Corazon Aquino (1933-2009)

This blog takes pause to mark the passing of a former Filipino President, the Seventh President of the Philippine Republic, the lady in yellow, the unexpected heroine who brought down a corrupt, overstaying, and much hated dictatorship.  She came to power on a wave of massive popular support goodwill, domestic and international.  She had the mandate to reform a system that had grown hopelessly corrupt, dysfunctional, and worse, criminal.

I wish I could say more positive things about her but in good conscience I can’t.  23 years after our people kicked the Marcoses out, we all can certainly say that things haven’t turned out for the better.  The country remains polarized, the political system and government bureaucracy remain highly corrupt, brain drain has gotten much worse, economic opportunities remain limited or non-existent for millions of Filipinos, and millions of lives remain mired in poverty.

I did not agree with her on a number of issues such as the ineffectual agrarian reform law she and her Congress passed; the decision to junk the 1935 Constitution that led to a multi-party political system that has become mired in endless gridlock; , the way she let her closeness to the Church influence some of her political decisions; and to scrap any program that was associated with her predecessor without regard to the benefits it bore.  I also did not agree with the very weak hand she displayed towards elements of both the extreme left and extreme right.

Although she led a revolution, Cory Aquino was no revolutionary.  She came from a family of oligarchs and she pretty much preserved the system that fed and sustained such oligarchy.  By bringing the Marcos dictatorship down, she simply destroyed a new, crony and military-supported oligarchy to reinstate the old landowner-dominated form that enriched and empowered her clan and others like hers.  A lot of the faces and family names of people in her administration reflected the return of the old order.

Like millions of Filipinos, I had high hopes that February day in 1986 when Mrs. Aquino took her oath of office.  I had hoped then that with Marcos out of the way, the Philippines could get back on the road to economic development.  I had hoped that the people who had plundered the country for 20 years will be brought to justice.  I had hoped that in spite of my country’s imperfections, there were enough very good men and women among us who could help lift the nation out of its economic misery.   But as I found out later on, intelligence, good intentions, and a willingness to serve are not enough.

My idealistic and naive mind didn’t realize then that there was a much bigger hurdle to overcome in order for the country to gain a place among the world’s prosperous nations.  That hurdle was, and still is, the inability of Filipinos to unite and set aside their differences in order to achieve a higher and greater good.  A lot of cause-oriented groups and political parties sprung out of the new political system created by the 1987 Constitution.  All these groups had noble goals and were led and supported by smart and gifted people with a genuine concern for the country’s future.  I do not question their patriotism and I do not question their sincerity.   And I will not go into any more details as to what happened or did not happen.  But our system has failed to deliver because of the failure of these groups and parties to reach a middle ground somewhere, to compromise some of their faction’s ideals for the sake of a higher, more unifying national goal.

Mrs. Aquino had, for a brief shining moment, the opportunity to unite a tired, frustrated and weary nation.  But in my humble opinion, the inability to think and rise above her oligarchic comfort zone, coupled with her own failure to compromise with both pro-administration and opposition groups in order to foster a more united nation made her miss out on such a golden opportunity.