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Pitfalls of personality politics in Philippines election

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In Brief

Filipinos go to the polls today to elect their next president. Self-styled fiery outsider and strongman Rodrigo Duterte leads the polls pledging to fix the broken system. Nipping at his heels are Manuel 'Mar' Roxas, endorsed by current President Benigno Aquino III, and junior Senator Grace Poe. Trailing the pack is incumbent Vice President Jejomar Binay.

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As has been the norm in the Philippines, the contest is personality rather than party-driven. In the past, the personalities tended to be dominated by an oligarchy of prominent political families. This time, frontrunner Duterte is promising a revolution that threatens to undermine the nation’s struggling democratic foundations.

That a revolutionary candidate is leading the polls may seem strange. After all, the Philippines under Aquino has transformed itself remarkably from the so-called ‘sick man of Asia’ to an economic success story amid global gloom. As Gilbert Llanto notes, ‘The Philippines has [economically] performed well in the past few years relative to its peers. It demonstrated great resilience to exogenous shocks that would have undone less capable economies’.

And it has achieved economic growth in excess of 6 per cent for most of Aquino’s six years in office. As Llanto writes, ‘Policy reform efforts led to sound macroeconomic foundations and an improved governance framework. Both these factors encouraged investment and business activity as well as a consistent build-up of foreign exchange reserves’.

The problem is that not everyone across the country has reaped the economic benefits. The level of income inequality in the Philippines is one of the worst in Asia. Job creation has been disproportionately focused in cities while rural poverty remains unaddressed, and infrastructure spending has been concentrated in Manila, fuelling resentment in other regions such as Visayas, Mindanao and Luzon.

At the same time, despite Aquino’s slogan of ‘the straight path’, corruption remains rampant. Imelda Deinla observes that while the Philippines ‘has good laws adopted from best international practices’, they tend to be ‘poorly or selectively enforced’. And ‘accountability among public officials is sorely lacking’, something which is ‘exacerbated by dysfunctional accountability mechanisms’.

Substantive debates have been sidelined and the candidates’ personalities picked apart as ‘the campaign narratives … have been dominated by questions of character rather than policy’, says Ronnie Holmes. ‘Roxas, running on a promise to continue the “straight path” (daang matuwid) of the outgoing president has been held back by criticisms of his indecisiveness’. Questions regarding Poe’s citizenship ‘deflected attention away from her slogan of Gobyernong May Puso (Government with Heart) and [were] played up by her opponents as an indication of her weak allegiance to the nation’. And ‘Binay, with his slogan of Kay Binay, gaganda ang buhay (With Binay, life will be better/more beautiful), saw his pre-election support dwindling amid serious corruption allegations’.

Enter Duterte. More than just a revolt of the poor, the Duterte phenomenon is ‘middle class-driven’, say Julio C. Teehankee and Mark R. Thompson in our lead article this week. ‘It is angry protest most acute among the modestly successful, including call centre workers, Uber drivers and overseas Filipino workers’. This ‘angry middle class constitute an emerging counter-elite, who feel left out by the ruling oligarchy’ and highlights the pent-up anger at ‘a lack of public services, horrendous land and air traffic, persistent corruption and fears about the breakdown of peace and order’.

Duterte has boldly promised to end crime in six months. His ‘campaign calling card has been his record as mayor of the once rough city of Davao in the southern island of Mindanao, which he claims to have pacified by going after drug gangs, murderers and other criminals’, Teehankee and Thompson explain. But his methods have raised alarms. ‘He is known as “the punisher” for his willingness to kill supposed criminals first and refuse to answer questions later’. He joked about the rape and murder of an Australian missionary, has called human rights advocates ‘cowards’, proclaimed his admiration for former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and has said his presidency is ‘going to be bloody’.

