YOU
HAVE COME a long way, Filipino voter, but where exactly are you
now? And whither goes thou? I would like to address these with
optimism to the average Filipino voter, even as I prepare to
unravel my own non-fictional version of his tale.
The
story spans long periods of our country’s political history, for
how can one detach suffrage from realities or trappings of
democracy? Come with me then as I play Homer and sing of the
Filipino voter’s own tragicomic odyssey.
We
can start with experiences before the Caucasian conquistador ever
touched the sands of our tropical islands. The voters among the
native population composed the councils of elders who cast their
word not for leaders, who were selected through kinship or
military victory, but for options in important decision-making
proceedings.
Our
barangays of old had this measure of democracy in cases where the
datus earnestly consulted with their councils of advisers before
promulgating decisions.
Under
Spanish rule, the all-powerful parish cura paroco conducted
elections where the privileged among the townsfolk voted for the gobernadorcilio.
Actually, this electorate was rather minute—to be exact, each
municipality had a voting population called "electoral
board" made up of only thirteen people.
The
right of suffrage was then enjoyed only by the outgoing gobernadorcilio
along with twelve members of the principalia (local elite,
who were almost entirely landed gentry).
And
what sort of official was this gobernadorcilio that his selection
had to be limited to a very select few? He was virtually
powerless, because the cura paroco was the one wielding
real power at that level, sharing this only to a certain extent
with the Spanish chieftain of the local guardia civil. Of course,
the position carried the privilege of being "close to the
gods" and that translated into a measure of real influence
and opportunity to partake of the plunder of money or even of
flesh.
Centuries
have passed since then, and the Filipino voter, who has grown in
number with the institutionalization of popular suffrage, can be
said to have come a long way from that point. The number of people
involved even doubled, at least theoretically, when the womenfolk
won their ballot in an uphill struggle.
But
the question of whether or not he has "arrived" in his
essential role for democratic governance to be attained is a
different matter altogether. That would be considered to have
happened only if the average Filipino is able to wield the ballot
both as a symbol and as an actual mechanism of asserting his
political power in the service of his actual will. That is, if he
casts his vote in the context of a genuine working democracy.
The
Filipino voter is like Homer’s Odysseus, and the story of his
voyage has been long and winding, exciting and tragicomic. The
route has passed from narrow principalia voting for
gobernadorcilios, through succeeding periods of direct colonial
rule with the Americans and the Japanese replacing the Iberians,
through the institutionalization of popular suffrage, and through
decades of periodic elections in post-war "show window of
democracy in Asia," through dark years of farcical but
mandatory voting, and now, through the transition period going
back to pre-martial law "glory".
Voting
For Powerless Puppets
top
While
supposedly preparing us for self-government, the United States
governors-general in the Philippines allowed Filipinos, and,
later, Filipinas, to vote for Assembly deputies and Commonwealth
officials. But while we have attached the label "puppet
government" more to Jose P. Laurel’s administration under
the flag of the Rising Sun, that of Manuel Luis Quezon before him
was essentially the same, albeit under another foreign banner. In
contrast to the much-earlier Spanish period, however, the Filipino
voter under the star-spangled banner had a broader base of action
and it touched the national level except the more decisive posts
that Uncle Sam himself occupied.
How
consequential could votes be if they were cast only for officials
who had had to bow to and serve under foreign governors-general of
varying flags? Can democracy ever attain a consequential reality
under direct colonial rule?
The
answer to this seems obvious enough, so much so that when we talk
about the history of suffrage in the Philippines, we prefer to
refer only to those years between July 4, 1946 and September 21,
1972. Many of us have practically likened this entire period to a
veritable "Golden Age" for Philippine Democracy, a
romanticism strengthened only by the passage of starkly
contrasting years of martial law on that latter date.
