996 peace
agreement with the Ramos government led to the Moro National Liberation
Front (MNLF) taking the leadership of the Autonomous Region in Muslim
Mindanao (ARMM), which was created by President Aquino in response to
calls for Muslim autonomy. But instead of transforming ARMM into an au-
thority reflecting the ideals of the MNLF, Nur Misuari and his comrades did
little to change its “oversized and mostly inept bureaucracy of 19,000 em-
ployees.”95 In fact, MNLF leaders were soon accused of contributing to its
characteristic waste and corruption. State capacity has been particularly weak
where personnel are former guerrillas; institution-building programs are cur-
rently run by the Australian, Japanese, and U.S. governments, among others.
Misuari himself showed less concern for governing than for traveling in the
Philippines and abroad. He tried to lobby for an extension of his term after the
November 2001 ARMM elections, and when Manila denied his request, he or-
dered his troops to revolt. But the rebellion in Jolo was easily crushed, and
Misuari fled to the neighboring Malaysian state of Sabah. The Malaysian gov-
ernment, which now favors a peaceful resolution to the Philippines’ “Muslim
problem,” later extradited him back to his homeland, where he languishes in a
jail cell outside Manila. The MNLF has become a spent force.
Into the void has stepped the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF),
whose forces grew from six thousand to fifteen thousand in the 1990s and
which is today considered the most powerful armed Islamic group in Muslim
Mindanao. In some ways, though, the MILF is difficult to categorize. While
openly Islamist in its politics (in contrast to the more secular MNLF), it has
expressed no intention of establishing an Islamic state and has not declared
its rebellion to be a jihad. (Jihad, an Arabic word, can be translated as “strug-
gle” or “striving”; in the political sense, it indicates a defensive struggle or
fighting to right a wrong.) According to investigative journalists Marites
Dañguilan Vitug and Glenda Gloria, “The MILF leadership has not yet fully
294 Chapter Ten

thought [through the] idea of what constitutes an Islamic state,” and MILF
leaders and followers differ in their interpretation of jihad. In fact, Vitug and
Gloria observe an “ideological gap between the leaders and the rank and file
[that is] wide and palpable.”96 MILF leaders may be devout students of Islam,
but ordinary Maguindanaos, Maranaos, Tausugs, and other Filipino Muslims
tend to practice some form of “folk Islam” that mixes animism with teachings
from the Koran.97 Many of its fighters have joined the MILF for reasons hav-
ing little to do with religion—often to avenge the death of family and friends
at the hands of the military or because it represents opportunity in one of the
poorest regions in the country.98
This inconsistency of intentions, interpretations, and motives extends to the
MILF’s politics. It claims to be fighting for a Bangsa Moro Republik, but has
agreed to negotiate with the Philippine government on the issue of autonomy.
It declares itself an Islamic movement and admits hosting members of al-
Qaida and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI, a Southeast Asian jihadist network) in the
past, but has sought the assistance of the United States in expediting peace ne-
gotiations and expresses no opposition to the presence of American soldiers
training Filipino troops in its areas. On the other hand, while it claims to have
removed foreign fighters from its ranks, “all evidence points to ongoing op-
erational and training links,” perhaps without central MILF control or ap-
proval.99 If the Malaysian and American governments do broker talks, there
is a distinct possibility of establishing lasting peace in Muslim Mindanao; this
is one reason the separatist issue has moved quietly to the margins of public
debate. But the Philippine government’s support for the American war on ter-
ror and JI–MILF links give it the potential to move quickly back to center
stage.
As the country’s original “outsiders”—within the Philippines, but outside
the church-state template from which the nation-state developed—it is not
surprising that Muslim intellectuals have a unique perspective on current con-
stitutional debates. Abraham Sakili of the University of the Philippines says:

If the Christian Filipinos have the so-called “Muslim problem” in the southern
Philippines, the Muslims of the south have also their “Christian problem.” “As-
similation” . . . could mean death to a culture and religion. . . . It is therefore ur-
gent for the Philippine government to alter the unity structure of its “assimila-
tionist” system of governance vis-à-vis the Muslims, instead of pursuing its
centrally directed so-called “Strong Republic.”100

Population Policy
A report released by the U.S. Council for Foreign Relations after the May 2004
elections cautions that Philippine economic recovery depends in part on how
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 295

the country deals with its high rate of population growth.101 Growing at its cur-
rent rate of 2.36 percent annually, the population—estimated at 84.2 million in
2004—will double by the early 2030s. According to the Asian Development
Bank, because “labor supply is outstripping labor demand,” the country’s
quickly rising population “does not permit a rise in per capita incomes suffi-
cient to provide the savings necessary among the poorest for the required
amount of capital formation for growth.”102 Yet according to economists
Alejandro Herrin and Ernesto Pernia, the country has lacked a consistent pop-
ulation policy during the decades other developing countries have been forg-
ing consensus and implementing policy on this important issue (see box 10.6).
Ferdinand Marcos, who strengthened the state in many other ways, was
also the first modern president to attempt to shape the family—a basic com-
ponent of society that had hitherto been subject to Church leadership. Ac-
cording to Herrin, the country’s first family planning program addressed “the
negative consequences of rapid population growth on the attainment of social
and economic objectives.” Recognition that the decisions of individual cou-
ples affected the nation justified state intervention in providing “information
and services as well as advocacy for a small family size.”103

