Poor People Power: Preludes and prospects. A conjunctural analysis

Just short of its one-hundred days in office, the Arroyo government is confronting the biggest challenge so far to its rule. The ‘Poor People Power’, being played out at the EDSA shrine, has broken through officialdom’s grand narrative of a national consensus on the administration’s EDSA 2 ride to power. Stoked by the inquisition under which the government had subjected former President Joseph E. Estrada, the masses who elected Estrada in 1998 and had been marginalized in EDSA 2 are turning the tables on the elite supporters of government.

Only in the Philippines

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s rise to power is laden with constitutional ambiguities. No further proof is needed than the eruption of EDSA 3 so soon after EDSA 2, and the difficult position that the administration finds itself in as it confronts a mirror-image of the people power that brought it to power and now wants to bring it down.

The Poor People Power, triggered by the humiliating arrest of Estrada on April 25, has upped the political ante. Calls raised at the EDSA shrine have gone beyond the Estrada family’s initial demand of putting the former president under house arrest. Due partly to Malacanang’s silence on this demand, the protesters have since called for Arroyo’s resignation and Estrada’s reinstatement.

And here lies the rub for the Arroyo administration. The constitutional provision on presidential succession made her the obvious winner among several pretenders during EDSA 2. The Constitution, however, does not provide the legal basis for the manner by which Estrada was forced to leave Malacanang to make room for her ascension. Today, the legal questions surrounding EDSA 2 have come to haunt her administration.

This was not the case in the aftermath of EDSA 1986 when Corazon Aquino, widow of martyred opposition leader Ninoy and thus the consensus leader of the broad opposition to the Marcos regime, declared a revolutionary government to do away with the legal framework laid down by the 1972 Constitution. EDSA 1 after all was a state-replacing act, requiring as well a leader with an electoral mandate to implement it. In 1986, the people’s democratic struggle culminated not only in the changing of guards. The fundamental law of the land, the Constitution, had to be rewritten to reflect the political consciousness at that time on how the country will be governed under a democracy.

However, while EDSA 1986 was an uprising to change the political system after 14 years of strongman rule, that in January was staged to replace one man, the President. It was an act that, under the 1987 Constitution and in more stable democracies, should have been resolved through the impeachment process. The Supreme Court’s vaunted 13-0 decision validating the legitimacy of the Arroyo administration has also inadvertently legitimized the extra-parliamentary process of changing the country’s president. Today, EDSA 3, seeking to oust Arroyo, through a ‘poor people’s uprising’, is stretching the legal question to confounding proportions.

Based on the stream of humanity at EDSA 3, its numbers have matched that at EDSA 2 before the final blow was dealt to the Estrada administration, with the military leadership’s defection to the Arroyo camp on 19 January. Going by the official justification of EDSA 2 that the legitimacy of any government lies with the ‘taong-bayan’, then numbers should prove decisive. But this democratic ideal has now been put into the crucible of class analysis: EDSA for and by whom?

EDSA 3 is a mirror-image of EDSA 2 in its intent and form. The difference lies in its class composition. Differing from EDSA 1 and 2, EDSA 3 has a patently poor people constituency. Live coverage by the Net 25 cable TV and DZEC radio station—providing a service not unlike that of Radio Veritas during the days of the dictatorship—belies the establishment media’s portrayal of pro-Erap rallies as nothing more than the handiwork of a few rabble-rousers or lumpen proletariats.

Today, with the breakthrough in the media, ‘the silenced majority’ has finally come into full public view. Besides the ubiquitous buses and jeeps that transport organized constituencies in any mobilization, the pajeros and other luxury cars that lined EDSA 2 in January have now been replaced by tricycles and owner-jeeps. Instead of the Catholic school-bred gentexters in January, EDSA today is bustling with street vendors, domestic helpers, community youth, and families whose children are used to sleeping in cold pavements.

