By the Policy Study, Publication, and Advocacy
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
July 23, 2013*
Benigno S. Aquino III’s first three years as president only further entrenched elite rule in all major aspects of governance, politically and economically. Ruling political clans are more ensconced in high and local positions among them numerous fellow oligarchs and allies of Aquino. High GDP statistical growth is being hyped to cover up the rising income inequality between the super-rich – including Aquino’s financial backers – and majority of Filipinos who continue to wallow in untold poverty.
Three years of empty promises nuanced by presidential vacillations and inaction only point to an “Ampaw presidency” – deceptively sweet and solid outside but only hot air inside. (Ampaw is a street lingo for a blowhard or for someone full of hot air.)
In the end, Aquino’s overrated “Kayo ang boss ko” (the masses are my boss) shibboleth is hypocritical and meaningless. Such deceptive phrase has been repeated over and over again a la Goebbels the motive being to hide the truth. And the truth is that Aquino’s real bosses are his fellow political oligarchs, big business, and the Obama administration.
To begin with, Aquino defied the constitutional ban and public clamor for an end to political dynasties by campaigning openly for a cousin for the Senate and numerous leaders of traditional clans to ensure their election at all levels in the recent fraud-ridden mid-term elections.
Elite rule
The mid-term elections further entrenched the dominance of political clans in 95% of the country’s 80 provinces, according to CenPEG Board chair Prof. Temario C. Rivera. Indications are that the generations-old system of political dynasties has not only perpetuated but became more entrenched in both Congress and local levels under Aquino.
The results of the recent mid-term elections that were automated by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the Venezuelan marketing company, Smartmatic, remain questionable and lack credibility, according to CenPEG Fellow Dr. Felix Muga II. Efforts by election watchdogs led by the Automated Election System Watch (AES Watch) to junk the highly-defective, fraud-prone Smartmatic technology were foiled by Aquino’s executive intervention in an April 2012 Supreme Court mandamus case filed by the poll watch group who asked that the voting machines’ purchase by the Comelec be voided. The president’s support for Smartmatic underpinned Malacanang’s and Comelec’s exclusionary policy against the development of a Filipino election technology that, IT programming guru Dr. Pablo R. Manalastas said, can otherwise be developed indigenously.
Recently, Aquino defied the public outrage over the latest P10-B pork barrel scam by retaining a controversial P27B outlay for Congress in the guise of Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) in the 2014 budget. The president’s nod on the retention of pork barrel is a clear message of presidential tolerance if not tacit endorsement of corruption on the pretext of seeking “cooperation” with Congress to ensure passage of Malacanang’s priority bills. Political patronage, opportunism, and trade-offs continue to bind the chief executive and legislature thus allowing high-profile corruption to come into full play.
As Rivera says, “By its very nature, this system lends itself to opportunistic, short-term negotiations and alignments with the legislative body driven not by commitments to a strategic set of reform legislation but by the narrow and immediate concerns of individual legislators particularly in the lower House.”
Whatever slight improvement in public perception of Aquino’s “anti-corruption program” there is has been molded by the Corona impeachment. Outside this, no comprehensive and institutional reform has been set in place to curb corruption. In fact, recent reports show an upsurge in corruption at the local level particularly local government units (LGUs) and the police. Corruption and inept bureaucracy has driven away foreign investments, to say the least, making the country least attractive to foreign investment in Southeast Asia today.
Not really dead-set
Proof that Aquino is not really dead-set in fighting corruption is his lack of political will in pushing through the Freedom of Information Bill (FOI) bill. In the absence of FOI, it takes gallant whistleblowers to expose high-level corruption and other high crimes. Yet they risk death threats no thanks to inaction by Aquino for an effective witness protection program. As CenPEG legal counsel Felix Carao, Jr. puts it, “The best instrument in fighting graft and corruption is freedom of information.”
The much-hyped GDP growth of 7.8% does not tell the whole truth. CenPEG analyst Prof. Ben Lim says, “While Aquino’s economists and business cronies as well as foreign financial experts extol about the phenomenal rise in the country’s GDP growth, they were silent on the fact that along with the GDP rise is the sensational rise in the prices of all basic commodities including tuition. They were also silent that the mid-term expenditures contributed to GDP growth.”
People are skeptical however of the economy booming at a breakneck pace, Lim says. “They see no progress or improvement in their daily lives…Twenty-five million Filipinos or 27.9% of the country’s population are living in poverty – largely the same as in previous years. Wages of those employed have not caught up with inflation.”