Box 10.6. Why Population Matters

“To this day, the issue of why and how population matters remains crucial for this
country. Given its soft state and hard church, the Philippines has neglected the
population problematique, practically just sweeping it under the rug. Consequently, it
now finds itself virtually alone among middle-income developing countries as not
having made any significant demographic transition. And it finds itself having to
debate an issue that is passé for most Asian developing countries, including such less
developed countries as Bangladesh and India. . . .
“In the other East and Southeast Asian economies, sharp reduction in poverty has
occurred as a consequence of rapid and sustained growth, attributable to sound
economic policies coupled with strong population policy. These countries have been
benefitting from a ‘demographic bonus’ resulting from an increasing share of workers
(population aged 15–64) relative to young dependents (ages 0–14), while the
Philippines continues to be burdened by a ‘demographic onus’ (large share of young
dependents relative to workers). . . .
“The lack of a clear and consistent population policy . . . partly explains [the
Philippines’] anemic economic growth and persistent mass poverty. Some observers
would, of course, point to problems of poor governance, corruption and political
economy, or to exogenous shocks brought about by trade liberalization and WTO
rules as the culprit. The counterargument, however, is that these problems or
circumstances have also beset or affected the other Asian economies. And so the
question remains: Why have they consistently performed better than the Philippines?”
—Ernesto M. Pernia, “Population: Does It Matter?
Revisiting an Old Issue,” Philippine Star, August 16, 2003
296 Chapter Ten

The Marcos-era program—which condoned and provided modern (artifi-

cial) methods of birth control in opposition to Catholic Church teaching—
benefited from the Church being “deeply divided on how to protect its own
interests and continue to have the influence it thought it ought to over the
country.”104 The situation turned around completely from the mid-1980s un-
der the presidency of Corazon Aquino. Aquino came to power with the strong
backing of the Catholic hierarchy and, more than simply owing it loyalty,
“appeared comfortable with closeness to the Church.”105 The resurgence of
Church influence over this issue was reflected in her administration’s focus
on “the rights of couples to determine the number of their children” and was
institutionalized in the 1987 Constitution. Article XV, Section 3.1, states:
“The State shall defend the right of spouses to found a family in accordance
with their religious convictions and the demands of responsible parenthood.”
In the following decade (1992–2001), the emphasis of population policy
shifted back to “the effect of rapid population growth in constraining socio-
economic progress,” but because the program itself had been absorbed by the
Department of Health, “the promotion of fertility/population growth reduc-
tion” was diluted by that department’s emphasis on “the promotion of repro-
ductive health.” While not mutually exclusive, of course, the reality of lim-
ited funding blunted the state’s advocacy of smaller families. Under both
Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada, however, the state endeavored to make var-
ious means of birth control available to married couples who wanted to
“achieve their desired family size.” It is often pointed out that Ramos is a
Protestant and therefore personally less subject to Catholic Church influence.
Readers will also notice certain continuities between the state under Marcos
and under Ramos: Marcos militarized the country and maintained power
through martial law; Ramos, who was a senior military officer under Marcos,
also articulated a commitment to building a strong state. In contrast, the pres-
idents who followed Marcos (Aquino) and Ramos (Arroyo, after the Estrada
interlude) have been both personally “pious” and politically dependent on
Church support.
Arroyo’s administration continued to treat family planning “as a health in-
tervention, specifically as an element of reproductive health.” The president
initially took a tolerant position toward government promotion of modern
birth control methods—she acknowledges using “the pill” herself during her
child-bearing years—but bitterly disappointed women’s groups in 2002 by
cutting the Department of Health’s budget for purchasing artificial contra-
ceptives and further in 2003 by announcing that her government would pro-
mote “only the Catholic Church’s natural family planning method.” Arroyo
defended her policy with the assertion that most Filipino mothers are “con-
servative Catholics” who do not use artificial contraceptives.106 Yet the gov-
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 297