Going by the banners and slogans of this dominantly C and D crowd, the protesters want ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’. They are calling for the powers-that-be to uphold the Constitution: distilling the inchoate voice of EDSA 3, they want their vote in 1998 recognized, and the constitutional process of resolving charges against Estrada therefore carried out. And perhaps goaded by the thinly-guised anti-poor rhetoric of the EDSA 2 forces, they have trooped to the shrine to take their place in the sun, adopting an in-your-face ‘poor-is-power’ attitude toward the Establishment. Simply put, the poor in EDSA today want respect.

Who’s afraid of Estrada

Despite the ouster of Estrada from the seat of power, there had been no let-up in the campaign against the fallen leader as if his actions remained decisive in the business of running government. Despite Arroyo’s promise of a ‘healing’ presidency, the government had proceeded apace with the pro-Erap vs anti-Erap campaign that has only worked to further divide society.

In this light, the overkill in the arrest of Estrada was an event waiting to happen. The campaign to demonize the past administration provided incentives to government officials and civil society actors to treat the former president like nothing more than a common criminal. The more indignities they heaped on his person, the more media mileage or political capital they seemed to gain. Unwittingly, however, this mean-spirited campaign grated on the Filipino psyche that tends to sympathize with the underdog.

The Arroyo administration’s single-minded campaign to cleanse the system of all vestiges of the past administration apparently has also affected its performance. Almost from Day 1, the government has begun to ease out all government officials or appointees and dismantle programs identified with the Estrada presidency. Such a complete break with the immediate past, however, also leads to a slowdown in the bureaucracy’s service-delivery, the impact of which is borne by the poor.

More important, the government is pushing for a drastic cut in the national budget because of the budget deficit, purportedly due to the plunder committed by the Estrada government. Apparently, government has refused to recognize that the past administration had left it with a starting free-cash position of P72.9 billion, a far cry from the P8.3 billion free-cash position that the Estrada government had to content with when it took over from the Ramos administration in July 1998.

Claiming bankruptcy and the need for ‘balanced budgeting’ as reason, the Arroyo administration has announced that it will cut back on government spending and rely more heavily on the market. Such a slash in the budget always hists public investments in the economy and social programs. Perhaps it will be this pronounced market-driven development strategy that will serve to fuel the discontent among the poor electorate.

The EDSA 2 forces, now ensconced in the state, have grossly miscalculated the priorities, if not the anger, of the masses. Among the poor, the issue of graft and corruption is a charge to be leveled against the system and not on one person alone. The practice of a double-standard, whereby administration allies accused of similar offenses go scot-free while Estrada is persecuted, is not lost on the EDSA 3 protesters. Estrada’s humiliation in the hands of authorities seems to have only strengthened his links with the masses who voted him to the presidency as it has come to symbolize as well the oppression of the weak by the mighty wielders of power.

Scenarios

1. GMA remains President

So far, the administration seems intent on allowing time and fatigue to take its toll on the EDSA 3 forces. The poor people power at EDSA today lacks a critical ingredient for the present political challenge to become a full-blown crisis of governance: the defection of elite allies of the GMA presidency, particularly the military. Any long-drawn impasse without this ingredient usually works to maintain the status quo.

Nevertheless, the administration has also already conceded and extended to Estrada prison amenities befitting a former president. If the government gives in to the minimum demand of putting the former President under house arrest, the poor peoples’ demand of ‘justice for Erap’ may be met albeit temporarily. It can be expected that the EDSA 3 forces will closely monitor the trial of Estrada much like how the intelligentsia watched the impeachment proceedings. The shoe, so to speak, is now in the other foot.

Morever, the elections are just three weeks away. EDSA 3, just like EDSA 2 then, has given the opposition much political mileage, and has deflated the administrations 13-0 senatorial campaign. It has rendered almost effete survey results favoring the administration candidates as a measure of projecting election results. If the opposition gains the upper-hand in the polls, then the power of the president to effectively govern hangs in the balance.

On hindsight, perhaps the most effective way for the Arroyo presidency to have secured its stability after EDSA 2 would have been to grant Estrada presidential pardon. Unfortunately, that moment may have come to pass. Today, some in government and in the opposition have forwarded the ‘solomonic solution’ of Arroyo conceding that she is president in an acting capacity which would then allow Estrada to take refuge behind the cloak of presidential immunity. While the suggestion has been ignored by Arroyo, it may be the only way for her to sweep this episode under the rug. Either way, EDSA 3 has given the lie to the stability of the Arroyo presidency.

