Philippine Elections: Under the Watch of Uncle Sam

The May 10 presidential elections should not be expected to be any different. As it has always been, the U.S. bet is a sure winner and he or she who dares to go against the flow from within the existing framework may very well expect to be harassed in various ways. The U.S. is the real decision-maker in the present Philippine electoral process; no one has been able to ascend to Malacañang, and stay there, without its blessings.

By Alexander Martin Remollino
People’s Media Center Reports
Volume 3, No. 2, May 2, 2004
Posted by Bulatlat.com

As Filipinos flock to the polls on May 10, not only the nation’s eyes will be keenly focused on the conduct and outcome of the elections. International eyes will also be keenly watching the elections, namely a group of American international observers.

The observers’ presence begs the question of why the U.S. is so interested in the Philippine elections. While supporters of the observers say their presence will help prevent cheating, critics such as Anakpawis party-list national chairman Crispin Beltran denounce the move as a threat to clean elections and national sovereignty.

A look at the history of Philippine elections proves that despite the declaration of the Philippines’ independence from the U.S. in 1946, the Philippines remains a neo-colony of the US. The U.S. uses the elections as another way to continue to ensure their economic and political control over the Philippines.

Love letters

In a letter last Jan. 28, Executive Secretary Alberto Romulo wrote to Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Benjamin Abalos to propose the invitation of international observers to the May 10 elections, supposedly to help “protect and enhance” its credibility.

On Feb. 16 the Comelec chair wrote back: “The presence of international observers will send a message to the world that democracy in the Philippines, while relatively young, puts absolutely no one above the sacred process of election, and that leaders are chosen only by the genuine will of the people.” The proposal was formally approved by the Comelec two days later.

Though looking like an initiative of Malacañang, it was — as reported in the press — actually premised on an offer of the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) to lead an international observer team to monitor the coming presidential polls. (It is unclear, however when exactly the offer was made.)

Secretary Romulo was also quoted in media reports as having said that the NDI offered to consult other U.S.-based groups such as the International Republican Institute (IRI) on the possibility of their participation in a bipartisan and multinational delegation to the Philippines.

An advance team of observers came to Manila in the first week of March to discuss rules for the deployment of the observer team with Comelec officials. The U.S. Agency for International Development, (USAID) a U.S. government organization which describes itself as a “humanitarian” organization working to promote U.S. economic and foreign policy interests, provided the advance team with initial funding of $75,000. (U.S.)

Malacañang spokesperson Ignacio Bunye had been quoted in the news as saying that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shared Romulo’s enthusiasm in welcoming the foreign observers.

Last April 23 it was reported in the newspapers that the U.S. would be sending not just 50, but 100 observers to monitor the coming election. The observer team, the reports said, would be coming over under the auspices of the USAID in cooperation with the Consortium for Elections and Political Processes Strengthening (CEPPS).

This time Malacañang, through deputy presidential spokesperson Ricardo Saludo, is trying to take some distance from the foreign poll watchers.

“All the monitoring arrangements need some concurrence from the (Comelec), which has to clarify whether such an undertaking would compromise our sovereignty and the independence of the electoral process,” said Saludo, apparently unaware that the proposal to invite foreign poll observers had been approved by the Comelec months before.

Beltran, chair and first nominee of the party-list group Anakpawis, has criticized the forthcoming presence of U.S. election observers saying: “The U.S. should not be allowed to interfere in the May elections. The U.S. can only be up to no good by sending its observers who are, no doubt, operatives of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). They have an ulterior agenda, and no doubt this agenda is in line with the U.S. efforts to maintain its stranglehold and influence over Philippine politics and government.”

A closer look at the background of the observer team gives reason to believe Beltran’s statement.

Observing the observers

The CEPPS is composed of the NDI, the IRI, and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).

The NDI, which had offered to lead the international monitoring group, is not new to Philippine elections.

In 1986, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan also sent an observer team (which included the NDI) to monitor the snap presidential elections called by Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who was under intense public pressure to resign.

Said Reagan in a statement on Jan. 30 that year: “This election is of great importance to the future of democracy in the Philippines, a major friend and ally of the United States in the Pacific. It comes at a time when the Philippines is struggling with the urgent need to reestablish a political consensus, restructure the economy, and rebuild a sense of military professionalism.”

Marcos had been forced to call a snap election to prove that his government still held the interests and mandate of the Filipino people, amid armed and legal opposition to the martial rule he imposed in 1972.