Nearest
Thing To a ‘Golden Age’
top
Indeed,
if we are to speak at all of a "Golden Age" for
Philippine suffrage, the nearest thing to such a period of glory
was this post-World War, pre-martial law period where the Filipino
voter was casting ballots periodically for national and local
executive officials and for district representatives in the
legislature every four years, and for a third of the Senate once
in two years.
Three
things deserve to be mentioned here: first, there were no more
foreign overlords in top, untouchable, government posts; second,
elections were held in an undisturbed automatic pattern; and
third, executive and legislative officials, who all enjoyed
mandates derived from the ballots cast, formed part of a
trilateral check-and-balance structural mechanism. The aspect
last-mentioned, plus the fact that there was strong rivalry
between the two major political parties, seemed to discourage
self-serving behavior in government.
What
was the Filipino voter’s frame of mind in this period? He
enjoyed it. He did to the extent that politics came to be
described as our national pastime. Factors contributing to the way
of enjoying the so-called "Golden Age" of Philippine
suffrage and democracy included his own level of political
literacy, and the prevailing clan-centered patronage system.
The
design of the check-and-balance system was not substantially
understood and appreciated by the average citizen and voter. For
him, his second-degree uncle who recently won an election can help
him with his problems and it mattered little if the uncle won the
local mayoralty race or the district’s seat in the national
legislature. It mattered little to him that the job of a town
mayor is a world apart from that of a national-level legislator. A
low level of political literacy, along with confusing behavior of
these politicians, results from the inadequacies of the population
coverage and substantive quality of the educational system in the
country. Add to this the fact that politicians who come to power
serve their constituencies and themselves mainly by providing
funds for hi-publicity and/or high-kickback projects whether or
not these are really appropriate to their respective posts.
However,
political literacy is quite different from political maturity.
Those of the more impoverished sections of the population may have
lacked the knowledge of what the elective posts should, by law,
entail. But substantial numbers of them have exhibited what can be
interpreted as a higher level of political maturity—realizations,
after some more time of careful observation, or realizations by
following their proletarian instincts, albeit without going into
terminologies.
They
have apparently known that formal job descriptions are honored
more in the breach than in observance and that they could not
depend on these to derive any benefit from government.
So
they tried to get what they could – by importuning winning
candidates for recommendation letters, by securing personal grants
or loans from them, and at times, even by selling their votes to
the highest bidders.
For
what other reason did the Filipino voter enjoy the periodic
elections during the so-called "Golden Age"? Let us
examine the conduct of Philippine elections of those decades,
beginning with the bombastic campaign period.
Even
as we prefer them to the succeeding martial law years, elections
in the 1946-72 period can be described as a cockfighting pintakasi,
flea market, a variety show of superstars and an episode of Inday
Badiday’s See True, all rolled into one. How could Juan
de la Cruz, the voter, not have enjoyed this periodic carnival?
Even
with all the blood being spilled, for as long as it did not
include the specific voter’s very own hemoglobin, it was still
exciting entertainment breaking the tedious monotony of making a
living in an agriculture-based country. Moreover this provided
fodder for endless storytelling around barbershops and market
stalls afterwards.
For
the small-village folk, what could be more exciting than to see
the big-named stars of showbiz live on-stage with this or that
what’s-his-name candidate.
And
if rumor-lovers delight in talking about private trivia in one
another’s seemingly inconsequential lives, here now was the
chance to comment with sneering chuckles on the dirty linen of the
mata-pobre clans of candidates, courtesy of their election
rivals.How could Juan de la Cruz, the voter, not enjoy these
elections for whatever they were worth?
'Structurally-fair'
Design
top
Far
beyond the ken and concern of many voters, there was an elaborate
system designed to make the holding of elections structurally
fair. Such fairness was seen as a sine qua non to claims of
providing avenues for the genuine choice of the people to prevail.
Here are some of the aspects and components of the design:
First,
schedules of elections were Constitutionally-mandated and did not
depend on the political fortunes and moods of incumbents who might
otherwise have sought to "snap" or postpone them.
