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The Impending Crisis in the Philippines
| Article
# : |
11757 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
2,547 Words |
| Author
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Ray S. Cline
Ray S. Cline, former CIA deputy director for intelligence, is
chairman of the United States Global Strategy Council. |
A little over one year ago, Ferdinand Marcos with his governing entourage was maneuvered into leaving the presidential palace in Manila and going into exile in Hawaii. Corazon Aquino, his popular opponent in the patently fraudulent February 1986 elections, became undisputed president. The multiple disasters that struck the Philippines in the 1980s had thoroughly discredited the aging dictator. Unfortunately, events in the Philippines since the elections have proved to be beyond Aquino's competence to significantly change for the better.
Despite the constitutional plebiscite on February 3, 1987, that confirmed Aquino in office for another six years, political violence, Communist Party-sponsored guerrilla insurgency on a massive scale, and economic stagnation still cloud the future. "Cory," as the nickname-addicted Filipinos call their new leader, is in increasing danger of becoming the Jimmy Carter of the Philippines. If she cannot build a more effective government than she has to date, the Philippines may become the odd man out of the otherwise dynamic West Pacific region.
The trouble is Aquino is more public-relations image than political reality, especially in her own country. The majority of the Filipino people are desperately poor and stricken by widespread unemployment. They know they are likely to stay that way so long as public order is constantly being shattered by armed terror attacks by the revolutionary New People's Army (NPA) or local police and military detachments. Business activity cannot pick up in the 20 percent of the countryside dominated by the NPA. All the glamor of "people power" simply did not improve public order, economic welfare, or business dynamism in the first 12
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