AS FILIPINOS flock to the polls on May 10, not only
the nation’s eyes will be keenly focused on the conduct and outcome
of the elections. International eyes will also be keenly watching
the elections, namely a group of American international observers.
The observers’ presence begs the question of why
the U.S. is so interested in the Philippine elections. While supporters
of the observers say their presence will help prevent cheating, critics
such as Anakpawis party-list national chairman Crispin Beltran denounce
the move as a threat to clean elections and national sovereignty.
A look at the history of Philippine elections proves
that despite the declaration of the Philippines’ independence
from the U.S. in 1946, the Philippines remains a neo-colony of the
US. The U.S. uses the elections as another way to continue to ensure
their economic and political control over the Philippines.
Love letters
In a letter last Jan. 28, Executive Secretary Alberto
Romulo wrote to Commission on Elections (Comelec) chair Benjamin Abalos
to propose the invitation of international observers to the May 10
elections, supposedly to help “protect and enhance” its
credibility.
On Feb. 16 the Comelec chair wrote back: “The presence
of international observers will send a message to the world that democracy
in the Philippines, while relatively young, puts absolutely no one
above the sacred process of election, and that leaders are chosen
only by the genuine will of the people.” The proposal was formally
approved by the Comelec two days later.
Though looking like an initiative of Malacañang,
it was — as reported in the press — actually premised on
an offer of the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs (NDI) to lead an international observer team to monitor the
coming presidential polls. (It is unclear, however when exactly the
offer was made.)
Secretary Romulo was also quoted in media reports as
having said that the NDI offered to consult other U.S.-based groups
such as the International Republican Institute (IRI) on the possibility
of their participation in a bipartisan and multinational delegation
to the Philippines.
An advance team of observers came to Manila in the first
week of March to discuss rules for the deployment of the observer
team with Comelec officials. The U.S. Agency for International Development,
(USAID) a U.S. government organization which describes itself as a
“humanitarian” organization working to promote U.S. economic
and foreign policy interests, provided the advance team with initial
funding of $75,000. (U.S.)
Malacañang spokesperson Ignacio Bunye had been
quoted in the news as saying that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
shared Romulo’s enthusiasm in welcoming the foreign observers.
Last April 23 it was reported in the newspapers that
the U.S. would be sending not just 50, but 100 observers to monitor
the coming election. The observer team, the reports said, would be
coming over under the auspices of the USAID in cooperation with the
Consortium for Elections and Political Processes Strengthening (CEPPS).
This time Malacañang, through deputy presidential
spokesperson Ricardo Saludo, is trying to take some distance from
the foreign poll watchers.
“All the monitoring arrangements need some concurrence
from the (Comelec), which has to clarify whether such an undertaking
would compromise our sovereignty and the independence of the electoral
process,” said Saludo, apparently unaware that the proposal to
invite foreign poll observers had been approved by the Comelec months
before.
Beltran, chair and first nominee of the party-list group
Anakpawis, has criticized the forthcoming presence of U.S. election
observers saying: “The U.S. should not be allowed to interfere
in the May elections. The U.S. can only be up to no good by sending
its observers who are, no doubt, operatives of the CIA (Central Intelligence
Agency). They have an ulterior agenda, and no doubt this agenda is
in line with the U.S. efforts to maintain its stranglehold and influence
over Philippine politics and government.”
A closer look at the background of the observer team
gives reason to believe Beltran’s statement.
Observing the observers
The CEPPS is composed of the NDI, the IRI, and the International
Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES).
The NDI, which had offered to lead the international
monitoring group, is not new to Philippine elections.
In 1986, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan also sent
an observer team (which included the NDI) to monitor the snap presidential
elections called by Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, who
was under intense public pressure to resign.
Said Reagan in a statement on Jan. 30 that year: “This
election is of great importance to the future of democracy in the
Philippines, a major friend and ally of the United States in the Pacific.
It comes at a time when the Philippines is struggling with the urgent
need to reestablish a political consensus, restructure the economy,
and rebuild a sense of military professionalism.”
Marcos had been forced to call a snap election to prove
that his government still held the interests and mandate of the Filipino
people, amid armed and legal opposition to the martial rule he imposed
in 1972.