Second,
the Commission on Elections was a Constitutional body with members
enjoying tenures independent of the good graces of the appointing
powers.
Third,
election personnel were teachers who generally enjoyed the
confidence of the citizenry as to their unimpeachable integrity.
Fourth,
political parties were equally represented in check-up mechanisms
like boards of inspectors.
Fifth,
prohibitions on fund releases during campaign periods were
designed to clip the incumbents’ undue advantage over their
rivals.
Sixth,
limits on election spending were determined in terms of the
salaries of the posts being contested and/or in terms of a certain
amount per registered voter in the contested constituency, in
order to clip the undue advantage enjoyed by more wealthy
candidates over their rivals, theoretically enabling ordinary
people to contest and win seats in government.
Seventh,
there was an elaborate system beginning with verification and
purging of voters’ lists, voting booths that provide privacy,
ballots that bear no markings identifying the voter, immediate and
open precinct-level counting, duly signed and countersigned
duplicates and triplicates of election return sheets, and so on
and so forth.
Eighth,
the military was quartered in the barracks and the semi-police
Constabulary troops were admonished to be neutral even as they
were deputized and directly commanded by the Comelec to keep order
in certain areas.
Ninth,
there were systems for filing and processing election protests,
providing for procedures and for such structures as electoral
tribunals.
And
tenth, the whole exercise and all parts thereof were declared open
to the public and specifically open to quick and adequate media
coverage. Various newspapers and broadcast stations had their own
unofficial quick counts and fielded more reporters than usual to
provide on-the-spot, up-to-the-minute reports on goings-on the
whole of Election Day and far into the counting night.
Add
to all these the provisions in the election law categorically
prohibiting the involvement of foreigners in any part of the
entire exercise, except, perhaps, to congratulate the winners.
Well
and good. The system for insuring that the election results were
unmistakably an expression of the people’s will did appear to be
logically airtight. Throughout this "Golden Age" period,
however, it was a public consensus that most of the elections held
in most of the areas were scandalously and violently violative of
the voter’s collective decisions. For every rule there was in
the book, politicians had their way of skirting, ignoring, or else
violating it outright, practically with impunity.
The
most subtle, even legal, part of the mockery of democratic
elections during the "Golden Age" was the way candidates
tried to influence the Filipino voter’s mind before he cast his
ballot.
At
this phase of bombastic campaign, political machinery used heavy
psychology by combining the seemingly-contradictory images of the
underdog and the sure-winner. A candidate was shown as an underdog
by presenting him as a victim of malicious slander and other dirty
tricks, even physical violence, perpetrated by the opposing camp
on his person and his loved ones. At the same time, he was shown
to be a sure-winner, with popular following still growing in the
manner of the bandwagon supposedly because he had a love affair
with the common folk and a mortal duel with the wrongdoers.
Why
did such a combination of images work at all on the Filipino
voter? Well, it may be said that the Filipino has always had a
soft heart for underdogs, especially those of the type of Fernando
Poe characters on the big screen that had a capability to win out
in the end. The sure winner image played on the Filipino’s
gambler mentality that would make him identify himself with
winner-types and bet on them with or without money involved. Save,
perhaps, for exceptional cases where the battle was between a
proven sinner and a proven saint, the bandwagon effect almost
always worked not only to draw in voter support but also to
attract investors.
Incumbents’
campaigns heavily played up their experience and performance in
office, while their challengers raised charges of
maladministration, graft and corruption. But the conflicts on
these matters often unfolded within the sure-winner and underdog
context.
Part
of the sure-winner image necessarily involved adequate public
exposure. This meant ads in the commercial media, billboards,
posters, mobility to penetrate far-flung areas, and the presence
of show business personalities in the campaign rallies. This meant
spending huge sums of money.