ernment’s own 2002 Family Planning Survey by the National Statistics Of-
fice showed that half the Catholic women practicing birth control “use artifi-
cial contraceptive methods such as pills, IUD, injectibles and condoms while
11.1 percent of them have resorted to permanent family planning methods
such as female and male sterilization.”107 That Catholic women generally are
trying to limit family size is shown by the country’s falling total fertility rate
(births per women)—from 4.4 in 1990 to 3.4 in 2000.108 Independent polling
confirms public approval of “the policy of reducing population growth and
the promotion of a wider range of contraceptive methods, including modern
artificial contraception,” developments to which the Church offers “persistent
and consistent opposition.”
Given Arroyo’s personal beliefs and political indebtedness to the Catholic
bishops for their support after the May 2004 elections, her policy stance is un-
likely to change. When a congressman introduced a “two-child” population
policy bill in July 2004, the president reiterated her support for “responsible
parenthood, enlightened birth spacing and free choice.” She rejected the major-
ity view of other economists that curbing high population growth was essential
to economic growth: “My priority now is not to deal with over-population to
overcome the challenges we face in social justice and economic development
but to go directly to the social and macro-economic issues that strike at the root
of these challenges.” Arroyo’s views were echoed by Mike Velarde, leader of
the conservative Catholic lay group El Shaddai:
The root of our problems is not population but corruption and mismanagement
of our resources. . . . When a father fails to use his God-given talent, energy
[and] resources wisely to feed his family, the tendency is to blame the number
of mouths to feed. When our leaders seem to run out of solutions or simply lack
the knowledge and ability to provide for the needs of the people, they begin to
conclude that the population, nay, the people is the problem.109

In support of the population bill, columnist Raul Pangalangan cites its aim
to provide “timely, complete and accurate information and education on re-
productive health as well as ready access to safe, adequate and affordable re-
productive health care services.” Pangalangan castigates those who conclude
that “the government should leave parents alone without help, without med-
ical advice, without access to contraceptives—and conveniently forget that
the right to choose requires knowledge and informed choice.”110
Herrin’s recommendations offer some hope of breaking through this im-
passe. He calls for the government to develop a “stable policy consensus” on
the issue, which would include opportunities for the Church and state to work
together: “An example of actual cooperation between the Catholic Church
and local government units is the joint implementation of a Natural Family
298 Chapter Ten

Planning (NFP) Program in the province of Pangasinan.” But in addition to

acknowledging the interests of the technocrats and the moralists, Herrin’s ap-
proach has an important democratic component: “There is a need to listen to
the larger, albeit unorganized and silent, constituency—the married couples
with unmet needs for contraception—whose consistent views are well docu-
mented in nationally representative demographic surveys and opinion polls.”

The Filipino Diaspora

At the end of 2002, some 7.5 million Filipinos were living outside the Philip-
pines. Over three million were classified as Overseas Filipino Workers
(OFWs), meaning that their stay abroad was tied to a work contract and they
were expected to return; another 1.6 million “of irregular status” were largely
overseas workers as well. The remaining 2.8 million were classified as emi-
grants or permanent residents of foreign countries, although it is impossible
to draw a distinct line between temporary and permanent residence abroad.111
Official OFWs fall into eight skill categories; the top three in the 1990s were
service workers, production workers, and technical and professional workers.
The growth of the service category in overseas labor coincided with its in-
creasing feminization, as the proportion of newly hired OFWs who were
women grew from 58 percent in 1995 to 72 percent in 2001.112 This develop-
ment mirrored the growth of the service sector in the domestic economy and
the fact that, at 64.4 percent of the working poor, women constitute “a sig-
nificant source of surplus labor.”113
The state “deploys” the official OFW workforce by screening candidates,
processing exit visas, waiving income tax, and (as a kind of alternative tax)
collecting a fee for an Overseas Employment Certificate each time an OFW
leaves the country. Likewise, the state depends heavily upon these workers
for remittances that averaged 22 percent of the country’s foreign exchange
earnings from 1995 to 2000. “Except for 3 years within the 1984–2000 pe-
riod,” Germelino Bautista reports, “the level of remittances has steadily
grown, thereby accounting for the increasing difference between GNP and
GDP per capita,” that is, between the country’s total income (which includes
remittances, loans, and other revenue from abroad) and the country’s domes-
tic production. “Remittances as a portion of GNP increased from 0.07% of
GNP in 1980 to 7.7% in 2000,” or about $6 billion.114 By 2003, remittances
had reached the $8 billion mark.
Yet another way of measuring the OFWs’ contribution to the nation-state is
to calculate their proportion in the country’s total employment, which was 3.1
percent in 2000. That is to say, more than 3 percent of the nation’s workforce,
who would otherwise swell the ranks of the unemployed, found work at their
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 299

