Walden Bello
for Focus on the Global South
07 May 2001
When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo appealed for help to defend Malacanang Palace from a looming assault by the Estrada loyalists on Sunday, April 29, the left was the first to respond, with militants from Akbayan and other progressive groups immediately taking positions at the Mendiola and Nagtahan approaches to the Palace. But it was an action that we carried out with a certain amount of ambivalence, if not trepidation.
It was not so much because we were putting our bodies on the line to defend a government many of whose policies we had misgivings about. That night and the following night, the choices were clear: either come out in defense of Gloria’s government or watch from the sidelines as a corrupt counter-elite rode back to power. For us in Akbayan!, the Citizens’ Action Party, there simply was no middle ground.
No, our feelings of discomfort stemmed from the fact that we, supposedly a mass party for the masses, were ranged against masses mobilized by almost millenarian fervor --which went to show, said a friend, that history not only was cunning but had an ironic sense of humor.
A genuine mass uprising
True, many of the people at the Edsa Shrine had been paid from 500 to 3000 pesos to go there. True, the backbone of the pro-Erap forces were members of the Iglesia ni Kristo (Church of Christ) and the charismatic El Shaddai movement who had been ordered to Edsa by their hierarchs. True, opposition senatorial candidates like Juan Ponce Enrile and Miriam Defensor-Santiago, as well as Estrada offspring J.V. Ejercito must bear responsibility for inciting the crowd to march on Malacanang. True, many of the shantytown youth spearheading the assault were high on shabu and other drugs.
But when all is said and done, one would be hard put to deny the truth that the vast majority of those who went to the Edsa Shrine and later marched on Malacanang were mainly motivated by resentments against the rich, by feelings that a terrible injustice had been done to their hero, Joseph "Erap" Estrada, by a sense that they were acting to protect the constitution and democracy. To say that they were simply manipulated by cynical politicians is to express a half-truth and to do the masses a great injustice.
How a corrupt lout masquerading as a man of the masses like Estrada was able to capture the fierce loyalties of the poor, downtrodden, and marginalized will be the subject of many studies in political psychology in the months and years to come. But the reality is that, for all their vast corruption and incompetence while in office, Estrada and his backers have been able to do something that has eluded the left for decades, and that is to organize the people along class lines into a powerful mass movement.
'Erapism' and Peronism
The closest approximation to the Estrada movement is Peronism in Argentina.
The parallels are stark: Juan Domingo Peron’s main base of support was the villas de miseria, or urban poor settlements, ringing Buenos Aires. Peron was squeezed out of power by the traditional aristocracy and the military, with the support of the middle class. Peron was brought back to power by the rampaging descamisados ("the shirtless ones"). Whether the urban poor and the pro-Estrada politicians will manage a similar feat in the Philippines remains to be seen, for it is increasingly clear that this week’s setback was not the last act of a national drama.
The fact is that just as Peronism altered the political landscape of Argentina irreversibly, becoming the dominant expression of lower-class participation in politics, so is Estrada’s populism transforming that of the Philippines. Class-oriented politics has finally come to this country, but it has done so with a vengeance, in a way that the classic parties of the left never anticipated: as an alliance among the urban and rural poor, party bosses with a strong grip on the electoral machinery, and a charismatic personality to whom populist rhetoric and the populist style is second nature.
Sobering lessons
To the forces that made up the so-called Edsa II Coalition that drove Estrada from power last January, the May Day riot in Mendiola was a moment of crystal clarity.
To the middle class that served the mass base of Edsa II, the Mendiola Riot underscored the gap between their political values and those of the masses. Anti-corruption and good governance was the battle cry that mobilized the middle class in January. In contrast, while the masses care about good governance, their rallying around Estrada showed that they value much more the promise of a better life, being accorded respect as human beings by those who are better off, being able to identify with those who claim to lead them.