Candidates
who had respectable platforms with backgrounds to match, but
lacked in these obvious manifestations of adequate logistics, were
perceived as Quixotes fighting the windmills, as gladiators
fighting in the wrong arena. Such candidates won a measure of
respect and sympathy from the bulk of the electorate but not the
consequential votes, because they had failed to convince the
people that they had enough resources for an adequate campaign and
for defending themselves against whatever dirty tricks would
expectedly be used by the other camp.
Beyond
the psychological war, there was the clearly illegitimate practice
of bribing ward leaders and voters, with incumbents enjoying the
edge of having command over public funds aside from their own
private resources.
Besides
harping on past performance, reelectionist candidates also showed
they could use the power still in their hands to reward their
faithful followers and hardworking campaigners.
Pork
barrel, or the release of public funds to certain areas or
agencies upon partisan electoral grounds (i.e., "in aid of
reelection"), was practiced by incumbents in general. The
fixed-length bans on public works fund releases have been honored
more in the breach than in compliance, with reelectonist
candidates ordering the release of hundreds of thousands or even
millions of pesos from public coffers to instantly solve pressing
problems presented by would-be voters. The wealthy challengers
tried to match this act by proclaiming donations of big amounts
for immediate repair of bridges, market buildings, and the like.
This practice did not affect only the campaign period, it also
went a long way in influencing the cheating patterns on election
day.
Vote-buying
has always been illegal. But this practice was rampant in the
so-called "Golden Age" of Philippine suffrage, both in
the subtle and brazen forms. The subtle forms included the instant
fund releases just described, which benefited entire communities.
There
was also the practice of buying out entire groups of voters,
especially in far-flung areas, by providing for their
transportation and food during election day. This worked quite
easily because many voters were either too politically illiterate
to realize what was happening or were politically matured enough
to see that there were no substantial contrasts between the
contenders anyway. "Pare-pareho lang naman sila!" (They’re
all the same.) And we, as self-appointed "voter
educators" have been challenged to prove them wrong about the
country’s politicians. The challenge has actually remained.
There
has also been the reverse of this, where candidates hoarded the
means of transportation to the voting centers, like boats and
public utility land vehicles, to prevent voters who were not their
followers from even just reaching the polling booths.
There
was also the brazen from of vote-buying, where voters were offered
at least double the average daily income in exchange for their
votes and even made use of carbon or paraffin sheets to ascertain
that the purchased votes were indeed delivered. Some voters who
had sold their ballots were even fielded to a number of precincts
as "flying voters" with the collaboration of election
personnel who "look the other way" when persons of
dubious legitimacy as legitimate local voters come to claim
ballots.
The
most brazen way employed physical intimidation, but strictly
speaking, this was not just vote-buying anymore. Voters were
threatened with danger to their lives and to the lives of their
next-of-kin unless they voted for this or that warlord. Entire
communities were threatened by private armies of both camps.
Reelectionist candidates, or those backed up by incumbent
executives were even able to mobilize the military, or at least
the Constabulary, despite all official admonitions for men in
uniform to keep neutral.
After
the voting came the magical counting.
The
hocus-pocus took place at various points: a newly-opened ballot
box may have been previously stuffed with extra ballots, fake or
genuine, ensuring an additional number of votes for a set of
candidates; names of candidates were misread (to sound like those
of their opponents) or omitted altogether in the name-by-name
reading of ballots; sudden electric power failures which, not
coincidentally, happened very often during the counting of ballots
on election night allowed for markings on blackboards to be added
or erased or for entire ballot boxes to be switched or stolen; or
the entire proceeding at the precinct level was spotlessly clean
but with a completely different set of election return forms being
delivered to the town hall, or from the town or city hall to the
provincial capitol for official canvassing.
Save
for zealous partisans, the Filipino voter took all these in
stride. In the first place, he had all along expected some amount
of cheating to take place as they always did. Moreover, the
sure-winner psychological campaign somehow lent a measure of
plausibility to the final results.
Hundreds
of election protests were filed after every election, but they
rarely ever prospered. And in the few cases where the arbitrating
body reversed the Comelec proclamations, the proceedings had taken
too long and the vindicated real winner would occupy the contested
post for only a few months before the next election cycle.