own expense outside the national economy, yet consumed a substantial por-
tion of their earnings (via their families) within the national economy. Little
wonder that the state calls OFWs the nation’s “heroes” and accords them
small courtesies such as dedicated immigration counters at the country’s in-
ternational airports (an Erap innovation).
But the state cannot discharge its debt with such easy measures. This is be-
cause of the sacrifice OFWs make, especially women, a majority of whom per-
form “domestic work and cultural entertainment, health care and nursing,
where the pay is low and the nature of the work involves a higher exposure to
physical, sexual and other abuse.”115 Accounts of such abuse strike a sensitive
note among the Philippine public, which feels acutely the double weakness of
the OFWs’ situation—first forced by the weakness of the Philippine economy
to seek work in inhospitable circumstances and then left without practical re-
course because of the weakness of the Philippines’ international standing.
When the misfortune of a Filipino abroad includes death—the murder of an
entertainer in Japan in the 1980s, the death by execution of a domestic worker
by Singapore in the 1990s—it can become a major public issue.
This happened again shortly after Arroyo’s election in 2004, when a Fil-
ipino truck driver in Iraq was kidnapped by militants demanding the with-
drawal of Filipino troops from that country, where they formed part of the
U.S.-led coalition. Failing compliance, the militants promised to behead their
hostage. After a few days of unsuccessful negotiations, the Philippine gov-
ernment acceded to the kidnappers’ demands, bringing home its small con-
tingent of troops a few weeks ahead of schedule. This concession to terror
tactics occasioned howls of protest and derision from U.S. allies such as Aus-
tralia and Great Britain, as well as quieter disapproval and a symbolic reduc-
tion in aid from the United States itself. But it was seen as the proper course
of action by the vast majority of the Philippine public, which was no stranger
to politically motivated kidnappings and also the least opposed to U.S. for-
eign policy among nations surveyed in September 2004. Why? It was not for
the sake of one Filipino hostage, Filipinos argued, but to prevent the 1.3 mil-
lion workers remaining in the Middle East from becoming “targets of retali-
ation.” As Senate majority leader Francis Pangilinan acknowledged, the state
owed whatever help it could extend to its overseas workers, even at the tem-
porary expense of its alliances (see box 10.7).
Yet there is a great deal of ambivalence about the migration of Filipinos
abroad in search of economic security. In early 2004, a leading national news-
paper highlighted the case of a medical student from one of the country’s poor-
est provinces. Elmer Jacinto, who topped the year’s national examination for
medical doctors, announced his intention to acquire a nursing degree and pur-
sue employment in an American hospital, where a shortage of nurses was
300 Chapter Ten

Box 10.7. Why Philippine Troops Left Iraq Early

“It was an American politician who once said that all politics is local. True to that
maxim, our decision to advance our troop pull-out by a few weeks also was based on
certain realities in the Philippines that may not have been fully grasped by those who
have been critical of the move. Angelo de la Cruz, the man taken hostage, is one of 7
million Filipino workers scattered around the world. These workers have families back
home to whom they send their earnings. . . . The sacrifice they make because the
country has failed to provide them with adequate means to take care of their families
imposes a special responsibility on the government. The government may not always
be able to be there for them. But when it is within its means to act for their welfare,
there is a heightened sense that the government owes them everything it can do.”
—Francis Pangilinan (Senate majority leader), “Why Manila Left Iraq Early,”
Far Eastern Economic Review, July 29, 2004: 24

pushing up salaries and attracting “droves” of foreign medical professionals.

Jacinto’s action was met with disdain from nationalists, and the Philippine
Daily Inquirer editorialist called his decision a “sellout”:

This is what we have come to in this country of our afflictions, where young
(28), bright (magna cum laude in Medicine) offspring of middle-class profes-
sionals (teachers in mathematics, science and English), yet unencumbered by
the challenges of life (single, no children), throw in the towel before even put-
ting up a fight. What a sellout.116

Responses to the editorial—many coming from overseas on the newspa-

per’s website—were just as passionate and combative. Most overseas Fil-
ipinos vehemently defended their right to seek better employment in coun-
tries where their talents were appreciated. One wrote that “immigration has
always served as the safety valve for countries that could not provide for their
own. Immigrants left their country behind because their country . . . failed to
establish the environment that created jobs and a dynamic productive econ-
omy for the long run.” One doctor noted that the Philippines’ annual health
budget was only 3.5 percent of GNP—the World Health Organization rec-
ommends 5 percent—thus holding the government “partly to blame for the
exodus.” Another writer faulted the country’s political leadership:

I love the Philippines, sir. Our country simply made it impossible for me to have
the future my children deserved. I may be in a different country. At least I’m
earning a living, I follow the rules, and I pay taxes and know where my taxes
go. I could be in the Philippines, pursuing a career in politics, stealing the peo-
ple’s money for my son’s new [Honda] Accord. Sir, with all due respect, be-
tween me and the corrupt politician, who’s really selling the Philippines out?117
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 301

Others upbraided the newspaper for misplaced self-righteousness, contrast-

ing Manila’s elite journalists with the medical student from southern Mindanao:

Dr. Jacinto has every right and every reason to leave. He is not a wealthy scion.
He is not the son of newspaper owners and editors. While you were sleeping
soundly in your high-walled subdivisions, Dr. Jacinto’s village was being bru-
talized by a gang of thugs (including even the Abu Sayyaf). While you were
traipsing around in ridiculous outfits at Manila’s hippest parties, Dr. Jacinto
spent a [residency] year in the Philippine General Hospital caring for the poor-
est of the poor. Long after you handed your token donations, Dr. Jacinto was
just starting another sleepless day of working in the most horrendous of condi-
tions, sometimes shelling out his own minute resources to buy his patient’s
medicine.118

