THE IDEA BEHIND THE 1986 PEOPLE POWER REVOLUTION

Jose T. Almonte

Given before the Conference on Asian Renaissance: Capacity Building

for Future Leaders in Southeast Asia sponsored by the Institut Kajian
Dasar (IKD) of Malaysia with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation
AIM Conference Centre Manila, Makati City, Philippines
28 January 2010

1. WHY DID REVOLUTION BECOME NECESSARY IN THE PHILIPPINES IN

THE MIDDLE 1980s?

Because we had lost our freedom—and got nothing in exchange for it.

FOR FILIPINOS, the imposition of martial law in September 1972 by

the strongman Ferdinand Marcos had been a kind of Faustian
bargain. Many of us had acquiesced in the loss of our civil liberties,
in the hope that authoritarianism would restore social stability and
produce the shared growth that it did in the East Asian ‘economic-
miracle’ states.
But, by the early 1980s, Marcos’ venture in authoritarianism
had become overly oppressive. We had lost all our political liberties:
the economy was in the grip of crony capitalists; the populace
demoralized; and the military divided. And an ultimate takeover of
the state by a raging Maoist insurgency had become a distinct
possibility.

2. WHAT WAS IT WE WERE FIGHTING FOR?

To be able to use our freedom to build our nation.

By then, too, we had come to realize that authoritarianism is

unworkable in a dual society such as ours—a significant part of it
being modern enough for middle-class people to demand political
participation, and yet in many ways still patrimonial enough for
political leaders to treat government merely as a vehicle for
enriching themselves and for distributing patronage to their
followers.

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Creating our own freedom
Our experience of authoritarian rule taught us that we
Filipinos can never put our trust in a strongman. We must create
our own freedom. And what does creating our own freedom mean?
In East Asia, political freedom has been inextricably linked
with economic freedom: with private property and with free markets.
These two together created a private realm—civil society—outside
the domain even of the authoritarian state. And it is this initial act
of separation of the public and private realms—of the domain of the
State and the domain of the individual—that initiates the evolution
of a form of limited government.

The exuberance of democracy

In the Philippines, this sequence—first of economic and then of
political opening—has been reversed. Since the early 1900s, at least
our middle class has enjoyed a measure of civil liberty, although the
economy has remained in the grip of oligarchic special interests.
Structural reform in our country, therefore, must take place in
the context of what Lee Kuan Yew famously called “the exuberance
of democracy [that] leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions
… inimical to development.”
As a result, we Filipinos are, until now, far from being a fully
achieved nation. Geography and history have combined to make the
sense of nationality hard to instill among our people. Our country
may have won its independence and consolidated its territories, but
nation building—which is the diffusion of national awareness and
the incorporation into the national community of all sectors of the
population—still is a work in progress.

3. DID OUR PEOPLE POWER REVOLUTION SUCCEED?

Our People Power Revolution had a ripple effect in the world.

But here at home, its practical results were mixed.

Our peaceful People Power Revolution inspired a chain of similarly

dramatic upheavals in the captive nations: from China in Northeast
Asia to Burma in Southeast Asia to Hungary, Bulgaria, and
Romania in Eastern Europe—from the Caucasus clear to Chile in
South America, and to Africa.
To quote the Los Angeles Times, “The civilian-backed military

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uprising, with its stirring scenes of nuns kneeling to stop Marcos’
tanks, made the Philippines a leader in the global wave of
democratic movements that climaxed in the dismantling of the
Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
The Burmese junta suppressed brutally the democratic
upsurge in Rangoon. On Tiananmen Square, soldiers obeyed orders
to fire on a peaceful student-led rally. But the Solidarity Movement
liberated Poland. In East Germany, citizens themselves tore down
the Berlin Wall. And, on Wenceslas Square, the “Velvet Revolution”
returned democracy to Czechoslovakia.

Restoration of the oligarchy

But here at home, our peaceful revolution fell far short of our
expectations.
Politically, the restoration of elite democracy also brought back
the old oligarchy that Marcos had, for the most part, dismantled
(replacing it with his cronies).
Nor did the constitutional system set up under the successor
government in 1987 prove superior to the 1935 Charter it replaced.
Substitution of a “free and open party system” for the
traditional two parties—one in power and the other in opposition—
has fatally weakened party government.
Limitation of the right to reelection has also been a step
backward, since citizens have lost a substantial degree of control
over their elected officials.
With her revolutionary powers, President Corazon Aquino
might have carried out a thoroughgoing land reform program—
putting an end to agrarian dissidence, particularly on our main
island of Luzon.
Instead she allowed a restored Congress—dominated by the
old landlord interests—to enact a watered-down program; one that
saved her own family’s sugar hacienda from redistribution.
Special interests reassumed control of the regulatory agencies
and the business incentive systems that Congress was empowered
to grant.
Indeed, the oligarchy may have recaptured all our centers of
political decision-making. For, in the World Bank’s view, the
weakness of the Philippine state “stems from the effective control by
interest groups of the state machinery, such that rule making and

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enforcement serves not the general welfare but particular interests.”
As a result, our economy, despite globalization, remains
heavily cartelized, and relatively closed to foreign competition,
compared with its vigorous neighbors.