Foreign
intervention in Philippine elections has always been prohibited,
given the premise that we are supposed to be an independent
country. But it has been an open secret that foreign interests,
especially American and Chinese, have been at play with
far-reaching effects.
American
intervention in "Golden Age" Philippine elections was
clearly shown in two presidential elections. In 1949, the US
supported the reelectionist Elpidio Quirino against the
anti-Parity challenger Jose P. Laurel; four years later, the US
propaganda magic was behind Ramon Magsaysay then challenging his
utterly discredited former boss, Quirino.
The
1949 election campaign played up the issue of communism and
anti-communism. Americans were active in whipping up a hysteria,
which was used by the Quirino camp to demolish the anti-Parity
camp of Laurel that included the nationalist Claro M. Recto.
But
American fingers were not as visible in that election as they were
in the Magsaysay campaign. Here, the American media played a big
role in projecting former defense secretary Magsaysay as the
"champion of democracy" and "man of the
masses." Time and the Reader’s Digest led the
promotion barrage, which was echoed also by the national dailies
in the Philippines.
Huge
amounts of dollars were donated by American interests to two
national organizations that played big roles in ensuring a
Magsaysay victory— the Magsaysay for President Movement (MPM)
and the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel).
The
MPM was necessary both for creating a popular movement appeal to
the campaign as opposed to those waged simply by the political
parties, and for providing JUSMAG’s Edward Lansdale a direct
level of control and conduit of logistics for the campaign. The US
needed a Namfrel to act as watchdog against cheating because the
Americans were on the side of the opposition this time.
Aside
from an orchestrated media campaign and the establishment of the
MPM and the Namfrel, the US also used direct "Gunboat
diplomacy." Days before the election, US warships docked at
Manila Bay with a clear message to reelectionist candidate Quirino
dissuading him from employing violence again as he did four years
earlier when they were on his side.
In
other elections during the post-World War and pre-martial law
period, Uncle Sam’s fingers were less conspicuous but they were
there anyway. American government and private institutions have
been donating to campaign funds of favored candidates under
various pretexts and disguises.
Aside
from American intervention, there was also the Chinese vote. This
was a pittance in terms of volume compared to Uncle Sam’s
electoral investments, and was considered controversial because
many donors were locally-based Chinese businessmen who had already
acquired Filipino citizenship and were in fact even qualified to
vote and even run for public office.
And
so, the elections came and went for Juan de la Cruz, the voter,
every two years from 1946 to 1972. But all this time, he was
merely witnessing dirty and violent contests that entertained him,
enriched him with a few extra pesos occasionally, but did not
really touch his heart. He was, after all, essentially a mere
spectator in the series of such contests among politicians.
The
issues of the economy and of the quality of governance were
touched by the campaigns all right, but the average voter could
not strongly identify with any single candidate or group of
candidates.
This
was because candidates of any consequence just had to belong to
the well-to-do strata of society while the average Filipino voter
has always belonged to the impoverished majority. The few who were
of relatively humble origins who made it somehow to high
government posts either got transformed to adopt the promises and
ways of the elite or got eliminated from those posts. (A former
CIA officer, after getting out of The Company, wrote a book
admitting the agency’s role in the "accidental" death
of President Magsaysay when the most popularly-beloved of post-War
Philippine presidents started showing signs of imminently defying
American diktat.)
Moreover,
these politicians and the political parties they belonged to had
never convincingly proven themselves to be champions of the causes
of the commonman. The two major political parties were in fact
identical for all practical purposes. The Nacionalista Party and
its spin-off rival, the Liberal Party, were the tweedledum and
tweedledee of Philippine politics, where tactical convenience and
personal loyalties were the rule, more than contrasting party
principles.