Several issues are discernible in these exchanges. First, the newspaper’s

unthinking shift from “hero” to “sellout” occurred along class lines. While
schoolteachers forced to work as domestics earn the paper’s sympathy, a
move up the economic ladder through education and emigration elicited a
charge of betrayal. But the response was not so unconscious of class cate-
gories: Many readers charged that the nation’s elite (for whom the editorial-
ist was a handy stand-in) had not delivered and therefore had no right to be
self-righteous about loving one’s country.
Second, the growth of Filipino migrant communities throughout the world,
in conjunction with the internet revolution of the 1990s, has profoundly af-
fected the territoriality of Philippine nationalism. Whereas we have written in
earlier chapters about “outsiders” who resided inside the Philippine state, we
are now confronted with “insiders” who reside outside the state. Because their
billion-dollar remittances are crucial in propping up the Philippine economy,
Filipinos who work or have migrated abroad are less diffident about making
their views known about the problems and future of “their” country.
The tone of the Jacinto debate suggests a greater confidence in the voices
from the diaspora. And starting in 2004, those voices can be institutionalized
through the implementation of the Overseas Absentee Voting Law. Registra-
tion was low for the 2004 election—only 357,782. This included 157,000 in
Saudi Arabia, 66,000 in Hong Kong, and 24,000 in Singapore, all sites of con-
centrated overseas Filipino workers. Those who registered and voted some-
times had to overcome significant obstacles. Domestic workers in Singapore,
for example, often have little access to information, “a day off only every
other week, once a month, or once in two months,” and no transportation to
the embassy, where registration and voting occur. Professional workers are
much more informed and able to vote. Will they translate their exposure to
competence and efficiency overseas into influence over elections back home,
302 Chapter Ten

demanding higher standards of performance from the Philippine state?119 Or

will they simply give up on the Philippines?

NOTES

1. Yvonne T. Chua, Robbed: An Investigation of Corruption in Philippine Edu-

cation (Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 1999); Gemma Luz
Corotan, “The Meteoric Rise of [Health Minister] Hilarion Ramiro,” Philippine Star,
November 9–10, 1995; Gemma Luz Corotan, “The NFA [National Food Authority]:
Tailor-made for Corruption,” Manila Chronicle, September 8–11, 1995; Sheila S.
Coronel, ed., Betrayals of the Public Trust: Investigative Reports on Corruption
(Manila: Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, 2000).
2. Zelda T. Soriano, “In Hot Waters,” Newsbreak, May 27, 2002: 22–23.
3. Karina C. David, “The Philippine Experience in Scaling-Up,” in Making a Dif-
ference: NGOs and Development in a Changing World, ed. Michael Edwards and
David Hulme (London: Earthscan Publications, 1992), 138.
4. Vincent Boudreau, Grass Roots and Cadre in the Protest Movement (Quezon
City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2001); Dorothea Hilhorst, The Real World
of NGOs: Discourses, Diversity, and Development (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila
University Press, 2003).
5. See these organizations’ websites: http://www.akbayan.org and http://www
.geocities.com/sanlakasonline.
6. Benedict J. Tria Kerklviet, “Contested Meanings of Elections in the Philippines,”
in The Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia, ed. R. H. Taylor (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), 163; Jennifer Conroy Franco, Campaigning for Democracy:
Grassroots Citizenship Movements, Less-than-Democratic Elections and Regime Tran-
sition in the Philippines (Quezon City: Institute for Popular Democracy, 2001).
7. Patricio N. Abinales, “The Enigma of the Popular Will,” I: The Investigative
Reporting Magazine, January–June 2004: 78.
8. Benedict R. Anderson, “Elections and Participation in Three Southeast Asian
Countries,” in Taylor, Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia, 14.
9. Glenda M. Gloria, “Bouncing Back,” Newsbreak, April 1, 2002: 8–10.
10. Coeli M. Barry, “The Limits of Conservative Church Reformism in the Dem-
ocratic Philippines,” in Religious Organizations and Democracy in Contemporary
Asia, ed. Tun-Jun Cheng and Deborah A. Brown (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, forth-
coming).
11. Sheila Coronel, “The Pare Principle,” I: The Investigative Reporting Maga-
zine, October–December 1998: 7.
12. “The Empire Strikes Back,” I: The Investigative Reporting Magazine,
July–September 1996: 10–11.
13. Luz Rimban, “In and Out,” I: The Investigative Reporting Magazine, October–
December 1998: 13–16.
14. “The Empire Strikes Back,” 10.
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 303