Marked by fraud and violence, the snap election was widely denounced and the U.S. observer team joined in condemning the official results. Public indignation came to a head in the next few weeks, leading to Marcos’ ouster through a people-power revolt on Feb. 25 and the installation of his opponent, Corazon Aquino, into the presidency.

Aiding “democracy”

In its website, the NDI is described thus: “The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs…is a (non-profit) organization working to strengthen and expand democracy worldwide. Calling on a global network of volunteer experts, NDI provides practical assistance to civic and political leaders advancing democratic values, practices and institutions. NDI works with democrats in every region of the world to build political and civic organizations, safeguard elections, and to promote citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.”

The NDI thus appears to be a neutral entity with the sole mission of fostering democracy throughout the world. But its background reveals much more than meets the eye.

The NDI, identifying itself with the U.S. Democratic Party, is one of four organizations affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), an organization funded by the U.S. government ostensibly to “carry out democracy initiatives” internationally. Other organizations affiliated with the NED are: the IRI, representing the U.S. Republican Party; the Center for Private International Enterprise (CPIE, US Chamber of Commerce), and the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations).

Beyond “democratic” rhetoric

Created by the U.S. Congress in 1983, the NED promotes the doctrines of minimal government intervention in the economy or free-market economics, class “cooperation,” “pluralism,” and opposition to socialism. It propagates the “virtues” of the American economic and political system among the influential sectors of its target countries, making sure that socialist ideas do not gain ground. For its work, the NED receives from the U.S. government an annual budget of some $33 million, which it channels to the four foundations affiliated with it and from these to professional and employers’ associations, universities, media, judiciaries, churches, and certain “dissident” movements.

Contrary to the democratic facade that is provided by its name, the NED has been known to support authoritarian governments in the Philippines and other Asian countries, as well as in South and Central America, and other regions — while toppling duly elected ones. In 1991, Allen Weinstein, one of those who drafted the law creating the NED, said: “A lot of what we do today was done 25 years ago by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).” The NED has worked closely with the CIA in covert operations, such as the failed CIA-instigated plot against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April 2002.

The plot against Chavez’s nationalist government in 2002 is reminiscent of the CIA plot against the left-leaning government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Supported by the CIA, the Chilean military staged a coup against the democratically elected Allende government, resulting in the Chilean president’s assassination and the installation into power of the fascist Augusto Pinochet.

The true colors of the NED become more obvious when one takes into account the fact that among the members of its Board of Directors are Dr. Francis Fukuyama of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI).

The PNAC is an institute openly advocating U.S. global leadership. In its Statement of Principles, signed June 3, 1997 by Fukuyama and others, the PNAC declares thus: “We need to accept responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.” It also speaks of the need “to challenge regimes hostile to our (U.S.) interests and values.” The PNAC promotes the Reaganite doctrine of active intervention in other countries.

The AEI describes itself as a “think tank” devoted to “preserving and strengthening” what it calls the “foundations of freedom” — limited government, private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and a strong foreign policy and national defense — through scholarly research, open debate, and publications.

The “scholars” associated with the PNAC and the AEI, such as Fukuyama and Novak, are among the most vocal defenders of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush’s global interventionist policies.

Marcos and U.S. observers

The U.S. has always paid lip service to democracy, but it has never balked at supporting anti-democratic regimes that are friendly to its economic and foreign policy interests, while at the same time working against democratic governments that assert national sovereignty. As former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said of a certain Latin American dictator, “He may be a son of a bitch, as long as he is our son of a bitch.”

In the Philippine context, the U.S. has always maintained a policy of supporting dictators that are friendly to its economic and foreign policy interests. The U.S. still supported the Marcos administration at the height of martial law, when state forces violated civil liberties and other human rights with the highest impunity.

Marcos was the fair-haired boy of the U.S. while he was an able protector of U.S. interests in controlling the economy of the Philippines and influencing its politics and military.

In a number of media interviews, Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo has said that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is represented by the CPIE in the NED, was one of the first entities to congratulate Marcos upon the declaration of martial law. In 1983 George Bush, father of the present U.S. president and then U.S. vice president, said to Marcos: “We love your adherence to democracy.”

The servility of the Marcos regime to U.S. interests generated a social crisis which fanned the flames of dissent. To avert the revolutionary tide, Marcos imposed martial law in 1972. Armed and, later, legal opposition to authoritarian rule forced Marcos to make a pro-forma lifting of martial law in 1981. But U.S. support for his government continued up to the last days of February 1986, when the broad resistance to his continued leadership had come to a head and already constituted a considerable danger to the U.S. interests he was serving.

