This fierce competition illustrates the extent of the malaise inside the majority. The politicians have two worries: the danger of a military coup on the one hand, and the 1992 presidential elections on the other. In this particularly unstable context, local patronage and the intensity of the conflicts of interest between the big tamilies are un- interest between the "big families" are undermining the national political blocs. In fact, from the May 1987 election victory onward the majority bloc began to break up: last September, vice-president of UNIDO Salvador Laurel had already publicly broken with the government.
The "reformers", , who have been pushed to the political sidelines, are worried about this. Joaquin Bernas - the dean of Ataneo Catholic university, an influential member of the "Jesuit mafia" and an former advisor of Corazon Aquino — noted that "the bitter and intense rivalries between families and families, between burgeoning dynasties... are tearing the nation apart"4
So the fragmentation of the ruling coalition is continuing. It is one of the most persistent features of the institutional system set up after the overthrow of the Marcos dictatorship. This breakdown is impelled by the main social base of the Aquino regime: the big provincial families coming from the traditional elite. It is aggravated 1. See "Aquino scores another personal triumph" by Paul Petitjean, /V 123, June 29, 1987. 2. Cited by Kim Gordon-Bates, Le Monde, January 19, 1988. 3. UNIDO is a coalition of small right-wing political groups. 4. Cited by James Clad, Far Eastern Economic Review, 11 January 28, 1987, p.17.
March 7, 1988 • International Viewpoint
A ROUND 150,000 candidates competed for the votes of 27.6 million voters to win the 73 provincial governments and some 1,500 municipal councils — in all, around 17,000 seats of varying importance. According to the Electoral Commission, participation in the elections was high (at least 80%). But we will probably have to wait a long time before the complete results are known. A number of disappointed candidates are challenging the count, and in 11 provinces voting was postponed for "security reasons"
In May 1987, at the time of the legislative elections, the presentation of national slates for senatorial seats had given a semblance of political clarity to the consultation. There was a slate of candidates backed by the president standing against a left slate and two extreme right-wing ones. But already relations between the big provincial families — apart from any political programme — had profoundly influenced the composition of parliamentary alliances.! The January 18 elections marked a clear victory for patronage and for the local "political dynasties". . To hell with principles -turncoats are part of the system - and Aquino's supporters welcomed a growing number of ex-collaborators with the Marcos dictatorship into the majority.
Corazon Aquino, the very Catholic president, had promised to ensure a "moral" functioning in the government and institutions. She played, and continues to play, cleverly on her image as an honest woman, far removed from the base concerns of politicians. Although her charisma had faded somewhat is was not extinguished, and in order to be sure of winning candidates fought for her endorsement. It is therefore very significant that her own family today is being taken to task in the press and in political circles for excessive nepotism.
Patronage prevails in "her" province, Tarlac, to such a degree that both voters and candidates have to fall in behind one of the three factions of the families of her late husband and her own, the Conjuangcos. There are two clans for the presidential majority (those of her brother "Peping" and of her brother-in-law, "Butz"), and a clan which supports the right-wing opposition (that of her cousin Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, in exile in the USA). This is what they call a democratic choice!
The Aquino-Cojuangco family candidates have spread outside of their own province, looking mainly to establish them-
PHILIPPINES by the unceasing pressure of the army on the regime. An electoral victory does not of itself guarantee political stability. This was dramatically illustrated by the failed putsch last August 28, instigated by Colonel Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan only three months after the triumphant success of the presidential slates in the May 1987 legislative elections.*5
Colonel Honasan was finally captured on December 9, 1987. He probably fell victim to the faction struggles inside the general command. However, he still has serious backing. Other seditious officers are still at large, such as Brigadier General Jose Maria Zumel and Lieutenant Colonel Reynaldo Cabauatan. The threat of a coup d'état has not been removed. Raising the accusation of a plot, General Fidel Ramos put more than 200,000 soldiers and police on a state of alert on January 18, voting day. The army thus gave a forceful reminder to the government and the population that democracy continues to be under the shadow of military power.
Defence Secretary Rafael Ileto resigned at the end of February, noting that all his efforts to reform the army had failed. He is going to be replaced by General Ramos, the current chief of general staff. The dividing line between civil administration and military bodies is becoming increasingly blurred. Although he belongs to a "clan", General Ramos used to like to portray himself as a pure "professional". Today, he is up to his neck in big-time politics and barely conceals his presidential ambitions.
The Aquino regime is not the same as that led by Marcos. The Marcos' regime got along quite nicely without elections, or else held rigged votes. It denied elected institutions any real authority, accepted no independent parties and imposed an extreme state centralization, the instrument of personal dictatorial power. Today, electoral confrontations play a real role in the political system. Congress is not under Corazon's orders. And presidential power is eroding as the power of the "families" rises.
However, a double historical heritage has shaped both the Aquino and Marcos regimes. One long-standing aspect is the weight of the clans, which leads to a continual privatization of the public administration. The other, more recent, is the role of the military caste that came into politics with the establishment of martial law, and which intends to keep its hand in. What this in fact reflects is the real social content of Philippine democracy (and of the dictatorship before: namely, the interests and impasses of a bourgeoisie dependent on its links with imperialism, which is incapable of breaking from the shackles of the debt, and of the traditional elites, who are incapable of breaking with clientelism in order to bring about a genuine modernization of this bourgeoisie's state. 12 different family group interests, electoral Being so rooted in the struggle between International Viewpoint • March 7, 1988 jousts can easily become bloody affairs. The last campaign cost the lives of around 100 people, of whom over 40 were candidates. Although this is distinctly less blood-letting than in some of the elections before martial law, it is still no small thing. Indeed, it demonstrates that it is foolhardy to take on the ruling "families" seriously in politics without body guards for protection - and, therefore, without the money to pay them. Aquino-style Philippine democracy excludes de facto what the Marcos dictatorship excluded de jure: genuine free participation by the popular organizations in institutional political competition.
