Addressing Philippines' democratic deficit

Paul D. Hutchcroft and Joel Rocamora, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Asia News Network, Manila

More than 35 million Filipinos voted last May 10. But it will be a few weeks before the official outcome of one of the most archaic voting systems in the world -- in which handwritten paper ballots are counted manually -- is known.

In their decades-old fight against the infamous trio of "gold, guns and goons," civic movements throughout the country work valiantly to promote clean elections. As always, they face many challenges. Vote buying was probably no more rampant than usual, but there have been more persons killed this election season -- 147 thus far -- than in the previous two presidential elections combined. In the process of updating the voter lists, nearly a million citizens were denied the right to vote.

As official election tallies begin their long migration from local precincts to Manila, losing politicians can use a variety of tactics to supplement retail vote buying with wholesale manipulation of the vote count.

Incumbent President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo began the campaign with limited support but is emerging as the victor. She proved to be an indefatigable campaigner, highly adept in deploying the many advantages of incumbency, and cutting deals with local politicians and religious sects with significant command votes.

This broad base of support adds credence to Palace claims that she won the election fairly, and enables her to grasp the legitimacy that has been denied her since 2001 -- when she assumed office via a popular uprising. Her challengers promise to bring forth evidence of cheating, but the bigger her winning margin, the more unlikely that the protests will gain adherents. US election observers have been quick to provide a favorable assessment of electoral conduct. At this early stage in the vote count, it seems that the country will avoid the post-election instability that many had feared.

The mere absence of crisis, however, should not obscure fundamental shortcomings of Philippine democracy. It is true that no country in Asia has more experience with democratic institutions than the Philippines, and that the country's democracy has tremendous strengths. Percentage-wise, voter turnout far exceeds that of the United States, and the "people power" uprising of 1986 served as a beacon of hope for democrats throughout the world.

But a century after the introduction of national-level democratic institutions in the Philippines, the sense of frustration with the character of the country's democracy is arguably more apparent than ever before. Most specifically, the country faces a democratic deficit: Pent-up demands and pressures from below, and the incapacity of the country's democratic institutions to address them with any degree of effectiveness.

While surveys register a high degree of "faith in democracy as an ideal," they also reveal widespread disenchantment with "the way democracy works" in the country. Political institutions fail to respond to the needs of the poor; they are unable to control and regulate the means of violence; they exhibit deeply rooted flaws that hinder them from converting the country's rich human and natural resources into sustained development. While Philippine democracy has major difficulties delivering public goods and services, those with favorable access to the state have countless means of milking the system for private gain.

The inauspicious beginnings of Philippine democracy can be traced to the institutional innovations of American colonial rule in the early 20th century -- in the first concerted US attempt to export democracy overseas. Through the creation of democratic structures that very systematically excluded the Philippine masses, US colonials handed political power to an elite that had already developed a strong economic base in the Spanish era. Administrative structures were given comparatively little attention, and soon came to be controlled by politicos via a system of spoils. Patronage-oriented political parties became the basic prototype, and pork-barrel politics reigned supreme.

When Philippine oligarchs later adjusted to the mid-century expansion of the electorate, their dominance was so well- entrenched that challenges from below -- motivated by deep social injustices -- faced monumental odds. In effect, Philippine-style democracy has provided a convenient system by which power could be rotated at the top without the effective participation of those below.

A frequent complaint at the May 10 polls was the lack of real choice in both national and local races, and the near absence of debate over substantive issues. Parties and elections remain dominated by personalities rather than programs; legislative institutions continue to be the domain of long-standing political clans (now sharing the limelight with an assortment of actors, newscasters and basketball stars); and the legislative process is still driven by the politics of pork and patronage. Philippine democracy is urgently in need of reforms that can undo the institutional deficiencies that have undermined it for the past century.

The best way to close the democratic deficit is through the creation of more effective and cohesive political parties, oriented to programmatic rather than particularistic goals; policy rather than pork. As momentum builds toward a constitutional convention in 2005, this should be the No. 1 goal. And the first step in this direction should be the establishment of a new set of institutional innovations -- in representational and electoral structures.

Paul D. Hutchcroft is associate professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, currently based at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore. Joel Rocamora is executive director of the Institute for Popular Democracy in Quezon City. More in-depth analysis of the origins and evolution of the democratic deficit can be found at www.ipd.ph.