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Not Just Electoral Fraud
(Last of two parts)

The crisis is no longer just about electoral fraud. The economic crisis resulting in mass unrest, the lack of business confidence, and the political crisis due to rebellion have come together into a final crisis for the Arroyo government.

By Antonio Tujan Jr.
IBON Research Director
Posted by Bulatlat

IBON Features - By confirming that the Hello Garci tapes were genuine, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo did not achieve any moral high ground nor quash any speculation since her admission fell short of what the tapes implicated her with. Instead, her admission fueled another level of popular rejection since she did not accept any wrongdoing, preventing closure on the matter and fuelling another level of speculation as to her political fate.

The Hello Garci tapes may be so damning of a President’s ethics and legitimacy that one would think that it is more than enough for a public official to resign in a democratic country. Definitely many have resigned on much less such as the Watergate scandal for Richard Nixon of the United States. But the Philippines is not a Western democracy where ethics of a nation’s leaders are meant to be unassailable. Our leaders do not act that way at all.

Hoping the opposition runs out of steam

President Arroyo has two aces up her sleeve in this crisis. She continues to enjoy direct and indirect support of the status quo - direct support from her coalition that includes links to parts of the powerful Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and big business, and indirect support from pillars of the status quo who consider another People Power too much destabilization for the country. Her second ace as an incumbent is the tremendous advantage of control over the state and its resources.

If Arroyo played her cards right and properly mobilize the resources and support at her disposal, then she could ride out the scandals and protests until they run out of wind. In the end, she is still on top as President of this country.

Such a strategy would work if this crisis were only about jueteng scandals and Hello Garci tapes imputing electoral fraud. But this is no longer the case as the economic crisis resulting in mass unrest and lack of business confidence and the political crisis due to rebellion have come together into a final crisis for the Arroyo government.

It does not follow, however, that Arroyo’s days in Malacañang are numbered, in lower digits.

While the opposition has achieved much in pushing its case of electoral fraud, the matter has not been concluded and will not take its natural course of removing the President from office. Either this must be pursued legally-- which will not be likely unless the administration’s stronghold on Congress is broken-- or the Supreme Court takes a different track, or politically depending on the course of events. Either way the opposition must sustain its efforts to push its case in the months ahead.

Congressional solution?

The irony is that Arroyo’s presidency started not with the ballot but with Congress whose majority elected her in office through its controversial canvass. The burden now again rests on the same Lakas majority in Congress who, away from the prying eyes of the public, has sustained Arroyo’s control over the state. It will be an uphill climb for the opposition to unseat Arroyo through congressional action, since Congress has always been the hallmark of opportunism in the form of “turncoatism” and recently the “rainbow coalition” politics of accommodation.

The legal issue is also difficult for Congress since it is not only the presidency that is in question, but the presidential elections itself. Disqualifying Arroyo does not necessarily mean that the Vice President will automatically succeed. In the same vein, a successful people power uprising will obviously not unseat Arroyo only to put Noli de Castro in Malacañang. The opposition candidate Loren Legarda may lay claim to the office, but such claim may also be weakened by other arguments.

Calling for snap elections does not necessarily provide the options for stability and would simply be a facile attempt to find a peaceful way out of a crisis that started with the failure of the 2004 elections.

Because of this situation plus other more important considerations of building democracy from the shambles of this government, the option of a representative governing council is more workable towards a peaceful transition to a truly representative government. But Arroyo, and her supporters in and out of government are not about to relinquish power for national interests.

President Arroyo needs earthshaking positive impact to draw mass support, isolate the political opposition and sideline the issues currently facing her. That is an extremely difficult act for her to accomplish in time for the State of the Nation Address since there is practically nothing much left for her to offer the people. The government is bankrupt and heavily indebted, it is fighting an insurgency it is not capable of winning, it is unable to stamp out criminality and terrorist bandits, it needs to slap more taxes to the people than give them economic relief and welfare, ad nauseam.

Probably the only thing keeping the administration going is the support of the US, which needs her administration to work in order to continue the US agenda of pursuing the war on terror in Mindanao and ensuring that the country remains an important ally. Thus, despite the government’s bankruptcy, the US has supported its capacity to continue borrowing through the bonds markets abroad and has poured a few billion dollars in the past few years in military and economic aid.

Military option

But President Arroyo’s main front of strength is the military. While talk of coup plots is rife and the military is generally vulnerable to political influence from the opposition, the Arroyo regime counts among its key pillars the dominant leadership in the military and police forces. Thus it will not be easy for those who seek her removal to weaken her control of the most important element of the state and her political power.

When we projected at the start of the year that Arroyo will take the path of authoritarianism, this was based on the emerging trends in 2004 such as the growth of opposition, possibilities for unification of the political and popular opposition, intensification of the economic crisis and the deterioration of the political crisis which would make it untenable for the administration to operate in the old way. This is not a matter of choice but of necessity, in that the growth of the insurgency and Arroyo’s dogged belief in her presidency as legitimate arbiter and defender of the status quo, confidence in US support, commitment to the US agenda and failure to find civil alternatives in the face of intensifying opposition will make an authoritarian version of her administration the necessary alternative.

However, Arroyo’s main political support comes from political parties and groups that belong to the anti-Marcos, anti-dictatorship camps. While this may seem to pose a quandary for Arroyo and prevent her from taking an openly militaristic authoritarian regime, Arroyo’s repressive authoritarian option will use the anticommunism as its facade as these parties also belong to the rabidly anticommunist clerico-fascist groups, or are allied with them.

As the first months of the year have shown, the military authorities of the Arroyo administration are not reticent in intensifying the political crisis by anticommunist witch-hunting and widespread assassination of leaders of people’s movements and outspoken intellectuals. This would indicate the growing boldness of the military leadership and confidence in their dominant position in the Arroyo regime.

National consensus for change and unity

Many Filipinos bewail the current political crisis, which is just the culmination of seven years of continuous political crisis under the Estrada and Arroyo presidencies. It would seem that people are tired of instability, people power and crisis.

On the other hand, Filipinos have experienced more than thirteen years of dictatorship and two people power uprisings against unpopular governments. They now know that playing musical chairs in Malacañang does not really make a difference and only exacerbates the problems of instability and economic crisis. People now talk of genuine change, policies that are genuinely responsive of the people’s welfare and interests. The next task is to build national unity to realize that change. IBON Features / Posted by Bulatlat

IBON Features is a media service of IBON Foundation, an independent economic policy and research institution. When reprinting this feature, please credit IBON Features and give the byline when applicable.

Posted by Bulatlat

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