Nevertheless, Duterte has ‘shrugged off accusations of human rights violations, promising to implement his Davao model nationwide’. It is poignantly ironic, as Deinla says, that in their desire for a safe and clean Philippines ‘the idea of an effective politician who is willing to move outside the law holds greater appeal for some than the dysfunction and corruption they associate with the status quo’.

The return to authoritarianism that the election of Duterte might signal falls within a broader regional trend. In Thailand, the imposition of martial law has been a major source of international economic and diplomatic problems for more than a year. In Malaysia, Prime Minister Najib Razak is embroiled in a major ongoing corruption scandal. The country is in a political crisis, the origins of which go back to the way in which Malaysia’s politics were personalised under Mahathir.

Singapore’s approach to dissidents no longer involves arrest without trial, but the truth is that activists and the loyal opposition that challenge the government still face repression. There are success stories, such as Indonesia, which narrowly avoided the election of Suharto-era general Prabowo Subianto as president, and Myanmar’s fragile but breathtaking democratic de facto civil-military compromise. While these countries have made great progress, they will need to remain vigilant on their journeys of democratic consolidation.

The possibility of a Duterte presidency in the Philippines harks back to the days of Marcos. Marcos’ son, Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ R. Marcos Jr ‘refuses to apologise for the crimes of his father’s regime, including both its human rights violations and economic plunder, which he flat out denies’, write Teehankee and Thompson. Perhaps it is no coincidence that he is one of the leading contenders in the poll for the vice presidency.

To consolidate democracy in the Philippines, and build on Aquino’s macroeconomic foundations, moving away from ‘oligarchical democracy’ by prominent political families is indeed necessary. But progress in this direction needs to be coupled with continued systemic reforms to build a more economically and politically inclusive society. Duterte’s strongman politics is a case of the wrong medicine and threatens to undermine Philippine’s fragile democratic institutional foundations at a time when the region needs more democratic leaders.

The EAF Editorial Group is comprised of Peter Drysdale, Shiro Armstrong, Ben Ascione, Ryan Manuel and Jillian Mowbray-Tsutsumi and is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.

2 responses to “Pitfalls of personality politics in Philippines election”

  1. This is democracy at work, that is people elect whatever they like, isn’t it?
    If the existing elected government can’t get things, like putting crimes and corruptions under control, people are willing to elect someone who has the hope to get things done, one way or another, that is people’s choice.
    West countries are mostly mature democracy, mostly operating under the rule of law. However, not every country is as luxury as the mature west democracy. We should trust their people’s choice.

  2. In all of the comments in the media and by analysts on Duterte’s election there have been virtually none on the Philippines unique electoral system. Duterte has been elected, like Noynoy Aquino before him, with some 40% of the votes. From memory Fidel Ramos, another ostensibly popular president, was elected with less than 25% of the votes.

    The Philippines has the worst of both worlds, a modified US style presidential system, without the functioning checks and balances (e.g. an independent judicial system) and political culture to make it work. In Indonesia, as in France and many other countries with presidential systems, elections are held with two rounds, with a run off between the two leading candidates if none achieve 50% of the vote in the first round. This has the advantage of meaning a president has a mantle of legitimacy coming from the support (or at least acquiescence ) of more than 50% of voters. Moreover, the one term limit makes a Filipino president almost a lame duck from his/her inauguration.

    Anther peculiarity of the Filipino system is the separate election of a vice-president. Structurally this potentially leads to rivalry at the apex of the state and, as was the case with Gloria Arroyo and Joseph Estrada, can lead to great instability.

    Finally the Philippines has a nationally elected Senate, i.e. one in which the whole notion of an upper house (albeit in federal systems) namely that of defending regional interests is negated.

    Why after the People’s Power revolution was such a system introduced in the mid ’80s? The noble reason was to avoid the return of a Marcos style dictatorship. But, perhaps, as in Thailand another reason was to ensure that the Philippines would have a structurally weak president and a weak State, one incapable of threatening the power of the oligarchical elite.

    I doubt it if Duterte, despite his macho bluster, will be able to overcome these systemic realities.

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