The Arroyo Imbroglio in the Philippines

The Arroyo Imbroglio in the Philippines

Over the course of Arroyo’s seven years in office, an already crisis-prone democracy has faced an unusually high number of travails… As the Philippines suffers one political crisis after another, its longstanding democratic structures become increasingly imperiled.

By Paul D. Hutchcroft

(Paul D. Hutchcroft, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, has written extensively on Philippine politics. He is author of Booty Capitalism: The Politics of Banking in the Philippines (1998), and is completing a book on patronage structures and territorial politics in the twentieth-century Philippines. This article is published in the January 2008 issue of Journal of Democracy published by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy and The Johns Hopkins University Press.)

With the exception of Ferdinand Marcos, who held power from 1965 to 1986, no one in Philippine history has had a longer tenure in the presidential palace than Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She first assumed the presidency in January 2001, when a “people power” uprising ousted President Joseph Estrada from Malacãnang Palace and elevated her from the vice-presidency to the highest office in the land. After serving out Estrada’s remaining term until 2004, Macapagal-Arroyo was elected for another six years. Term-limit restrictions require her to step down in 2010, after what will be nearly a decade in office.

In the midst of this longevity, the Arroyo administration has found political legitimacy to be elusive. President Macapagal-Arroyo’s assumption of office through extraconstitutional means provided a weak initial mandate. Over the course of her seven years in office, an already crisis-prone democracy has faced an unusually high number of travails, including an uprising by the urban poor that nearly breached the walls of the presidential palace on May Day 2001; a botched military mutiny in July 2003; corruption scandals involving the first family; allegations of presidential involvement in fixing the 2004 elections; a failed coup-attempt-cum-popular-uprising in February 2006 that led to the declaration of emergency rule; concerted attacks on the press; an alarming spike in extrajudicial killings; impeachment attempts in 2005, 2006, and 2007; two major bribery scandals in late 2007, one involving the chief election officer and the other, brazen cash payouts from the Palace to congresspersons and governors; and a November 2007 bombing at the House of Representatives that killed a notorious warlord congressman from Mindanao. Macapagal-Arroyo very effectively wields the substantial powers of the presidency to keep herself in office, and in the process she exhibits no qualms about further undermining the country’s already weak political institutions. As the Philippines suffers one political crisis after another, its longstanding democratic structures become increasingly imperiled.

No country in Asia has more experience with democratic institutions than the Philippines, dating back to the fledgling Assembly created by the revolutionary republic that declared independence in 1898, after more than three centuries of Spanish rule. The United States’ rapid defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War led to a protracted colonial conquestof the Philippines, in the wake of which the United States embarked on its first major overseas experiment in “nation-building.” Elections proceeded from the municipal level to the provincial level to the October 1907 convening of a Philippine National Assembly, bringing together prominent elites from throughout the lowland Christian Philippines.