Crucial points

It is within this framework that the NDI offer to lead a team of observers to monitor the May 10 presidential elections must be viewed. For all its pretensions to safeguarding democracy, the observer team which will monitor the May 10 elections will be doing so with the objective of protecting the U.S. agenda of continuing its domination of the Philippine economy, politics and military; and ensuring that whoever will next sit in Malacañang will be a loyal accomplice in its quest for global “leadership.” That is clear from the NDI’s affiliations.

It is only now, since 1986, that the U.S. is once again sending a monitoring group to take watch over the Philippine electoral process. There are similarities between 1986 and 2004; at no other points in contemporary Philippine history have there been surrogate regimes so loyal to the U.S. and at the same time so alienated from the people.

Like the Marcos regime, the Arroyo government is distinguished for unleashing a crisis upon the Filipino people with its degree of servility to the U.S. agenda.

Under the aegis of U.S.-imposed pro-globalization policies, the Arroyo government has been wiping away all regulation of foreign investment, at the expense of the people’s livelihood and the country’s environment. Because of this, local enterprises have been closing down at alarming rates due to unfair competition, exacerbating the unemployment problem. The “right” of profit repatriation that foreign investors, without obligation to transfer technology, have been enjoying at levels previously unimaginable is worsening the decapitalization of the Philippine economy and swelling the foreign debt.

Meanwhile its support to the U.S. interventionist agenda, which it has been giving without being asked, is risking the lives of Filipinos overseas. Filipino workers abroad have been subjected to hate attacks in countries opposing the U.S. wars of aggression, as they are perceived to be also supportive of it like their government.

All these have unleashed a wave of public outrage against the Arroyo administration—an outrage that has expressed itself in numerous mass protests.

The NDI-led observer team may well be expected to lend legitimacy to the May elections, by pronouncing its results as “credible” when the circumstances favor U.S. interests. Right now the U.S. is still seen as supportive of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo whose recent actions, such as the sacking of a Comelec public information officer who pointed out her violations of election laws in the conduct of her campaign, are seen as indicative of a pattern of fraud. It was no less than Bush who last year encouraged Arroyo to run in the May elections, some five months after public discontent forced her to appease the people by declaring she would not run.

On the other hand, the U.S. Congress and State Department have recently come out with statements criticizing the Arroyo government for incompetence in the face of corruption and terrorism. This developed just as anti-Arroyo forces from both the Left and the mainstream opposition have been gravitating toward a broad front against her.

Rewind

U.S. interference in Philippine elections is not new. In fact, the entire Philippine electoral system traces its roots to the U.S. occupation.

The U.S. occupation of the Philippines was part of a larger drive for additional markets for the products of American factories.

In the latter part of the 19^th century, the U.S. economy experienced a rapid industrial growth, characterized by an increase in manufactured goods which outran the demand for these. In the words of Sen. John F. Miller: “The time has now come…when new markets are necessary...in order to keep our factories running.”

The expansion campaign was one that took the U.S. to the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. U.S. forces took part in the Philippine war against Spanish colonialism in 1898, supposedly to help free the Filipinos, only to set up an occupation government in 1901.

The U.S. occupation of the Philippines, although clearly in the furtherance of American corporate interests, was justified with the guise of “tutelage in the democratic way of life.” In line with this, the U.S. established an electoral system in the Philippines.

The first Philippine elections were held in 1907. In these elections to the National Assembly, only propertied men 21 years old and above, and able to write or speak Spanish or English, were eligible to vote and qualified to run. The U.S. tapped the local elite for “national” leadership as historically, moneyed classes in colonized countries have tended to collaborate with occupying powers in order to retain their positions of social privilege.

The next decades would see the further entrenchment of a Philippine elite leadership serving as the local appendage of U.S. imperialism.

Direct U.S. occupation of the Philippines continued until 1946, when independence was “granted” after decades of determined struggle by the Filipino people, but the Philippines continues to be bound by economic and military “agreements” which shape Philippine policies to ensure that these will be favorable to the U.S. agenda.

In the post-“independence” setting, the U.S. has interfered in the electoral process whenever personalities or parties it considered threats to its interests surfaced.

