• Print Edition
• Archive
  • Editorial
  • Monitor
  • Focus
  • Media
  • Tribune
  • InWEnt Forum
  • Debate
• About us
• Index
• Links
• Subscription

 

• RSS
• Twitter

 

[ Philippines ]

The elephant in the living room

The Armed Forces of the Philippines play an important role in the country’s politics. Their history is one of fighting insurgents – and, occasionally, toppling presidents.


[ Von Alan C. Robles ]

In January 2001, President Joseph Estrada found himself summarily fired, when eight men appeared before protesters massed in Manila. The senior commanders of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) declared they were “withdrawing support” from Estrada. Within 24 hours, the bewildered ex-action star was bundled out of the palace and vice-president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was installed as his replacement. It wasn’t the first time the military ended a president’s career.

In 2001, the AFP claimed they were following the will of the people or at least the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets outraged by Estrada’s corruption. The military had a precedent. In 1986, it deserted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, guaranteeing the success of the first peaceful “people’s power” uprising.

Whether legal or not, Estrada’s non-violent eviction made one thing clear: the AFP is the final arbiter in Philippine politics. Aprodicio and Eleanor Laquian, a husband and wife team of technocrats who worked with Estrada and wrote a book about his presidency, state: “The body politic may hold elections, pass legislation, formulate policies or implement programmes under the tolerant gaze of the military establishment. But if instability and turmoil erupt, things will be decided by the armed forces.”

The AFP’s political involvement is not at all as total and brutish as in Burma, or as openly interventionist as in Thailand. Government officials in the Philippines and top generals regularly issue reassurances that the military is apolitical, united and deferential to civilians. However, like the proverbial elephant in the living room, the Philippine military – a 120,000-strong volunteer force – is a massive presence.

To start with, the Arroyo administration hasn’t proven to be dramatically better than Estrada’s. The corruption, cronyism and disdain for the constitution which mark her government have made Arroyo the most unpopular president since Marcos. According to political commentator Professor Randy David, “Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has set back the political growth of the country by at least 20 years as a result of her single-minded pursuit of personal power”. In seven years, she has faced a mob attack on the presidential palace and three coup plots by rebel officers, one serious enough to warrant her declaring a brief state of emergency.


Calming the Army

Nonetheless, Arroyo has managed to avoid Estrada’s fate. One reason is that most Filipinos are reluctant to join yet another uprising. Another reason is the military’s loyalty to the president. They cannot go “down to the level of banana republics, where they change govern­ments like cars”, says Chief of Staff General Alexander Yano, the AFP’s highest ranking officer. The military has backed Arroyo in more than one way. For example, soldiers allegedly have helped to rig the 2004 elections.

However, the support has come at a price. President Arroyo had to court military favour, plying the rank and file with cheap housing, subsidised rice, increased bene­fits and pay rises. Distributing promotions and plum appointments, she has surrounded herself with favoured high commanders. The previous chief of staff, Hermogenes Esperon, described his loyalty to Arroyo as both “personal and constitutional” – maybe because the president was a sponsor at his wedding?

In any case, Arroyo has been accused of a “revol­ving door” policy in appointing generals to the much coveted chief of staff position. In a 30-month period, she named five chiefs, leaving barely enough time for each one to warm the seat before turning it over to the next appointee. President Arroyo, constitutionally the AFP’s commander in chief, followed the military’s lead in targeting a much-fragmented communist movement as the main enemy of the state. Accordingly, soldiers patrol certain Manila neighbourhoods and even engage in “social development”. Normally, these tasks should be in civilian hands. Arroyo also has shown little interest in pursuing charges against the military. Scores of civilians have been murdered or disappeared without trace – but there are no judicial consequences.


“Reformists” in the ranks

Nevertheless, the military itself is far from united. Some generals, field commanders and junior officers have been indefatigable in their efforts to turn the AFP against Arroyo to fight against corruption. Asked about this, General Yano asserts military adventurism is “no longer a threat”, as the leaders of those revolutionary soldiers are facing charges.

Indeed, the last attempt to overthrow the Arroyo government, failed miserably. Only a year ago, two dozen soldiers staged a coup at a hotel, calling for a withdrawal of support to the president, only to wind up being tear-gassed.