A
glaring proof of this was the fact that two victorious
presidential candidates, Ramon Magsaysay in 1953 and Ferdinand
Marcos in 1965, belonged, until the last minute, to the respective
parties of the reelectionist presidents they opposed. Marcos was
no less than the party president of the LP when he bolted that
party to become no less than the presidential timber of the rival
NP. Such changes of party affiliation required not even an iota of
public explanation, for after all, we had all known the parties to
be mere clones of each other.
And
so, for more than two decades, the Filipino voter experienced
every other year the elections that had no discernible bearing on
his overall well-being. All that time, he took his inconsequential
ballot for granted, and looked forward to next cycles more for
their entertainment value than for anything else.
(As
to his concern for his future and that of his children, the
Filipino voter began contemplating the slogans being shouted out
and painted on walls by the red-bannered activists, who were
declaring that the impoverished and oppressed Filipino could not
hope to achieve his emancipation and upliftment through
"elitist elections.")
The
voter took his right to vote for granted, until his ballot was
taken away from him by martial rule. It was restored, though, even
forced upon him a few years later but without the trimmings that
had lent Philippine elections entertainment value and a measure of
plausibility. Juan de la Cruz, the voter, began to value his
ballot after he had lost it. It was a turning point of the
"odyssey" where the Filipino voter took a forced cruise
down a dark draconian tunnel.
Voting
in the Dictator’s Dungeons
top
The
Constitutional context of the periodic elections of the previous
period was smashed to smithereens. The Constitution itself was
scrapped in favor of a new one, which provided for an indefinite
transitory period. This Constitution was promulgated without the
benefit of any decent or even just decently-looking electoral
process. The Filipino voter was not only suppressed, he was
insulted.
Martial
law concentrated in one man all the three counterbalancing powers
of the executive, legislative and judiciary, and replaced elective
officials with appointive ones. One of the points supposed to have
been mandated by the people in the same hand-raising ceremonies
that "ratified" the new Charter was the suspension of
"divisive" elections for a period of seven years. The
actual period of suspension lasted half a decade, but the
substitute that the dictator instituted could not capture the
Filipino voter’s imagination, much less his enthusiastic
participation. We refer here to occasional referendums held to ask
if the populace approved of constitutional amendments that made
Marcos more powerful, and finally to ask if we wanted him to
continue ruling.
All
the mechanisms for rigging elections available to pre-martial law
politicians and political parties were held and used by the
dictatorship, with the intimidation factor taking a higher
profile, and a controlled press unabashedly dignifying official
results that defied statistical probabilities.
At
this point, Juan de la Cruz, the voter, showed more and more
obviously his reluctance to play along the electoral exercises.
"I’d rather not participate in the forging of my own
chains," he whispered bitterly in his own tongue. Sensing
this and the effect of a low actual turnout during these
foreign-observed referendums, Marcos decided to force the voters
to cast their Yes-No ballots under threat of penalty.
Five
years after the suspension of elections, Marcos called one to have
an elected legislature. A rubber-stamp legislature with an
electoral mandate (like the Interim Batasang Pambansa) would look
much better than a rubber-stamp legislative advisory body (Batasang
Bayan) made up of appointees, Marcos must have reasoned.
By
this time, the Nixon Doctrine of 1970 ("Let Asians fight
Asians") which abetted martial dictatorships in many Asian
countries had already been rescinded by the clean-image-conscious
Jimmy Carter administration. Martial law could be retained in the
Philippines but democratic trimmings had to be restored (in a
process called "normalization"); the Marcos regime could
go on violating human rights but necessitated some measure of
legalese, something like "you could still be tortured but
only after being informed of your basic human right not to be
tortured."
