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The Philippines: An Economic Diamond in the Political Rough
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17860 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1990 |
1,600 Words |
| Author
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Richard Martin
Richard Martin, a writer at Insight Magazine, specializes in
Asian affairs. |
It has been four years since Corazon Aquino was swept into office as president of the Philippines, riding the yellow-bannered People Power revolution that deposed the 24-year dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
In those giddy days of 1986, when the Filipino people seemed ready to unify at last and create a functioning prosperous democracy in the beleaguered island nation, not even the most pessimistic forecaster could have predicted the mess that the housewife-turned president now finds herself in.
Even before the December 1 coup attempt, which turned Manila's financial district into an urban battleground, Aquino's political fortunes were in decline. Her approval rating had fallen from 79 to under 60 percent for the first time in her presidency. Public confidence in her government had evaporated, for the same reasons that the mutineers of early December would cite: Aquino has failed to revive the decimated economy rapidly enough. Internally, her government is languishing from corruption and the threat of the Communist New People's Army. In some ways Aquino has been the victim of the jubilant expectations her peaceful takeover inspired; her greatest failure has been the inability to relieve the rural misery of Filipinos.
The ambitious land reform program, one of the cornerstones of the Aquino administration, has stalled completely in bureaucratic wrangling and financial scandal. The program, intended to break up the huge estates common in the rural Philippines and dilute the communists' recruiting base by increasing the standard of living, was delayed and watered down in Congress by the powerful landholders' lobby. Soon after its inception, it was
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