It is telling that the officers in charge managed to organise the coup even though they were in jail at the time. And even now, they maintain a website called Sundalo, which carries articles with titles like “We have lost our constitutional options”. The site also carries links to the communist party and Muslim separatists, and contains a declaration by Brigadier General Danilo Lim excoriating Arroyo as “the number one corruptor”. Bizarrely, one of the jailed rebels, 36-year old Navy lieutenant Antonio Trillanes, is a senator. Last year, he got eleven million votes in an election, even though he had not been able to campaign. Some see his win as an expression of the public’s dissatisfaction with Arroyo.
If recent history is a gauge, imprisoning rebel soldiers won’t put an end to coup plotting. In fact, the Philippines possibly holds Southeast Asia’s record for unsuccessful coup attempts. There were at least 13 in 21 years. Some included bloody assaults, killing hundreds of civilians. Since 1986, only one president out of four, was spared a military revolt – Fidel Ramos, a former general and himself a conspirator against Marcos.

After Estrada was ousted, it turned out that there had been at least three groups within the AFP racing each other in plotting to overthrow the president. Jose Almonte, national security adviser during the Ramos administration, describes the main problem: it is a politicised AFP.


Politicised military

According to conventional wisdom, Filipino soldiers became politicised during the 14-year dictatorship of Marcos, who used military rule to buttress a regime of plunder and abuse. But American scholar Donald Berlin claims that “military influence in Philippine state and society historically has been substantial”. He notes that presidents before Marcos used the AFP – not only for civic construction projects, but also for fighting corruption, coordinating propaganda, controlling resettlement programmes and even electioneering.

Marcos encouraged generals to behave like the political elite – as members of a spoils system based on clan, corruption and patronage. According to the Laquians, the dictator corrupted key officers by “secretly franchising to them opportunities for smuggling, kidnapping and other lucrative activities”. It was them – and only them – who got palatial homes at the height of the martial-law regime.

This continued after the Marcos era. Almonte points out how some generals have feathered their nests at the expense. Four years ago, the AFP comptroller, Major General Carlos Garcia, was revealed to have salted away millions of pesos, enough for his fami­ly to buy dozens of cars and property in the Philippines as well as the USA. The AFP not only tried to conceal the scandal, but also dragged its feet punishing Garcia.


Not this government, but what else?

Corrupt practices are grist to the mill of the so-called reformists. But while rebel soldiers have been explicit about throwing out the old order, they have been less detailed about what they would do afterwards. Ideally, they would hand over power to the civilians and go back to the barracks. More likely, they would insist on a civilian-military junta.

A short document that became public a few years ago has some prescriptions which do not look all that democratic. According to the writer of the document, military service should be compulsory for every Fili­pino older than 20 years. Soldiers should be immune from civilian law and media limited to “responsible reporting” and “positive commentaries”. On top of that, capital crimes should be punished with execution by a military firing squad.

The document is a reminder that the AFP mindset has been conditioned in a tradition which very few point out: that of fighting fellow Filipinos. Rather than defending the country against foreign threats, the AFP has spent most of its existence waging counterinsurgency. A modernisation program that was supposed to change the mission’s profile to external defence has gone nowhere. Despite appropriations that account for 4,6 % of the national budget, soldiers are under-equipped, the navy only has antique vessels and the joke you hear about the Philippine Air Force is that it only has air, no force.

Ironically, all these shortcomings mean that communist insurgents and Muslim terrorists are the only foes the AFP can actually fight. It also means that the military establishment, as well as the reformists, will continue to be obsessed with the “communist threat”.

In all this, there is a big question though: having heard the words “withdrawal of support” uttered so many times, should Filipinos wonder if their future includes a junta? AFP chief Yano asserts that “our strong democratic moorings make it quite repulsive” for soldiers to seize power. In contrast, Almonte, the former security advisor of P resident Ramos, warns that “the Arroyo administration has imposed no more than an essentially artificial stability on the political situation”. And this kind of stability, Almonte says, will never withstand intense pressure.

An opinion survey taken last year showed that only 54 % of Filipinos were happy with the way democracy works, and 19 % said authoritarianism is sometimes better. The sad truth is that there are Filipinos today who, disappointed as they are with Arroyo, would probably welcome authoritarian rule, brought about by a military-led coup. What they tend to forget is that the Philippines had authoritarian rule under Marcos – and not to the benefit of the people.

D+C, 2008/10, Focus, Page 371-373