15. Luz Rimban, “Lights, Camera, Election,” I: The Investigative Reporting Mag-
azine, January–June 1998: 40–45.
16. The phrases were introduced by Sheila Coronel, executive director of the
award-winning Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
17. Aprodicio Laquian and Eleanor Laquian, Joseph Ejercito “Erap” Estrada, the
Centennial President (Vancouver, B.C.: University of Vancouver, Institute of Asian
Research; Quezon City: University of the Philippines, College of Public Administra-
tion, 1998).
18. Sheila S. Coronel, “The Man Who Would Be President,” I: The Investigative
Reporting Magazine, April–June 1996: 9.
19. Rigoberto Tiglao, “The Philippines,” Far Eastern Economic Review Yearbook,
1999: 185.
20. As quoted in Ben Reid, Philippine Left: Political Crisis and Social Change
(Manila: Journal of Contemporary Asia, 2000), 75.
21. Figures from electionworld.org, “Elections around the World,” at http://www
.electionworld.org/philippines.htm (last accessed October 15, 2004).
22. Emmanuel S. De Dios, “Corruption and the Fall,” in Between Fires: Fifteen
Perspectives on the Estrada Crisis, ed. Amando Doronila (Pasig, The Philippines:
Anvil Publishing, 2001), 47.
23. De Dios, “Corruption and the Fall,” 49.
24. Sheila S. Coronel, ed., Investigating Estrada: Millions, Mansions, and Mis-
tresses: A Compilation of Investigative Reports (Manila: Philippine Center for Inves-
tigative Journalism, 2001).
25. Sheila Coronel, “Erap and Families,” I: The Investigative Reporting Magazine,
July–September 2000: 5–10.
26. Mel C. Labrador, “The Philippines in 2000: In Search of a Silver Lining,”
Asian Survey 41, no. 1 (January/February 2001): 221.
27. Far Eastern Economic Review, April 15, 1999.
28. Patricio N. Abinales, “Governing the Philippines in the Early Twenty-First
Century,” in States, Markets, and Societies after the Asian Crisis, ed. Takashi Shi-
raishi and Patricio N. Abinales (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2005).
29. Asia Society and the Asian Development Bank, “Financing Asian Develop-
ment: Growing Opportunities in Asia’s Debt Markets (Report of a Study Mission to
the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea),” May 20–30, 1998.
30. The 2000 Philippines Yearbook (Manila: Fukien Times, 1999), 165.
31. “The Philippines,” in Asian Development Bank Outlook, 2000 (Manila: Asian
Development Bank, 2000), 108.
32. Cayetano Paderanga et al., “The Erap Economy,” in Doronila, Between Fires,
180–84, 188.
33. Asiaweek Magazine, June 2, 2000.
34. On jueteng revenues, see “Illegal Gambling Has a Grassroots Base,” Philip-
pine Center for Investigative Journalism and Institute for Popular Democracy Re-
ports, December 4, 1995.
35. “Jueteng Is Embedded in Local Society and Culture,” Philippine Center for In-
vestigative Journalism and Institute for Popular Democracy Reports, December 4, 1995.
304 Chapter Ten

36. For a comprehensive account of the ouster of President Estrada, see Amando
Doronila, The Fall of Joseph Estrada: The Inside Story (Pasig, The Philippines: Anvil
Publishing, 2001).
37. Jose V. Abueva, “A Crisis of Political Leadership: From ‘Electoral Democracy’
to ‘Substantive Democracy,’” in Doronila, Between Fires, 83.
38. Barry, “Limits of Conservative Church Reformism.”
39. Manuel L. Quezon III, “The May Day Rebellion,” Philippine Free Press, May
12, 2001.
40. Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon Bautista, “‘The Revenge of the Elite on the
Masses’?” in Doronila, Between Fires, 8–26.
41. Alex Magno, “The State of Rebellion Is Not a Proclamation—It’s a Descrip-
tion of the Situation,” UP Forum Online, May 2001, available at http://www.up.edu
.ph/forum/2001/5/magno.html (last accessed October 15, 2004).
42. Arsenio M. Balisacan, “Did the Estrada Administration Benefit the Poor?” in
Doronila, Between Fires, 101–2.
43. Emmanuel De Dios and Paul Hutchcroft, “Political Economy,” in The Philip-
pine Economy: Development, Policies, and Challenges, ed. Arsenio M. Balisacan and
Hal Hill (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2003), 65.
44. Doronila, Fall of Joseph Estrada, 256.
45. Glenda M. Gloria, We Were Soldiers: Military Men in Politics and the Bureau-
cracy (Quezon City: Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, 2003), 34.
46. Maria Lourdes Mangahas, “The Transactional President,” I: The Investigative
Reporting Magazine, April–June 2001: 6–8.
47. Mangahas, “The Transactional President,” 11.
48. Ma. Joy V. Abrenica and Gilberto M. Llanto, “Services,” in Balisacan and Hill,
The Philippine Economy, 256–57, 259.
49. Germelino M. Bautista, “An Assessment of the Philippine Economy,” Kyoto Re-
view of Southeast Asia 4 (October 2003): 18, 57, available at http://kyotoreview.cseas
.kyoto-u.ac.jp/issue/issue3/index.html (last accessed October 14, 2004).
50. Mangahas, “The Transactional President,” 7; Alejandro N. Herrin and Ernesto
M. Pernia, “Population, Human Resources, and Employment,” in Balisacan and Hill,
The Philippine Economy, 283–309.
51. “No More Ransoms,” The Economist, May 31, 2001. Anticrime groups re-
ported an average of four kidnappings a week by early 2002.
52. Romeo Gacad, “Lamitan under Siege,” and Ed Lingao, “Grease,” I: The In-
vestigative Reporting Magazine, July–September 2001: 26–30, 31–34, respectively.
53. On the power sector, see Luz Rimban, “In Haste, Government Approves Con-
troversial IMPSA Deal,” I: The Investigative Reporting Magazine, April 2–3, 2001.
On the retirement services and Department of Justice, see Sheila Samonte-Pesayco,
“Winning Winston,” and Malou C. Mangahas, “The Politics of Justice,” I: The Inves-
tigative Reporting Magazine, January–March 2002: 4 and 7–11, respectively. On gov-
ernment waste management, see Jet Damazo, “The Stink That Won’t Go Away,”
Newsbreak, March 18, 2002: 20–21.
54. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, “Towards a Strong Philippine Republic,” State of
the Nation address at the opening of the 2nd Regular Session of the 12th Congress,
July 22, 2002.
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 305