2. Erap is reinstated as President

It appears that this is the maximum demand of the EDSA 3 forces. But for this to take place, the number of people at EDSA must either remain constant or grow by the day. Equally critical, as shown in EDSA 2, is the support of a critical section of the military willing to back Estrada.

While a return of the Estrada presidency seems remote, it is not impossible. Because EDSA 2 allowed for a change in the presidency through extra-legal means rather than through impeachment or election, it has muddled the rules of the game. The weakened legal and institutional framework obtaining in the country today can, therefore, accommodate previously unthinkable options.

How an Estrada presidency will look the second-time around will depend on the balance of forces surrounding it. A return of the Estrada presidency, however, will not simply mean a return to the old. At the very least, there needs to be a credible legal resolution of the charges leveled agains Estrada to meet the demand for accountability and for a cross-class national reconciliation to begin.

3. Emergency situation

The political uncertainty today may serve as a breeding ground for martial rule. There is wide agreement that EDSA 2 is predominantly a middle-class revolt. Nevertheless, the specific characteristic of EDSA 2, as against EDSA 1, is its more pronounced elite character, even if different Left formations also joined the broad opposition. The opposition elites, after all, have the resources to maximize the democratic space—unlike under a dictatorship—to agitate, organize and launch an offensive.

The corporate sector, particularly those in Makati, has shown that it could bring down a government by manipulating the market and conducting a relentless, well-oiled campaign through the establishment media. At the same time, unlike EDSA 1, which saw a divided military, EDSA 2 had the whole military leadership defectign to the opposition. In this light, it is easy to identify the possible leaders of a winning business-military coup coalition.

On the cultural front, it is unfortunate that fundamentalism has reared its ugly head during the terms of women presidents. Nevertheless, under the Aquino administration, fundamentalism took root among marginal, vigilante groups. Under the Arroyo presidency, fundamentalism is being mainstreamed no less than Archbishop Cardinal Sin’s dicta on morality, finding expression in state policies, such as current attempts to water down women’s rights, sex education in schools, and family planning programs.

Already, the state ban on ‘Live Show’, the present initiative to regulate cellular texting, the rise of exclusionary politics (e.g., the administration’s 13-0 senatorial campaign and marginalization of anyone even remotely connected with the past administration), and the establishment media’s self-imposed censorship in its coverage of political realities—made blatant today by the contrasting coverage of EDSA 3 by Net 25 and DZEC—all point to, as what some artists and women’s groups have flagged, a trend toward ‘moral authoritarianism’.

It is within the realm of possibilities that emergency powers may be declared. Any attempt at a power grab, real or fabricated, or outbreak of violence will give the government an excuse to clamp down on the people at EDSA. Nevertheless, more than the civilian authorities, it will be the military establishment that stands to gain from this act. In fact, because of the prominent, if not decisive, role that the military played in EDSA 2, rumors of a junta waiting in the wings gain credibility.

On the other end, disgruntled military and police elements may decide to join the pro-Erap forces at EDSA. The masses are certainly there and may back anyone who will rescue their fallen hero or defend them against a government assault on EDSA. This situation is also ripe for strongman rule as there will be a personalistic leader who has the backing of the toiling masses.

4. The formation of a transition government

Third party actors may raise the possibility of forming a transition or caretaker government to bring an end to a prolonged impasse. The caretaker government may be headed by a council whose members are acceptable to both pro- and anti-Erap forces. This option, however, becomes only credible in a situation of extreme polarization, which would compel both Estrada and Arroyo to give up all claims to the presidency. Under a highly polarized situation, a caretake government may oversee rewriting of the Constitution and elections of the country’s leaders.

Published in EDSA 3: Uncensored perspectives by Friends of EDSA 3, Manila, April 2002.

Back to EDSA Tres | Democracy Files |