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Philippines The Return of Old-Style Politics in the Countryside
Philippine politics, along with other aspects of society,
rely heavily on kinship and other personal relationships. To win
a local election, one must assemble a coalition of families. To
win a provincial election, the important families in each town
must be drawn into a wider structure. To win a national election,
the most prominent aristocratic clans from each region must
temporarily come together. A family's power is not necessarily
precisely correlated with wealth--numbers of followers matters
more--but the middle class and the poor are sought mainly for the
votes that they can deliver. Rarely will they be candidates
themselves.
The suspension of elections during martial law seemed at
first to herald a radical centralization of power in Manila,
specifically in the Marcos and Romualdez clans, but traditional
provincial oligarchs resurfaced when Aquino restored elections.
To the dismay of her more idealistic followers, Aquino followed
her brother's advice and concluded agreements with many former
Marcos supporters who were probably going to win elections
anyway. About 70 percent of the candidates elected to the House
of Representatives in 1987 were scions of political dynasties.
They included five relatives of Aquino: a brother, an uncle, a
sister-in-law, a brother-in-law, and a cousin. Another brotherin -law was elected to the Senate. The newly elected Congress
passed a bill prohibiting close relatives of government officials
from becoming candidates, but it did not take effect until after
the 1988 local elections. Many of the same prominent families who
had dominated Philippine society from the Spanish colonial period
returned to power. Commonly, the same two families vie for
control of provinces. The specific reason for social and
political bipolarity is not known, but it nourishes feuds between
rival clans that are renewed generation after generation.
Coercion is an alternative to buying votes. Because the
population of the Philippines has multiplied by a factor of nine
in the twentieth century, there is not enough land to go around
(see Migration
, ch. 2). As a result, tenant-landlord
relationships have become more businesslike and less personal,
and some old elite families now rely on force to protect their
interests. Article 18 of the constitution directs the dismantling
of all "private armies," but it seemed unlikely that it could be
enforced.
Data as of June 1991
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