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The Perils of Corazon
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# : |
11508 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
2,005 Words |
| Author
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Stephen A. Garrett
Stephen A. Garrett is professor of international policy
studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in
Monterey, California. |
One of the paradoxes of politics is that it is often easier to make a revolution than to run a country after the revolution succeeds. In the struggle to overthrow an oppressive dictator or a foreign occupier, people of varying political stripes can rally around the single-minded goal of ridding the nation of the evil besetting them. Differences in ideology and visions of the future can generally be muted in the interests of achieving a united front devoted to the immediate purpose of the revolution. Once "victory" has been achieved, however, there is no longer any unifying force binding together the disparate elements of the revolutionary movement. It is at this point, then, that a challenge arises perhaps greater than any faced in the past: how to translate the fruits of victory into a durable program of progress for the country.
Recent developments in the Philippines testify to the essential truth of the above proposition. President Corazon Aquino, during the first triumphant days of power following the ouster of the Marcos regime, asked for a 100-day "honeymoon" during which she would lay the foundation for a fundamental restructuring of Filipino life. To a considerable extent the afterglow of her successful "People's Power" campaign to topple President Ferdinand Marcos provided her with a margin of grace to begin the hard work of reforming Filipino society. She now faces one of the familiar aftereffects of such honeymoon periods: the necessity of coping with and adjusting to the sometimes dreary and certainly fractious details of day-to-day governance. More substantively, the current challenge facing Aquino is to persuade a majority of Filipinos, including important segments of the power elite, that she is up to the task of transforming that nation in a coherent and positive
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