4. NO REVOLUTION FAILS: THE LESSONS WE LEARNED

But no revolution fails. Ours taught us some basic lessons

about political and economic modernization.

Throughout history, we’ve seen how all too many dreams of

sweeping change and new beginnings have proved no different from
the old order they had sought to sweep away. But no revolution
fails—because no revolution can destroy a nation. It is when a
people loses its capacity—its will—to make revolution that a nation
is destroyed.
A revolution is waged not from any prior calculation of its
prospect of success, or its liability of failure. A revolution is waged
in response to a moral imperative. It is waged because people judge
it to be the only right thing to do.
In a word, a revolution is waged as a moral choice. Whether it
succeeds or fails, it allows a nation to regain its self-respect, to
begin life anew. And how a nation lives a new life depends on the
lessons that revolution teaches, and the nation learns.

The possibility of change

In this sense, President Aquino’s key achievement was to
reopen for our people the possibility of peaceful—incremental—
political change.
By restoring a measure of accountability to government, by
assuring everyday people some protection from arbitrary power,
President Aquino made sure we Filipinos can continue to work our
way toward modes of governance congenial to our communal
concept of the good society.
The Czech poet-philosopher former President Vaclav Havel
believes no democracy is ever completed. “As long as people are
people,” Havel once remarked, “democracy in the full sense of the
word will always be no more than an ideal. One may approach it as
one would a horizon, in ways that may be better or worse, but it can

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never be fully attained.”
We Filipinos are acutely aware of the immense political
distance we have yet to travel, to come anywhere near that political
ideal. For democracy, as we know, requires two social conditions.
First, there must be a minimum level of basic equality—of
opportunity if not of outcome—and that equality must be
widespread enough to allow for the development of the full
potentials of as many individuals.
Then, too, citizens must have the effective enjoyment of
freedom—and not just as a formal entitlement enshrined in a dead-
letter constitution, but as a living day-to-day experience.
In sum, democracy is a progressive discovery of people striving
to civilize themselves; its scope and implications are a gradual
revelation.
Through the agency of the 1986 People Power Revolution, we
Filipinos became free to muddle through to our own kind of
democracy. Perhaps there is a better way, but a gradual evolution of
the political system, rather than violent and abrupt change, gives
democracy a good chance to take hold.

The Ramos succession

The possibility of change that President Aquino opened, her
constitutional successor—General Fidel Ramos—nurtured through
a brief economic flowering (1992-98) that coincided with our
Independence centennial.
President Ramos was able to dismantle the most onerous
monopolies (particularly in telecommunications and inter-island
shipping); successfully pushed for water-service privatization and
oil deregulation; open sectors of the economy to competition; and to
begin reforming the revenue system.
He also made peace with both our rebellious young officers
and our separatist Muslim rebels in Mindanao. He went as far as to
legalize the Communist Party and to offer a truce to our Maoist
insurgents.
A People’s Initiative to implement the people power provision of
the 1987 Charter—and so enable President Ramos to seek
reelection—failed in the Supreme Court—and stopped short the
Ramos reforms.

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Predatory administrations
In the peaceful transition over which he presided, his roguish
vice president, Joseph Estrada, won handily—inaugurating a
disorderly administration that lasted only until January 2001 (well
short of his six-year term), when Estrada was impeached for
plunder, and removed by another People Power Revolution.
Estrada’s vice president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, served out
the remainder of his term; then in 2004 won the presidency in her
own right. But allegations that she conspired to pad her votes—
together with the popular perception that corruption has worsened
under her rule—have cast doubts as to her legitimacy. Despite
government’s claims about her accomplishments in the economy,
opinion surveys consistently rate her lower than even the autocratic
Marcos in the public esteem.

5. THE REVOLUTION WE NEED TO MAKE

Freedom as a tool for rebuilding our nation.

Now we Filipinos realize the revolution we need to make is still

unfinished: our revolution is a continuing one. And this revolution
must empower our people to use their freedom to create wealth with
others, and not at others’ expense.
Development needs an effective state able to act autonomously
on behalf of the national interest. We must work to enhance the
effectiveness, legitimacy, and technical capability of the institutions
of governance. All at once, these institutions must guarantee civil
liberties, keep the market free, and have a care for those whom
development leaves behind.

