Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) has been a very smart president of the Philippines. She came to office in 2001 on the back of a second people’s power ‘revolution’ that some considered illegitimate.

joseph estradaBut in her first three years, she showed considerable smarts, getting the economy back in shape after the actor-fool president Erap Estrada (right), deposed by the military and street demonstrators, had made a thorough mess of it. She has a PhD in economics, and mastered the basics quickly. Growth was restored.

There was one problem. Every Filipino president since the innovative dictator Ferdinand Marcos, save Cory Aquino, has, in either beneficial or detrimental ways modeled him/herself on Marcos.

Fidel V Ramos knew Cousin Marcos’s methodology of governance, rectified it and put it to good use. Estrada just took all the bad from Marcos and none of the good.

gloria arroyo macapagalGMA came in with only a legacy to leave behind: she had an almost guaranteed decade of power ahead, a reformer president as her father and a rich mother and husband to negate her need for presidential plunder.

A wise seer of Filipino politics, who has served in every presidency from Macapagal - in 1965 -onwards, noted to me from the start of her rule how she emulated Marcos detail by detail. He told me that when Diosdado Macapagal, her father-president, learned that he had lost his re-election bid, he refused to jiggle the election results while there was still time.

GMA, told of this, showed disgust at her dad’s democratic principles. He was thus reluctant to support her ascent from vice-presidency to the palace itself.By now, thought to be the ‘most corrupt president’ ever in a survey, she is only looking at the end-game, how to preserve power after her term ends in 2010, to avert corruption charges and possibly prison.

It’s even harder than in Marcos’s days, when ‘people power’ overthrew him. There are subpoenas that can be issued internationally in this new era. The billions she and her husband, ‘First Gentleman’ (FG) Mike, have allegedly amassed, won’t buy safety anywhere outside the archipelago, and are dubious protection at home.

So her current game plan is manifestly to change the constitution from a presidential to parliamentary form. Guess who could emerge the prime minister, Malaysian style?

How would she ensure that? Money talks. She has given handouts of cash even to priests right inside the palace, it is reported, and uses virtually all her vast powers to stay in office and keep her supporters in line. Allegations have just surfaced that members of Congress received literally bags of cash to oppose the annual attempt to impeach her.

Her recent efforts have been to obtain a congressional mandate for constitutional change, and the wags are counting as she approaches the magic number of 196. But there’s also the problem of the Senate. Constitutional change would almost inevitable close down the Senate for good.

No senators want that, and anyway, six of them want to be president. So the palace would like the Supreme Court to declare that a ‘joint session’ of the Houses, where the lower chamber has a huge majority, would vote whether to move ahead on ‘Cha-Cha’. The senate has thus been the biggest barrier to her.

Failing that, she goes to the Supreme Court, where she appointed nine of 15 judges, and will presumably be able to appoint six more next year. A brilliant associate justice told me recently that they can already feel the pressure.

But the Supreme Court is no pushover. There is so much procedure that stalls the process; it might be next March before it would come before that august bar. It is possible that the chief justice would resign rather than go along with such a move on her part.

Malaysian model preferred

The last and final step would, of course, be emergency rule or even martial law. Marcos staged an incident in 1971 that has now been proved to be phony, a bombing that left several senators maimed.

The culprit, beyond Marcos, was Juan Ponce Enrile, who at 84 has just been elected senate president. He managed to arrive late for the rally where the bombing took place.

Some of the most revered civilian leaders of the republic have reportedly gathered to ready some counter moves.

They are counting on enough generals to stand firm against emergency rule, and to install a ‘ruling council’ that would systematically cleanse the political sector of its worst miscreants once and for all, and immediately give a date for new elections and a constitutional convention to revise the sacred 1987 document.

GMA’s attendance would not be welcome; she would be shipped off to her San Francisco real estate empire.

So we anticipate a bombing probably here in the business district of Makati, that would have the apparent footprints of Muslim separatists from Mindanao, as pretext for constitutional change.

And all because of money politics - 20 percent would seem as enough to most of us. When the son of House speaker Jose de Venetia Jr negotiated a broadband contract in China for about US$120m, the FG told him famously to ‘back off’. This one was for the first family and they were to get a 200 percent cut. That’s inflation.

Numerous knowing negotiators had to be silenced with high jobs or big payoffs; they were only “trying to limit the greed involved”, one of them famously testified.

Oh. the problems of the rich and powerful: allegedly the FG had another even larger ‘bonus’ and transferred it to the hands of his congressman-brother, whose wife happens to be a resident of California, where a half-entitlement goes with divorce, guaranteed and absolute.

Guess what - the wife is suing for divorce. So apparently the FG has to decide whether to write off his foolishly placed investment or expose its sources.

Whether it’s a fertiliser scam (now in the news) or huge per diem payments for properly vetted bureaucrats travelling abroad, it’s all there is in the news these days. ‘Reform’ politics resides now only with a lone former priest elected governor of the president’s home province, Pampanga. He is a lonely voice, and the big boys are even trying to recall him.

Good governance is a long way off in the Philippines, and lots of people are fearing that they will wake up tomorrow to the sound of tanks in the street.

In the Philippines ‘the Malaysian model’ is proffered as the way to do it: foreign investors channel 20 percent of their capital to the ruling in Kuala Lumpur, Filipinos believe. Therefore any investor must put 20 percent of the money into whatever party a president has used or created in the Philippines to propel himself to power.

kl city view 130306But at least Malaysia has a lot to show for the investment - economic growth has stormed ahead despite world economic vicissitudes. The other 80 percent does its good.

In the Philippines, though, corruption actually affects the economic powerhouse itself, the worst form of corruption.

Corruption drives the process, rather than being a function of it. The fundamental problem among Filipinos is that politics is not just mainly about money, it’s only about money.

This is not corruption where a cut is taken from the cow’s milk coming out of the barn; it’s the alteration of the barn itself so that only designated cows can come out. The result is a lot fewer cows and a lot less milk.

One can only wish any new reformers the best of luck, for they’ll definitely be running against the grain.


PROF W SCOTT THOMPSON is a national security expert who served four American Presidents and is a professor emeritus at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is the author or editor of 13 books on world political issues and resides in Washington, Bali and Manila.