Salvaging democracy
Andrew Brown
Manila In search of someone who might have a good word to say for His Excellency President Marcos, I found a Catholic priest in a middle-class district of Manila. He was hardly a radical: his hobby was to restore antiques. He disapproved of church-funded social work, and still more of priests who thought temporal care more important than spiritual. He gave me an excellent lunch, and when it was over leaned back, steepled his fingers above his paunch, and spoke with the air of a man who has solved a dif- ficult problem: 'Our president is a con- genital liar.'
This was not meant as a psychological
`We spent Easter in the traditional hot cross jam.' observation. It was an expression of moral revulsion. 'The problem with this regimee a1 not the financial rottenness but the Or s, corruption. When the president steal everybody steals,' the priest had earlier said. It is the business of priests to think Ill these. terms, but the murder of Berligri°, Aquino, the opposition leader who wa't shot on his return to Manila on 21 August last year, has given all Filipino politics : moral flavour. Listening to some rnernbere o. f the. opposition praising democracY, °II, is reminded of a repentent, adulterous hasf character, band praising his wife's strength of Senator Mike Mansfield that , and also of the judgFilipino ° . , politics before Aquino was shot con b. of `49 million cowards and one son of a hitt ch. . Everyone you meet now is in favour' m_ virtue,. but few people can remember 5111 what it entails. His Excellency Presiciewri Marcos has been in power for 18 years o"' by the murder of Benigno Aquino last Ye.a.10" both gover; and the one thing on which b ment and opposition are agreed is tha l the 14 May elections to the Constituen Assembly cannot possibly dislodge him. is The question for the oPPosition c_ whether it is worth voting at all. The ele ,_ of revIll tions were called to break the wave
sion both at home, and, more importantlY_,' among foreign creditors, that was produce' There is no reasonable doubt that AanilL
he was shot by his military escort as act descended the steps from his Plar.,e„ce Manila airport. The ballistic evlu. ant presented to the official comtnissl inquiring into his death was unequivocal: Aquino was shot from above and behind With a small-calibre pistol, while his suppos- ed assassin, Rolando Galman, who was himself shot 20 seconds later, was standing in front of and below Aquino, and armed with a .357 magnum revolver. The question that remains is who ordered the killing. It is not supposed that His Excellency President Marcos himself did. He was wide- ly believed to be dying at the time — that is why Aquino came home — and the killing did him no good at all. But one of his cronies might well have ordered it. (The Word crony has a precise political definition in the Philippines. It means anyone who has used his friendship with the first family to enrich himself from the public purse. e money goes to Switzerland.) But -"never was responsible, the truth was pro- bably buried with Rolando Galman, or with his common-law wife, who disappeared in January after allegedly telling her daughter that the armed and crew-cut men who came to fetch her were acting on the orders of the !My Chief of Staff, General Ver. Though
Agrava commission will probably find that Galman did not kill Aquino, their find-
h,,gs will not, of course, be released till after the elections, and it is very difficult to see w they could determine who actually did ^4 Aquino, and on whose orders. is When a prominent politician like Aquino Murdered, it is called an assassination: When the military kill people in the ordinary %uurse 4 , of events, the practice is known as salvaging'. Thus a story not very pro- Ritkinently displayed in the papers while I was disappeared concerned seven students who had ,2saPpeared while agitating for a boycott of t`nhe 14 May elections. The bodies of four of ern had just been fou, insufficiently Lined after a dog was seen trotting along a roadside with a human foot in its mouth. s
Filipino politics seem far removed from
Niue!' savagery at their upper levels, on the visiting journalist circuit. Everyone here is elated to everybody else, or has been to wsehb°°I, or jail, or both with them. That is Y the murder and the bravery of Aquino were so shocking. He belonged to a rich and re, sPectable family, not to the salvageable !asses at all. His sister is a television pro- acncer in California, one brother imports g,riarnodore computers (not terribly useful siaig,ets in a country where the electricity brPPIY can't be relied on), while the other et7ther, known as Butz, has become the lef spokesman of that faction of the elections which believes that the coming leTetions should be boycotted. of the Only thing on which the two factions ceii"e oPnosition are agreed is that His Ex- Ivo erieY President Marcos's party, the KBL, not stand a chance in free and fair c'h'ecti°ris — and that it stands a very good chains in the coming ones. Butz Aquino votprns that half of the opposition will not leaj cm Namfrel, Jose Concepcion, the der of a surprisingly powerful urfgratnisation of the respectable bourgeoisie
ree and fair elections (which sends out Aespected, if harassed Poll-watchers to see that the dirty work is kept within reasonable limits), claims that 85 to 90 per cent of the electorate will vote, and that the elections will be fair if Namfrel's demands are met. This claim is quite incompatible with Butz Aquino's, given the strength that both men claim for the opposition.
The only certain figure in Filipino politics is the price of 'flying voters'. These are trucked in from the shanty towns to register, and then to vote, wherever they will do most good, as often as is necessary. Up to 30,000 have been recorded in one constituency where Namfrel is demanding re-registration. Since the flying voters cost 60 pesos a head wholesale, someone is spending a lot of money on these elections. (60 pesos is a bit less than five dollars at the official rate, a bit less than four on the streets, and about three dollars in Chinatown).
None of this might matter in a really poor and barbarous country. The trouble is that the Filipinos have known better. Corrup- tion, like decadence, demands that one first attain a certain eminence from which to decline, and in that sense the Philippines are profoundly corrupt. The mere existence of an articulate and brave opposition testifies to the memory of a time when elections
might not be exactly fair, but were not assumed in advance to be stolen. Filipino poli- tics have always been about personalities, not policies. Now they have been reduced to one personality. The issues — well, people thought it quite funny when I asked after them. The point, after all, is to persuade foreign bankers, and the Americans, that His Excellency President Marcos has everything under control again. And perhaps he has. There is a rumour around of 'operation mad dog', the great clean-up after the elections are over, when all the visiting dignitaries have gone home. Four thousand prison beds are said to be in readiness. The point, as with all rumours, is not whether it is true, but who would want it believed, and why.
The only certain winners are the fairly communist guerrillas of the New People's Army. The NPA is well organised, but as yet badly armed. It now operates all over the archipelago, fusing the separate grievances of the peasantry and the middle classes, nationalism with communism, into a really powerful force. When His Excellen- cy President Marcos dies, and the real struggle for power begins, among the cor- nies and part of the army, we shall see how powerful the NPA has become.
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