The vindication of Jovito Salonga

This piece is a salute to the great Jovito Salonga, statesman, legislator and patriot, who passed away last week. The citations are from his book, “The Senate That Said No,” University of the Philippines Press, 1995.

REMOVING the US military bases was an uphill battle against public opinion. In the June 1986 SWS-Ateneo de Manila national survey on whether “the US military bases should stay in the Philippines,” 50 percent agreed, only 19 percent disagreed, and others were neutral.

The new 1987 Constitution specified that there could not be any foreign military bases in the country without the consent of the Senate. To prepare for the 1991 termination of the bases agreement, the Peace Commission, under Dr. Alfredo “Alran” Bengzon, asked SWS to do several confidential polls, nationally and in the host communities. The polls—which Dr. Bengzon never tried to influence—found that opinions continued, on balance, to favor the bases.

SWS reported its polls only to the Peace Commission, to use as it saw fit. I don’t know if there were other surveys also. It is well-known that the United States habitually commissions opinion polls in countries where it has an interest.

The probases movement tried to use “surveys” to pressure Senate President Jovito Salonga to vote in favor of the RP-US Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Security. His book says (page 219): “At that time (soon after the Council of State meeting of Sept. 6, 1991, convened in Malacañang to try to influence him), the media reported that 70 percent to 80 percent of those polled said they were in favor of the Treaty.”

On Sept. 16, 1991, Senate President Salonga cast the deciding vote in the historic 12-11 victory of the Senate resolution to reject the treaty.

As told in his book, Executive Secretary Franklin Drilon, on behalf of President Cory Aquino, requested Senators Gonzales, Angara and Alvarez to leave immediately with Ambassador Pelaez for Washington to explain the situation to key American officials. The group left in the afternoon of Sept. 17 for the United States, where they spoke to several senators, congressmen and diplomats.

“[T]heir message was quite simple: the rejection of the Treaty by the Philippine Senate should not affect our long historic friendship with the United States, and in any case, the Senate rejection would surely be overturned by a referendum that would be held in a few months. … But in two or three days, recalls Senator Gonzales, we received some disturbing news—Malacañang was apparently abandoning the referendum idea.” (Salonga, page 282)

On Sept. 28, 1991, the Los Angeles Times reported: “The U.S. Embassy supported Aquino’s call for a national referendum to repeal the Senate vote, only to see the president distance herself from the campaign. Moreover, embassy officials and Aquino aides leaked poll results to reporters to show that 68 percent, 72 percent, even 81 percent of the Philippine people were pro-bases. The polls, however, never existed. ‘I made the numbers up,’ one American now concedes.” (Salonga, pages 281-2)

The survey numbers cited above, whether from the media, embassy officials, or Cory aides, could not have been from SWS. The SWS majorities were slim, not fat.

In its national survey of November 1991, two months after the veto, SWS found a small majority of 56 percent saying that the administration should not respect the Senate veto, and only 42 percent saying that it should respect it.

The satisfaction rating of Senate President Salonga slipped to net +32 (Good); it was the lowest of his four ratings in the SWS data bank.  The rating of the Senate itself fell to net -1 (Neutral), its lowest point during the Cory administration.

Even three months later, in the SWS national survey of February 1992, those siding with the Senate veto were only 45 percent, and those against it were 55 percent.  An early referendum would most likely have gone against the Senate, if President Cory had persisted; her not doing so was also a contribution to the removal of the military bases.

But the Filipino people soon changed their minds! Then, in the SWS survey of September 1992, just eight months later, those calling for respect of the Senate’s move were 82 percent, while those against it were only 17 percent. It was the biggest reversal in public opinion that I have ever seen.

I remarked on the new numbers in my Manila Chronicle column: “The vindication of the Senate” (11/7/92): “In hindsight, the rapidity of the public acquiescence to the Senate veto may have been due to two factors. One is the improvement in the economy, contrary to the doomsday predictions of the military bases partisans.  Previous SWS surveys, including special rounds conducted in Angeles City and Olongapo, showed that economic considerations far dominated security matters in the public’s preferences regarding the bases’ future.

“Secondly, the suspicions of the cold-war era have evaporated.  The September 1992 survey found that, among Filipinos aware of the dissolution of the USSR (some 37%), only 1 in 10 consider Russia an enemy, while 7 in 10 say it is neither a friend nor an enemy, and 2 in 10 say it is a friend.”

In the 1980s and 1990s, I did not have the pleasure of meeting Senator Salonga personally. But later I was able to do so, and to tell him the survey story of how the Filipino people had changed their minds.  It was on Jan. 10, 2004, when he kindly autographed my copy of “The Senate That Said No.”

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Contact mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.