In 1946 the U.S. supported moves to unseat from Congress six elected members of the Democratic Alliance (DA), a broad formation of leftist elements and progressive liberals united on the program of assertion of sovereignty and advancement of nationalist industrialization. Staunch opponents of the Bell Trade Act which granted U.S. corporations equal “rights” with Filipino businessmen in exploiting the country’s economic resources, the DA’s representatives constituted a block to a two-thirds vote on the said bill. President Manuel Roxas and his political allies, with the aid of the U.S., filed ouster cases against the DA representatives on spurious grounds of electoral “terrorism.” They succeeded in unseating them and the Bell Trade Act was able to pass in Congress.

The late 1940s and early 1950s saw the emergence of Claro M. Recto, a brilliant statesman who advocated nationalist industrialization and an independent foreign policy. As a senator in 1953-57, he came into frequent clashes with President Ramon Magsaysay, a staunch U.S. ally. When Recto competed against Magsaysay in the 1957 presidential elections, the CIA orchestrated a sophisticated smear campaign against him and his running mate Lorenzo Tañada. At the same time it built up the candidacy of Magsaysay, organizing and funding the National Movement for Free Elections which served the dual purpose of a pro-Magsaysay propaganda arm and election “monitor.”

It worked; Recto and Tañada were badly defeated.

Carlos P. Garcia emerged from that election as the new president—Magsaysay having perished in a plane crash while on the campaign trail. Though far more moderate than Recto, he adopted certain parts of the latter’s economic program, embarking on a Filipino First Policy. For this, the Garcia administration suffered from continuous U.S. harassment and almost met its end through CIA-supported coup attempts.

No illusions

The Philippine electoral system creates an illusion of empowerment among the Filipino people. It is always projected as a “civilized” way of effecting change in the country’s conditions.

But throughout the Philippines’ history, the Filipino people’s will has always ended up in the dustbin of the electoral process. Philippine elections have always served to lend a semblance of legitimacy to the leadership of politicians from classes with a historical record of willingness to sacrifice the national welfare for the sake of U.S. economic and foreign policy interests. The emergence of leaders constituting a counter-current to the status quo has invariably been met with maneuvers by the U.S. and its local henchmen.

The coming presidential elections should not be expected to be any different. As it has always been, the U.S. bet is a sure winner and he or she who dares to go against the flow from within the existing framework may very well expect to be harassed i    I n various ways. The U.S. is the real decision-maker in the present Philippine electoral process; no one has been able to ascend to Malacañang, and stay there, without its blessings.

There should thus be no illusion on the part of the electorate that by depending entirely on the present electoral process, the people can catapult into power a leadership decidedly committed to the national interest. Such a leadership can only come to power through the concerted action of the Filipino people to break the chains of Philippine bondage to the U.S. economic and foreign policy agenda. People’s Media Center Reports / Posted by Bulatlat.com 

Sources: 

1. Barbara Mae Dacanay with Estrella Torres, “Commission on Elections Agrees with Arroyo Plan to Invite International Observers,” Gulf News, Feb. 22, 2004

2. Jerome Aning with Inquirer wires, “U.S. to Field 50 Observers to Monitor May Elections,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, Feb. 26, 2004

3. Concepcion Paez, “Guess Who’s Coming to Our Elections?” Newsbreak, March 29, 2004

4. Maila Ager, “2 Foreign Groups Sign Up to Monitor May 10 Election,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 23, 2004

5. “Anakpawis Presses Arroyo to Prohibit the Entry and Interference of U.S. Intelligence Experts in the May 10 Polls,” Anakpawis News Release, April 24, 2004

6. Gil C. Cabacungan Jr., “U.S. Sending 100 Observers to Monitor RP Polls,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 26, 2004

7. United States Agency for International Development, http://www.usaid.gov/

8. National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, http://www.ndi.org/

9. National Endowment for Democracy, http://www.ned.org/

10. Roland G. Simbulan, The Bases of Our Insecurity, Second Edition, Quezon City: BALAI Fellowship, Inc., 1985

11. Bobby Tuazon, Edberto Villegas, Jose Enrique Africa, Paul Quintos, Ramon Guillermo, Jayson Lamchek, and Edwin Licaros, Unmasking the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialist Hegemony and Crisis, Quezon City: Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies, 2002

12. Project for the New American Century, http://www.pnac.org/

13. American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, http://www.aei.org/

14. Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited, Manila: Tala Publishing Corporation, 1975

15. Renato Constantino and Letizia R. Constantino, The Philippines: The Continuing Past, Manila: Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1978

16. R.E. Felicia, Walang Ilusyon sa Eleksyon: Praymer sa Eleksyon ng Mayo 2004, Manila: Institute of Political Economy, February 2004

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