To the Catholic Church hierarchy, recent events underlined how badly out of synch it is with the vast masses of Filipinos. Indeed, along with President Arroyo and former Presidents Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos, Cardinal Jaime Sin was one of the principal figures of the so-called "Edsa III’s" rogues’ gallery. If the Iglesia ni Kristo and the El Shaddai were welcomed at the Edsa Shrine by the pro-Estrada masses, this was not only because of their numbers, but because they represented faiths that were seen as more relevant to the needs, aspirations, and fears of the poor.
For the traditional "patrician" elite symbolized by the Makati Business Club, which has tremendous influence on the economic and social policy of the current administration, the Mendiola Riot should have underscored the fact that trickle-down economics cum paternalism and tokenism is no longer a viable strategy for appeasing the poor. And if she wishes to mount an effective challenge to the formidable populism of Estrada, President Arroyo must realize that a conditio sine qua non is her breaking with her Makati Business Club handlers and her UP School of Economics advisers. For these circles are locked into a losers’ strategy when it comes to addressing the masses’ central preoccupation: the rapid reduction of poverty and social inequality.
Indeed, one cannot say that this administration has a strategy for addressing poverty. What it has is a neoliberal strategy for stimulating growth by making the country attractive to foreign investors, liberalizing trade and capital flows, pursuing export-oriented growth, and cutting the budget deficit. In this view, the important thing is to get the "macroeconomic fundamentals right," and then leave it to market forces to trigger the economic growth that will create the resources that will trickle down to the poor. Until then, an anti-poverty program is largely a matter of setting up safety nets.
However theoretically attractive this approach may be, there is scant empirical support for its success in addressing the formidable problems of poverty and inequality that have now been accentuated by the same process of globalization it aims to promote. It is a surefire path to political disaster in a country with a vast urban and rural underclass.
Unenlightened elite
It is, however, unlikely that after the moment of clarity has passed, most of the key actors of Edsa II will remember the lessons of Edsa III. The Philippine elite, the Catholic Church, and the middle class have a notoriously short memory, and the fears triggered by the raw reality of class uprising that they saw in the last few days is likely to dominate their sentiments for reform, leading them eventually to throw their support for stronger police measures and conservative socioeconomic policies. The traditional elite in this country is notorious for its lack of a truly enlightened faction, and with much of the political counter-elite consolidating around Estrada’s bankrupt populism, a Filipino Franklin D. Roosevelt simply is not in the cards.
Challenges to the Left
The one possible exception among the Edsa II forces is the left. Here the task of unlearning ineffective paradigms and practices in order to better compete for the loyalties of the masses is a formidable challenge. Sticking to the explanation that it was simply manipulation by the pro-Estrada elite that triggered the Mendiola Riot, as some groups have noisily contended, is a sure route to irrelevance. Likewise, saying that unionized, class-conscious workers proved impermeable to Erap’s populist appeal doesn’t get one very far, since under conditions of globalization, irregular and marginal employment has become the dominant condition for the vast majority of workers, and it is these non-unionized strata that are most readily susceptible to Erap’s millenarian populism.
But the challenge goes beyond dumping facile explanations, to an abandonment of both the orthodox Leninist and western-oriented Social Democratic approaches to organizing the masses. Theory must be innovatively married to an instinct, a "feel," for where the masses are at and to populist language and symbolism while remaining faithful to the core values of equality, democracy, liberty, and decency. No less than a sea change in strategy, methods of organizing, and even as something as basic as language is demanded.
Unless the left looks at the recent crisis with humility, as an opportunity to learn and revitalize itself, the fire next time might not only sweep away the elite but also decimate the progressive movement, rendering it, as in Argentina, forever irrelevant.
Walden Bello is a professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and a senior analyst at the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South. He is also president of the Philippines' Freedom from the Debt Coalition and a party-list representative of Akbayan!, the Citizens’ Action Party. This piece first appeared on the electronic newsletter, Focus on the Philippines, Issue #20 2001.
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