55. Ricky Carandang, “Fraport Ups the Ante,” Newsbreak, April 28, 2003: 30.
56. Rigoberto Tiglao, “Building a Strong Republic,” Newsbreak, January 6–20,
2003: 13.
57. Bangkok Post, August 4, 2004, 4.
58. Sheila S. Coronel, “The Problem with Gloria,” I: The Investigative Reporting
Magazine, April–June 2003: 18.
59. Manny Mogato, “America’s Agenda,” Newsbreak, February 13, 2002: 7–9;
Julie S. Alipala, “Mixed Signals from Sulu,” Newsbreak, March 31, 2003: 8–10.
60. Emmanuel De Dios, “Alarm over the Deficit,” Newsbreak, January 6–20,
2003: 6–7.
61. Rigoberto Tiglao, “Manifesto for a Strong Republic,” manuscript, 2003: 2.
62. Miriam Grace A. Go, “Mike’s Company,” Newsbreak, September 15, 2003:
18–20, 21; Miriam Grace A. Go, “Ping’s Coup,” Newsbreak, September 15, 2003:
22–25.
63. Quoted in Concepcion Paez, “Run Gloria, Run,” Newsbreak, November 10,
2003: 17.
64. Jo-Ann Q. Maglipon, “FPJ: The Man and the Myth,” Newsbreak, December
22, 2003; Uro Q. de la Cruz, “The Myth of Ang Panday,” I: The Investigative Re-
porting Magazine, October–December 2002: 10–13.
65. “The Party List,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, June 6, 2004.
66. Glenda M. Gloria, “Lethal Weapon,” Newsbreak, March 1, 2004: 11–20, 23.
67. Isagani de Castro Jr., “Preventing a Checkmate,” Newsbreak, May 10, 2004:
9–11.
68. Aries Rufo, “Sibling Rivalry,” Newsbreak, May 10, 2004: 14–15.
69. Loretta Ann P. Rosales, “The NPA as the New Mafia,” Newsbreak, March 1,
2004: 24; Luz Rimban, “Strange Bedfellows,” in Sheila S. Coronel et al., The Rule-
makers: How the Wealthy and Well-born Dominate Congress (Manila: Philippine
Center for Investigative Journalism, 2004), 218–26.
70. Tony Bergonia, “GMA Election Strategy: Blending Governance, Magic, Noli,”
Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 28, 2004.
71. Barry, “Limits of Conservative Church Reformism.”
72. Bergonia, “GMA Election Strategy.”
73. Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 28, 2004.
74. Emmanuel S. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis: The Real Score on
Deficits and the Public Debt” (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, School of
Economics, 2004), available at http://www.up.edu.ph/upse_on_fiscal_crisis/up%20
econ-the%20deepening%20crisis.pdf (last accessed November 15, 2004). Also pub-
lished by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (http://www.pcij.org) and
the Philippine Daily Inquirer. All quotations are taken from the first source.
75. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis,” 4, 10.
76. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis,” 3, 5.
77. Gerardo P. Sicat and Rahimaisa D. Abdula, “Public Finance,” in Balisacan and
Hill, The Philippine Economy, 116–17.
78. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis,” 5.
79. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis,” 6, 7.
80. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis,” 2, 9, 11.
306 Chapter Ten

81. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis,” 24–25.