Marked by fraud and violence, the snap election was
widely denounced and the U.S. observer team joined in condemning the
official results. Public indignation came to a head in the next few
weeks, leading to Marcos’ ouster through a people-power revolt
on Feb. 25 and the installation of his opponent, Corazon Aquino, into
the presidency.
Aiding “democracy”
In its website, the NDI is described thus: “The
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs…is a
(non-profit) organization working to strengthen and expand democracy
worldwide. Calling on a global network of volunteer experts, NDI provides
practical assistance to civic and political leaders advancing democratic
values, practices and institutions. NDI works with democrats in every
region of the world to build political and civic organizations, safeguard
elections, and to promote citizen participation, openness and accountability
in government.”
The NDI thus appears to be a neutral entity with the
sole mission of fostering democracy throughout the world. But its
background reveals much more than meets the eye.
The NDI, identifying itself with the U.S. Democratic
Party, is one of four organizations affiliated with the National Endowment
for Democracy (NED), an organization funded by the U.S. government
ostensibly to “carry out democracy initiatives” internationally.
Other organizations affiliated with the NED are: the IRI, representing
the U.S. Republican Party; the Center for Private International Enterprise
(CPIE, US Chamber of Commerce), and the Free Trade Union Institute
(FTUI, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations).
Beyond “democratic” rhetoric
Created by the U.S. Congress in 1983, the NED promotes
the doctrines of minimal government intervention in the economy or
free-market economics, class “cooperation,” “pluralism,”
and opposition to socialism. It propagates the “virtues”
of the American economic and political system among the influential
sectors of its target countries, making sure that socialist ideas
do not gain ground. For its work, the NED receives from the U.S. government
an annual budget of some $33 million, which it channels to the four
foundations affiliated with it and from these to professional and
employers’ associations, universities, media, judiciaries, churches,
and certain “dissident” movements.
Contrary to the democratic facade that is provided by
its name, the NED has been known to support authoritarian governments
in the Philippines and other Asian countries, as well as in South
and Central America, and other regions — while toppling duly
elected ones. In 1991, Allen Weinstein, one of those who drafted the
law creating the NED, said: “A lot of what we do today was done
25 years ago by the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency).” The NED
has worked closely with the CIA in covert operations, such as the
failed CIA-instigated plot against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez
in April 2002.
The plot against Chavez’s nationalist government
in 2002 is reminiscent of the CIA plot against the left-leaning government
of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. Supported by the CIA, the Chilean
military staged a coup against the democratically elected Allende
government, resulting in the Chilean president’s assassination
and the installation into power of the fascist Augusto Pinochet.
The true colors of the NED become more obvious when
one takes into account the fact that among the members of its Board
of Directors are Dr. Francis Fukuyama of the Project for the New American
Century (PNAC) and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute
for Public Policy Research (AEI).
The PNAC is an institute openly advocating U.S. global
leadership. In its Statement of Principles, signed June 3, 1997 by
Fukuyama and others, the PNAC declares thus: “We need to accept
responsibility for America’s unique role in preserving and extending
an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and
our principles.” It also speaks of the need “to challenge
regimes hostile to our (U.S.) interests and values.” The PNAC
promotes the Reaganite doctrine of active intervention in other countries.
The AEI describes itself as a “think tank”
devoted to “preserving and strengthening” what it calls
the “foundations of freedom” — limited government,
private enterprise, vital cultural and political institutions, and
a strong foreign policy and national defense — through scholarly
research, open debate, and publications.
The “scholars” associated with the PNAC and
the AEI, such as Fukuyama and Novak, are among the most vocal defenders
of U.S. Pres. George W. Bush’s global interventionist policies.
Marcos and U.S. observers
The U.S. has always paid lip service to democracy, but
it has never balked at supporting anti-democratic regimes that are
friendly to its economic and foreign policy interests, while at the
same time working against democratic governments that assert national
sovereignty. As former U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt once
said of a certain Latin American dictator, “He may be a son of
a bitch, as long as he is our son of a bitch.”
