Commentary
Arroyo and the Making of a Weak Republic

This is the man that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wants the public to emulate? How could Diosdado Macapagal inspire this nation to build a "strong republic" when his legacy was one of toadism, when he destroyed what could have been a strong bedrock of our economy, when his steps ensured political and economic disaster for all of us? Today, his daughter makes no secret of her mission to follow these steps. That can only mean more disaster for all of us - and for her.

By CARLOS H. CONDE
Bulatlat.com

With her exaggerated State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 22, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo achieved two things: distort history and make a commitment that, mark my word, she could not possibly achieve. I am talking about her reference to her father, the late president Diosdado Macapagal, as an exemplar of a great leader and her mission to create a "strong republic."

Every chance she gets, President Arroyo would mention her father's name and tell the public how great a leader he was. In her SONA, President Arroyo pointed out that he inspires her in making the Philippines a "strong republic."

But history is rather clear on Diosdado Macapagal's legacy. More than any other man in his time, he was instrumental in weakening the republic. He reversed the Filipino First Policy that his predecessor, Carlos P. Garcia, had started to put in place. This policy sought the nationalization of industries so as to make them more efficient and competitive. It sought to do what strong republics ought to do: to ensure that the local economy is strong before it even thinks of opening up to the world.

What Diosdado Macapagal did was collaborate with the United States and implement what was called a "full decontrol" of the local economy. As a result, the growth of local industries was stunted as foreign goods started to flood the country and as U.S. big business elbowed out local business.

The United States did not want the local industries to develop and to grow strong because that would mean competition for their goods and the local market. And they found in Diosdado Macapagal the right man to strengthen their imperialist policies in the country. It was during Diosdado Macapagal's time that the United States began discreetly manipulating local politics and economy by, for one, using the multilateral agencies such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Through these agencies, the United States wanted the Philippine government to pass favorable foreign investment laws.

What the United States did not foresee, however, was that the nationalist sentiment in the Senate would grow strong and that Diosdado Macapagal, though much-vaunted as the quintessential America's Boy, would not deliver on their wishes. The result was another example of how Diosdado Macapagal contributed, in a way, to further weaken the republic: the United States shifted its support to a political genius named Ferdinand Marcos. The rest is history.

It can be argued that, if not for the political weakness and the collaboration of Diosdado Macapagal with the United States, there would have been no Marcos. If he was indeed the great leader that her daughter paints him to be, he should have realized that the U.S. policies he implemented was enfeebling his country. Perhaps, in a moment of greatness at a time when nationalist fervor was strong, he could have reversed the course set by the United States. But he was such a weakling that he failed to find his conscience. He failed to stand up to his imperialist master. If he did, he could have prevented Marcos's rise to power.

This is the man that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo wants the public to emulate? How could Diosdado Macapagal inspire this nation to build a "strong republic" when his legacy was one of toadism, when he destroyed what could have been a strong bedrock of our economy, when his steps ensured political and economic disaster for all of us? Today, his daughter makes no secret of her mission to follow these steps. That can only mean more disaster for all of us - and for her.

A burlesque of a SONA

President Arroyo identified "two essential features (that) mark out a strong republic." These are, according to her, "independence from class... interests so that it stands for the interests of the people rather than of a powerful minority." The second is the "capacity, represented through strong institutions and a strong bureaucracy, to execute good policy and deliver essential services...." If these two ideals are achieved, she said, there would be "faster economic development and social reform."

Let me focus on the first feature; I am convinced that the second relies so much on the first - that is to say, how the wheels of government and bureaucracy grind depends largely on the whims and wishes of the governing class. A corrupt bureaucracy, for example, augurs well for an elite whose very survival hinges on the inability of genuine democracy to function, on the failure, for example, of as basic a democratic precept as checks and balances, whose malfunctioning is a result of corruption. Thus, any attempt to clean up the bureaucracy was designed to fail under this setup.

To hear Mrs. Arroyo mouth the line - that her administration would need "independence from class" interests in order to achieve a "strong republic" - sent a chill down my spine. The phrase, if viewed from the context of "independence from the RULING class," connotes a revolution; it is Marxism at its most basic, which posits that in order for the people to be really free, they have to unshackle themselves from the domination of the ruling class, the elite to which Mrs. Arroyo belongs.

Of course, Mrs. Arroyo did not say she would overthrow the ruling class; she merely said a strong republic requires "independence" from "class interests." She didn't even say that she would attempt to achieve such independence. Still, her point could mean that she would try to betray her class -- the same thing Corazon Aquino said when she promised to implement genuine agrarian reform.

Class interests, however, are so dominant in our national life that it alone was the reason why Cory never kept her promise. What makes Mrs. Arroyo think that she can be different from Cory?

An important context to all this is that Mrs. Arroyo is not just an American toady (she was responsible for the law that led to the country's foray into liberalization to benefit the United States; that single act alone should demolish her pretensions for waging her own "class struggle") but a very, very shrewd politician who is not averse to stabbing the back of her own allies just to achieve her ambitions. This is proven by the many times she had changed political parties since she was a senator. In fact, in the same week that she hinted at freeing the country from the influences of class interests, she appointed balimbing par excellence Blas Ople as the country's new foreign affairs secretary, ostensibly to break the impasse at the Senate but really to firm up her chances in the 2004 elections. The appointment was just the latest display of her talent to make compromises, public interest be damned.

With the 2004 elections less than two years away, and with Mrs. Arroyo leaving nothing to chance by making sure that she would be the one to present to media common criminals (dragging them, horrors!, to the halls just so they can be photographed with her), what are the odds that she would make good on her promise to deflect the various class interests that make Malacaņang look more like a brothel and gambling den than a Palace supposedly of great leaders?

Maybe Inquirer columnist Neal Cruz was right when he said that we are making too much out of her SONA when it was actually nothing but words. Maybe all this is an exercise in futility because Mrs. Arroyo's SONA was, indeed, nothing but a show, a performance in a gallery full of leering politicos.  We knew that the moment she tried to sound cute by referring to her height. It was an obscene burlesque. Bulatlat.com

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