The Long View
Left and Right sides of People Power
By Manuel L. Quezon III
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:37:00 01/05/2009
Filed Under: Politics, Government, history, People
IN “Filipino Politics: Development and Decay,” David Wurfel writes: “Throughout the late 1970s, martial law prompted essentially three types of opposition: the reformist, the religious and the revolutionary.” On the eve of martial law, the militant Left, composed of student organizations in the cities and the New People’s Army in the countryside, made enough noise to frighten conservative elements in society and to give Ferdinand Marcos a pretext for emergency government. The First Quarter Storm, the storming of Malacañang Palace, the 12-day Diliman Commune—which riveted at least the attention of its participants—transport strikes and the specter of a Red peasantry, conditioned the public mind to drastic public measures. No one, however, expected a dictatorship.
The newspapers disenchanted the public and itself with democracy by printing Eduardo Quintero’s exposé of the bribery of Constitutional Convention delegates by Malacañang. Bombs went off throughout the city, culminating in the grenade attack on the Liberal miting de avance at Plaza Miranda on Aug. 21, 1971. That the government was suspected of most, if not all of the bombings, merely deepened the public gloom and sense of helplessness.
Rigoberto D. Tiglao, in his essay “The Consolidation of the Dictatorship,” does not think the Left was prepared—in training or logistics—to fight a proper war; but it had the one thing the milder opposition lacked, the will to fight the military on whom the Marcos dictatorship rested.
In pitiful contrast to the Left were the opposition politicians, who met in different houses after Ninoy Aquino’s arrest, but more to console than conspire. It was reminiscent of the meeting of Filipino politicians in Speaker Yulo’s House, as the Japanese were poised to take Manila.
In one of those meetings, the idea of convening a special session of Congress to declare Proclamation 1081 null and void was brought up. The following day the legislative building was occupied by troops who “dismantled the offices, carting away equipment, tables and chairs.” Someone had squealed or the room was bugged.
But the Communist Party, too, was in disarray. Its ranks had been decimated by mass arrests, its unity broken by mutual suspicions of betrayal. The Party’s Central Committee was not able to convene for a year and a half; and while the Armed Forces of the Philippines swelled from 60,000 strong in 1972 to 250,000 by 1975, the NPA’s ranks only increased from 1,230 in 1972 to 1,800 in 1974—and actually declined to 1,200 in 1976.
But the fundamental difference between the Left and the Center—as we might call the politicians—was while both declined in numbers, one increased in strength by sheer physical courage and tenacity in actual combat with the dictatorship.
By 1980, the NPA, if still not large, had the audacity to launch offensives. By 1983, US intelligence analysts concluded that it had achieved strategic parity with the dispirited Philippine army. The Communist Party accepted the US estimate of its mass base at 40,000 people and the military’s estimate of its military strength at 16,000.
As the Left boasted of its growing prowess, a new sector emerged in opposition to Marcos—the legitimate businessmen who distinguished themselves from the cronies.
Marcos had plied businessmen with pro-business decrees, and while the economy hummed along no one complained. But when the economy, which had grown by an average of over 6 percent in the first seven years of martial law, began to falter (down to 5.4 percent growth in 1980, 3 in 1981, and 2.6 the year after), businessmen worried about an economy and a country so firmly tied up with Marcos and his friends.
It also became evident at this time that Marcos’s preferential policies toward his friends or dummies had started to take a significant toll on the economy. Businessmen, who just winked at these peccadilloes, now worried that as these bogus, publicly financed enterprises sank under the weight of mismanagement and plunder, they would take the rest of the economy with them. Bankruptcies increased, as did unemployment, and some foreign investors pulled out their investments ($100 million worth of equity capital was taken out in 1980).
The Makati Business Club, composed of the Philippines’ top corporations, was organized and shortly after issued a plenary paper titled “Issues and Prescriptions.” It called for “an environment of honesty, integrity, peace and greater confidence in the government; a curb to military abuse and government corruption; a stop to red tape, graft, corruption and cronyism; the definition and pull-out of government roles from private sector concerns and business; the removal of lopsided competition from government; and the protection of media in its crusade against injustice and the curtailment of human freedom.” These were uncharacteristically strong words which stuck; the operative words “corruption,” “cronyism,” and “abuse” became battle cries of those social classes who stir when their pockets rather than hearts are touched.
In 1982 the businessmen had summoned up the nerve to present their complaints during the Eighth Philippine Business Conference. They invited Marcos to be their guest speaker, and were rewarded with a bravura performance by FM who thundered, “This government will and has the capability to protect itself. The country is presently reeling from worldwide recession and export price slump ... but let me warn those who opt to provide further misery to our people: tax evasions and frauds in remittances of export earnings will be seriously dealt with the full force of the law. These people are known to me and I have a list of companies right here with me.”
The businessmen blanched. They wanted reform, he would reform them.
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