The
1978 legislative elections proved to be a show window more of
electoral farce than of anything else. With all the resources at
the command of the dictatorship and its party, the Kilusang Bagong
Lipunan, the voting was done by region and block voting was
encouraged. At that time, it was only in Mindanao, Cebu and Metro
Manila where region-wide tickets and political machineries existed
to challenge the KBL’s province-hopping lineups. Independent
candidates never had a chance. Token opposition victories were
registered in the turfs of Pusyon Bisaya (which turned out to have
enjoyed the partisan support of a Comelec official) and the
Mindanao Alliance, but the Lakas ng Bayan (Laban) ticket led by
jailed former Sen. Ninoy Aquino was entirely swept underfoot by
the KBL’s ticket of cronies and unknowns led by Marcos’ wife
Imelda.
The
Filipino voter in Metro Manila was not all that frustrated over
the total rout, having harbored no high expectations to begin
with. But he displayed overwhelming enthusiasm in telling and
retelling stories of his participation in the unprecedented noise
barrage in the capital metropolis on the eve of the elections.
"Marcos refused to count our votes," said he, "but
he surely must have heard their sound and fury."
Succeeding
elections were not essentially different. The local election of
1980 did not produce anything significant except the break of the
Laurel clan in Batangas from the graces of the KBL. The most
absurd farce was the presidential election of 1981, which was
boycotted not only by about 70 percent of the voters but also by
credible presidential timbers who had by then established an
opposition coalition of substantial strength. Marcos had to offer
bribes to candidates just to run against him, but all opposition
he got was from a supposedly-disenchanted member of the Loyalists
for Marcos (LFM) organization.
The
1984 elections of members of the regular Batasang Pambansa and
succeeding electoral exercises would have been much the same, or
worse, in terms of voter attitude and non-participation. But an
upheaval at the heels of the Ninoy Aquino assassination in 1983
effected a big change in the political configuration.
1983
saw an unprecedented outpouring of open opposition to the
dictatorship, with breadth and intensity never before witnessed in
the country. Somehow, a number of opposition leaders saw in this
an opportunity to topple Marcos through elections, and decided to
try and transform the post-aquino-assassination spontaneous
movement into votes for the opposition.
By
this time, policymakers in Washington had had enough of Marcos’
one-man rule, and demanded, among others, that the new legislature
have enough oppositionists. There was a deal forged for the
Batasan to have an opposition force numbering roughly a third of
its members. This became a reality, with that one-third
corresponding roughly to the number of seats in Metro Manila. By
this turn of events, the Filipino voter began to nurture a growing
hope in the power of his ballot. At the same time, his rejection
of the Marcos regime was so total that he was prepared to use any
and all means to weaken and eventually depose him.
Marcos
erred fatally in giving him that chance. By calling for a snap
election a year and a half ahead of his term’s
"official" termination, Marcos gave the Filipino voter
the opportunity to unleash a political wallop unprecedented in
Philippine political history, from drafting Ninoy Aquino’s
widow, Corazon, as the rallying symbol, to vigorously campaigning
for votes for her (instead of waiting for political party
campaigners to do the campaign), to risking life and limb in order
to safeguard the votes, up to mounting a strong and destabilizing
protest campaign after Marcos had clinched the official election
result. It was a Pyrrhic official election victory for Marcos at
the price of fatal isolation from the rest of the population,
including his erstwhile supporters in big business, Church
hierarchy and the military.
The
roles played by the Cory Aquino for President Movement (CAMP) and
the revived Namfrel seemed to remind the Filipino voter of
parallels in the past, but this did not distract him from the
optimistic prospect of being able to finally unseat the despot.
The energy level of the campaign was translated into collective
readiness for extra-parliamentary struggle. This alarmed
Washington leaders who feared this might send the populace
marching straight into the waiting arms of the armed insurgent
movement. Something just had to be done and done quickly.
The
failure of democratic assertion in the official result of the snap
election of February 7, 1986, undeniably pushed the momentum for
the a combined military revolt and popular uprising to toppled
Marcos from power about three weeks later.
The
"People Power Edsa Revolution" of February 1986 was
undeniably another turning point along the route of the Filipino
voter’s odyssey. It was a point of finally greeting the light
after emerging from the long dark tunnel.
'Back
to Democracy... ?' ... At Last?