Corazon Aquino contends that she wants to fight the communist guerrillas, but the repression is hitting all the popular movements. Threatened by assassination, the legal left leaders are permanently insecure. Since the murder of Lean Alejandro*6, pressure has increased on the coalition of mass organizations, Bayan (of which Alejandro was general secretary), on the Volunteers for Popular Democracy (VPD) and on the Partido ng Bayan (People's Party), as well as on other progressive formations and personalities like Doctor Prudente, president of the University Polytechnic, near-victim of an attack last November 10
Land occupations by the peasants have been decreed illegal, since the agrarian reform law has not yet been passed. The needy must wait on the good will of the big landowners who sit in Congress. On October 20, Corazon Aquino announced an order to "the police and other peacekeeping authorities to give full assistance to the labor department to remove all illegal strike blockades at the factory". She explained to an assembly of businessmen that "a special peacekeeping force had been organized and was now being trained to enforce return-to-work orders and injunctions. ."*7
After having given the army a free hand for its rural counter-insurgency operations, the president thereby in practice declared war on the militant workers' movement -and already the most elementary workers' rights were very often not being respected by the bosses. However, nothing reflects the elitist and repressive social character of the Philippine political system better than the formation of "vigilante" groups, real private armies of the bosses. Since the end of 1987, they have mushroomed right across the archipelago. Para-military organizations or fanatical religious sects, they are virulently anti-communist and systematically create insecurity and terror locally. Amnesty International gave an early warning about this problem: "(we are) worried...by the extra-legal exactions perpetrated by the vigilantes, financed and equipped by local authorities, either civil or military."*8
On October 22, 1987, Corazon Aquino publicly gave her backing to the top vigilante group, Alsa Masa of Davao, in the southern isle of Mindanao. She called on the civil population of the country to participate actively in the battle against communism" by joining up with vigilante groups. Despite the cautious language used, she thus legalized the savage parallel-police repression she previously condemned. She gives the most sinister implications to the declaration of "total war" against "communism" issued after breaking off peace negotiations between the government and the National Democratic Front. Protests have grown since the president came out behind the "vigilantes" Karina Constantino-David, deputy ministet of social affairs, resigned from the government. The human rights movements, all the independent left from the
Partido ng Bayan to the socialist organization Bisig, have vigorously condemned the official support given to terrorist para-military groups.
The anti-dictatorial uprising in February 1986 raised democratic hopes both within the social elite and among the working people. The elites have got back their democracy — elections in which victory is determined by corruption, armed force and clientelism. Workers and peasants today are rediscovering the insecurity they had previously fought under Ferdinand Marcos martial law. * 5. See "Aquino under the shadow of the gun" by Paul Petitjean, /V 126, September 28, 1987; and "L'armée philippine défie ouvertement les institutions démocratiques" by Pierre Rousset, Le Monde diplomatique, October 1987. 6. See /V 127, October 12, 1987 (and Erratum /V 128). 7. Corazon Aquino, "Speech before businessmen at the Manila Hotel, October 20, 1987", Chronology of Events 38, October 1987, p.11. 8. Amnesty International, SF 87 RN033/ASA 35/05/ 87. Substantial extracts from this report were published in Philippines informations 59, December 1987.
N RELATION to the Soviet Union today the question therefore arises: have the internal reforms introduced by Gorbachev been accompanied by corresponding changes in the country's foreign policy? (At the same time the extent and character of the changes in Soviet foreign policy should be able to shed light on the real nature and depth of the internal reforms.) Changes in Soviet policy in the area of the East-West arms race have been the most striking.
Gorbachev's domestic policy, the perestroika, has its origins in the need to improve Soviet economic performance that, by various indices, has been declining since the middle of the 1970s. The basic idea of the economic reform is to replace the centralized, "administrative" system of management with a decentralized system coordinated through a market mechanism. The role of the center in this system will be limited to longer-term strategic planning, accomplished through regulation of the market mechanism by manipulating such economic levers as taxes, interest rates, subsidies, controls on foreign trade and a limited number of centrally fixed norms and prices.
The other side of the perestroika is political reform, what Gorbachev calls "democratization", but which is really more of a liberalization in the sense of increased individual freedoms and protection against official abuse of power. As for democratization - empowering ordinary people to decide major questions of public life — this has been of a very limited and halting, though in the Soviet context not negligible, character.
Bureaucratic interests threatened by the reform
Gorbachev himself has called democratization the very essence of the perestroika. This reflects his understanding that powerful bureaucratic interests are threatened by the reform and their resistance can be overcome only if there is popular pressure in favour of the reform. At the same time, since the economic reform will not be able to significantly improve consumption for a number of years (indeed, many workers view the reform as immediately threatening), the political reforms are a necessary measure in order to mobilize the working class behind it.
Politically, then, the perestroika has entailed a certain shift - albeit unstable and hesitant — in the political base of the regime (that is, the central power: in the last analysis the politburo). It has moved away from the position it had assumed under Brezhnev, as spokesperson and arbiter of bureaucratic interests, and has attempted through changes of style and substance to acquire a more popular base, one that
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