The poverty figures, however, should be higher given that the number of jobless Filipinos – including the underemployed – has grown by one million to 11 million under Aquino. Based on IBON Foundation and Fortune magazine reports, the net worth of the 40 richest Filipinos has more than doubled dramatically under Aquino – from $22.8B in 2010 to $47.4B in 2012. Their net worth is equivalent to the combined income of 60M Filipinos – and is likewise equivalent to over one-fifth (21%) of the 2012 GDP. At no time has income inequality and social injustice been more glaring and brazen than under Aquino.
Like a drone
Similarly, the country’s foreign policy has never been more tightly bound to the U.S.’ global security policy than under Aquino. Prof. Roland G. Simbulan, another CenPEG Fellow, says since 2010, the president has placed foreign policy “in the hands of Albert del Rosario and security policy with Voltaire Gazmin, both considered to be very close to Washington circles. Lately, the two have been arrogating foreign policy and security policy formulation from the president, and have acted as articulators and spokespersons of Washington and Pentagon in Malacanang.”
Simbulan, an authority on foreign policy, said Aquino's foreign policy “highlights a restoration of U.S. military forces in the Philippines. Not only that. On a strategic level, this foreign policy has adjusted itself to be beyond being a supporting column of Pentagon policy in the Asia-Pacific. It has become like a drone, directed by Washington and Pentagon for surveillance and as an attack dog to those who challenge U.S. hegemony in the Asia Pacific region.”
Dean Julkipli Wadi of the UP Institute of Islamic Studies criticized Aquino’s non-inclusive peace roadmap saying that current Government of the Philippines-Moro Islamic Liberation Front (GPH-MILF) talks will not necessarily silence the guns in Bangsamoro, southern Mindanao. Past peace agreements with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) have not been fully implemented and thus remain a thorny issue, Wadi said. Aquino did not heed a popular call from Moro groups to pursue a comprehensive peace process. As a result the GPH-MILF talks will not only be more protracted but will remain unsettling given lingering issues with the MNLF, Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, and the Sabah claim. Wadi doubts whether the GPH-MILF peace process will be completed when Aquino’s term ends in 2016.
But it is with the Left’s National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) where peace talks have been stalled by Aquino’s refusal to uphold previous agreements such as the Joint Agreement on Security and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and Humanitarian International Law (CARHRHIL). The Aquino government remains in the blacklist of international human rights watchdogs, including the Washington-based Human Rights Watch, for the military’s culture of impunity given the continuing politically-motivated extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances, and other rights violations.
Huge expectations were cast in 2010 on the Aquino presidency to undo the damage wrought to the country by previous presidents and begin the sweeping constructive reforms that two people power revolts – in 1986 and 2001 – fought for. But the Aquino mystique is too big an illusion that even expectations to deliver the people’s basic minimum rights such as food, jobs, and social services can never be addressed. The piecemeal achievements that he mentioned in his 4th State of the Nation Address (July 22, 2013) are not equal to the “transformation” that he had pledged in his first SONA of 2010. This is not unexpected from a bourgeois reformist president – who shows the motions of reform with band-aid solutions but fails to address the fundamentals of real change, in short, pro-status quo.
In the final analysis, the country’s social, economic, and political challenges are beyond the presidency and prudence dictates that the country’s future should be laid squarely in the people’s hands themselves.
What the Presidency should now do in the next three years is to fill in substantively the vacuum inside the sweetened "ampaw" that it continues to build around his elite rule. But will he?
* This Issue Analysis was based on the assessment by 10 Fellows of CenPEG on Benigno S. Aquino III’s first three years as President during the center’s pre-SONA 5th State of the Presidency (P-Noy, sino ang boss mo?) round-table discussion held July 20, 2013 at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. The assessment was introduced by CenPEG Executive Director Evi L. Jimenez and summed up in a synthesis by CenPEG’s director for policy studies. Roundtable discussion moderator was CenPEG Fellow Prof. Carl Marc Ramota. For copies of the assessment paper, please go to www.cenpeg.org in the story "3 years of Aquino only entrenched elite governance"
For reference:
Bobby M. Tuazon
Director for Policy Studies
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
3F CSWCD Bldg., Magsaysay Avenue
UP Diliman, Quezon City
TelFax +9299526; email info@cenpeg.org, cenpeg.info@gmail.com