The public good must prevail over private gain

First and foremost, the revolution we need to make must put
our house in order by leveling the playing field of enterprise. Our
revolution must transfer to the people the power that the few now
have over the state.
For generations, our political economy has enabled a tiny elite
to control the nation’s wealth by manipulating its politics. And the
political culture this condition developed has produced an elitist
democracy that emphasizes the family over the larger community

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and private gain over the public good—a political culture where our
sense of entitlement has been stronger than our sense of civic
responsibility.

Leveling the playing field

It is not enough that all men and women are created free and
equal. We must also create the means—the level playing field—so
that they can help themselves become truly free and equal. And
individual freedom must be used in the nation’s service—rather
than for private gain—because, ultimately, being rich and powerful
becomes meaningless in a state that fails.

State and market complement each other

Another key lesson is that the state and the market are not
incompatible alternatives: the state and the market complement
each other.
The state has had a necessary role in all the poor countries
that have prospered. East Asia’s typical ‘developmental state’ is an
activist alliance between government and the private sector to direct
industry and set national economic priorities.

The power of presidential leadership

Political parties in the poor countries are often too
fractionalized to administer coherent governments. But modernizing
party organizations will necessarily be long-term work. Meanwhile,
poor countries must depend on strong political leadership to cut
through institutional barriers to reform.
This was what a World Bank study of the political economy of
reform during the Ramos Administration suggests. “Ultimately, it is
the President—his person, character, vision for the country and
ability and willingness to spend political capital—who can muster
the national consensus, clear roadblocks, and drive the reform
agenda forward.”

6. THE TASKS OF NATION-BUILDING

Raising people to the peak of their potential, equipping them to seize the
opportunities being opened up by modernization, and becoming effective
wealth creators.

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Our basic task must be to raise everyday people to the peak of their
potentials; to equip them with the skills to seize the opportunities
being opened by modernization; and to become effective wealth
creators.
This means, first of all, easing the gross and pervasive
corruption that has virtually paralyzed public administration. We
must build up state capacity—because development needs
disciplined bureaucrats, stable policies and a predictable legal
order.
And we must begin to dismantle the unequal institutions and
administrative systems that affect the entire structure of national
society and the way it apportions wealth and power.
To narrow the gap between our urban and rural economies, we
must shift the weight of public investment from the big cities to the
towns and small cities where the bulk of our poor live. Agriculture
we must stop treating as the stepchild of development. And the bulk of
our investments in human capital, we must shift to our most
disadvantaged regions.

Eradicating generational poverty

Our immediate goal must be to ease generational poverty—
poverty passed down from generation to generation. Poverty of this
kind means not only malnutrition and constant hunger, lack of
access to basic education—even shortened life spans. It also means
social exclusion, loss of dignity and powerlessness.
Since the poorest households are those whose heads have only
the barest formal education, ensuring that no child is left out of
basic school should be a key objective of our anti-poverty
programs—together with primary health-care services that prevent
infant malnutrition and children’s deaths.
Right now, we spend far less on our public school children
than comparable neighboring states do. Meanwhile, as many as a
fourth of all the people in our poorest provinces get no formal
education at all.

Affirmative action for the poorest provinces and regions

All the resources we can raise we must focus on lifting up the
lives of our absolutely poor families. Anti-poverty programs that do
not target the absolutely poor well enough merely allow the non-

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poor to capture the benefits from these programs—the end result
being greater and wider inequalities.
Many countries give preferential treatment to groups or regions
disadvantaged by prior neglect. Muslim Mindanao, the Cordilleras
in Northern Luzon and the Bicol Peninsula, among other regions,
can reasonably claim preferential treatment in national budget
allocations for infrastructure, primary health care and basic
education.

7. NURTURING A CARING NATIONAL COMMUNITY

Civic responsibility is crucial

Ultimately, this revolution we need to make must build a caring

national community. Only in such a caring community will we be
able to carry out our civic duty to provide equitable opportunity,
promote human dignity, and secure justice for all.
To achieve these, we must put the Philippine state on a sound
democratic footing—by empowering everyday Filipinos to take active
part in making the political decisions that shape their lives. And we
must so ease their burden of poverty—not just material/temporal
but also moral/spiritual—so that our people can live in dignity, in
freedom, in justice, in prosperity at peace with itself and the world.
Civic responsibility is crucial to ensure our freedom is
exercised for the common good, because the future of democracy in
our country may lie outside today’s formal political arena. It may lie
with the groupings of civil society. It is these mediating institutions
between the individual and the State that may yet become the
building blocks of true political parties, perhaps the beginning of a
people power democracy that is based on principles and programs,
rather than on naked power and commanding personalities.#

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