82. Walden Bello, Lidy Nacpil, and Ana Marie Nemenzo, “Overdue, Selective,
Not Daring Enough,” available at http://www.focusweb.org/philippines/html/article
284.html (last accessed November 15, 2004). See also Walden Bello, Herbert Docena,
Marissa de Guzman, and Marylou Malig, The Anti-Development State: The Political
Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines (Quezon City: University of the
Philippines, Department of Sociology; and Focus on the Global South, 2004).
83. De Dios et al., “The Deepening Crisis.”
84. Unless otherwise noted, quotations in this section on presidential versus par-
liamentary government are taken from Miriam Grace A. Go, Maricar Veluz, and Adam
Apura, “Top Five Proposed Amendments,” Newsbreak, September 1, 2003: 18–19.
85. Jose Isidro Camacho, editorial, Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 13, 2003.
86. Manuel L. Quezon III, “The Origins of Celebrity Politics,” Philippine Daily
Inquirer, February 9, 2004.
87. Quezon, “Origins of Celebrity Politics.”
88. Neal Cruz, editorial, Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 28, 2004.
89. Quoted by Mynardo Macariag, “Arroyo Pushes for End to US-Style Govern-
ment,” Bangkok Post, August 2, 2004.
90. Marites Dañguilan Vitug, “The Race for Time,” Newsbreak, September 1, 2003.
91. Joel Rocamora, “Political Parties in Constitutional Reform,” available at the
Institute for Popular Democracy website, http://www.ipd.ph/features/july_2003/
political_parties.html (last accessed October 15, 2004).
92. Rocamora, “Political Parties in Constitutional Reform.”
93. Randolf S. David, “The Decline of Political Parties,” Philippine Daily In-
quirer, May 2, 2004.
94. Paul D. Hutchcroft and Joel Rocamora, “Strong Demands and Weak Institu-
tions: The Origins and Evolution of the Democratic Deficit in the Philippines,” Jour-
nal of East Asian Studies 3, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 259.
95. Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Glenda M. Gloria, Under the Crescent Moon:
Rebellion in Mindanao (Quezon City: Ateneo Center for Social Policy and Public Af-
fairs and Institute for Popular Democracy, 2000), 78.
96. Vitug and Gloria, Under the Crescent Moon, 114–16.
97. Thomas M. McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels: Everyday Politics and
Armed Separatism in the Southern Philippines (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1998), 183–84, 191–96.
98. Amina Rasul, “Poverty and Armed Conflict in Mindanao,” in Muslim Per-
spective on the Mindanao Conflict: The Road to Peace and Reconciliation, ed. Amina
Rasul (Makati City, The Philippines: Asian Institute of Management, 2003), 123–46.
99. International Crisis Group, “Southern Philippines Backgrounder: Terrorism
and the Peace Process,” July 13, 2004, available at http://www.crisisweb.org/home/
index.cfm?id=2863&1=1 (last accessed October 15, 2004).
100. Abraham Sakili, letter to the editor, Philippine Daily Inquirer, August 28, 2004.
101. Catharin E. Dalpino, “Challenges for a Post-Election Philippines: Issues for
U.S. Policy” (Washington, D.C.: Council on Foreign Relations, Center for Preventive
Action, 2004), 4.
 Twenty-First-Century Philippine Politics 307

102. Asian Development Bank, Economic Trends and Prospects in Asia: Southeast
Asia (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2004), 92.
103. Alejandro N. Herrin, “Consensus Lack Marks RP Population Policy,” Philip-
pine Star, August 23, 2003. All quotations in this section from Herrin except as oth-
erwise noted.
104. Barry, “Limits of Conservative Church Reformism.”
105. Barry, “Limits of Conservative Church Reformism.”
106. Domini M. Torrevillas, “A Stronger No-No to Artificial Contraception,”
Philippine Star, August 5, 2003.
107. Torrevillas, “A Stronger No-No.”
108. Asian Development Bank, Key Indicators of Developing Asian and Pacific
Countries 2002 (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2002), 46. Online edition, http://
www.adb.org/Documents/Books/Key_Indicators/2002/rt04.pdf
109. As quoted in Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 30, 2004.
110. Raul Pangalangan, “Passion for Reason,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 30,
2004.
111. Jose Z. Molano Jr., executive director, Commission on Filipinos Overseas,
Department of Foreign Affairs, letter to the editor, Newsbreak, August 2, 2004.
112. Odine de Guzman, “Overseas Filipino Workers, Labor Circulation in South-
east Asia, and the (Mis)management of Overseas Migration Programs,” Kyoto Review
of Southeast Asia 4 (October 2003), available at http://kyotoreview.cseas.kyoto-u
.ac.jp/issue/issue3/index.html (last accessed October 15, 2004).
113. Bautista, “Assessment of the Philippine Economy,” 27–37.
114. Bautista, “Assessment of the Philippine Economy,” 18–20.
115. Guzman, “Overseas Filipino Workers.”
116. Editorial, Philippine Daily Inquirer, March 4, 2004.
117. “Gretchen,” Ontario, Canada, letter to the editor, Philippine Daily Inquirer,
March 4, 2004.
118. Dr. Kim Arvin P. Lopez, University of the Philippines College of Medicine,
2003, cointern of Elmer Jacinto, letter to the editor, Philippine Daily Inquirer, March
6, 2004.
119. Lala Rimando, “Voting Away from Home,” Newsbreak, May 10, 2004: 12–13.