In the Philippine context, the U.S. has always maintained
a policy of supporting dictators that are friendly to its economic
and foreign policy interests. The U.S. still supported the Marcos
administration at the height of martial law, when state forces violated
civil liberties and other human rights with the highest impunity.
Marcos was the fair-haired boy of the U.S. while he
was an able protector of U.S. interests in controlling the economy
of the Philippines and influencing its politics and military.
In a number of media interviews, Bayan Muna Rep. Satur
Ocampo has said that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is represented
by the CPIE in the NED, was one of the first entities to congratulate
Marcos upon the declaration of martial law. In 1983 George Bush, father
of the present U.S. president and then U.S. vice president, said to
Marcos: “We love your adherence to democracy.”
The servility of the Marcos regime to U.S. interests
generated a social crisis which fanned the flames of dissent. To avert
the revolutionary tide, Marcos imposed martial law in 1972. Armed
and, later, legal opposition to authoritarian rule forced Marcos to
make a pro-forma lifting of martial law in 1981. But U.S. support
for his government continued up to the last days of February 1986,
when the broad resistance to his continued leadership had come to
a head and already constituted a considerable danger to the U.S. interests
he was serving.
Crucial points
It is within this framework that the NDI offer to lead
a team of observers to monitor the May 10 presidential elections must
be viewed. For all its pretensions to safeguarding democracy, the
observer team which will monitor the May 10 elections will be doing
so with the objective of protecting the U.S. agenda of continuing
its domination of the Philippine economy, politics and military; and
ensuring that whoever will next sit in Malacañang will be a
loyal accomplice in its quest for global “leadership.” That
is clear from the NDI’s affiliations.
It is only now, since 1986, that the U.S. is once again
sending a monitoring group to take watch over the Philippine electoral
process. There are similarities between 1986 and 2004; at no other
points in contemporary Philippine history have there been surrogate
regimes so loyal to the U.S. and at the same time so alienated from
the people.
Like the Marcos regime, the Arroyo government is distinguished
for unleashing a crisis upon the Filipino people with its degree of
servility to the U.S. agenda.
Under the aegis of U.S.-imposed pro-globalization policies,
the Arroyo government has been wiping away all regulation of foreign
investment, at the expense of the people’s livelihood and the
country’s environment. Because of this, local enterprises have
been closing down at alarming rates due to unfair competition, exacerbating
the unemployment problem. The “right” of profit repatriation
that foreign investors, without obligation to transfer technology,
have been enjoying at levels previously unimaginable is worsening
the decapitalization of the Philippine economy and swelling the foreign
debt.
Meanwhile its support to the U.S. interventionist agenda,
which it has been giving without being asked, is risking the lives
of Filipinos overseas. Filipino workers abroad have been subjected
to hate attacks in countries opposing the U.S. wars of aggression,
as they are perceived to be also supportive of it like their government.
All these have unleashed a wave of public outrage against
the Arroyo administration—an outrage that has expressed itself
in numerous mass protests.
The NDI-led observer team may well be expected to lend
legitimacy to the May elections, by pronouncing its results as “credible”
when the circumstances favor U.S. interests. Right now the U.S. is
still seen as supportive of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo whose
recent actions, such as the sacking of a Comelec public information
officer who pointed out her violations of election laws in the conduct
of her campaign, are seen as indicative of a pattern of fraud. It
was no less than Bush who last year encouraged Arroyo to run in the
May elections, some five months after public discontent forced her
to appease the people by declaring she would not run.
On the other hand, the U.S. Congress and State Department
have recently come out with statements criticizing the Arroyo government
for incompetence in the face of corruption and terrorism. This developed
just as anti-Arroyo forces from both the Left and the mainstream opposition
have been gravitating toward a broad front against her.
Rewind
U.S. interference in Philippine elections is not new.
In fact, the entire Philippine electoral system traces its roots to
the U.S. occupation.
The U.S. occupation of the Philippines was part of a
larger drive for additional markets for the products of American factories.
In the latter part of the 19th century, the U.S. economy
experienced a rapid industrial growth, characterized by an increase
in manufactured goods which outran the demand for these. In the words
of Sen. John F. Miller: “The time has now come…when new
markets are necessary...in order to keep our factories running.”
The expansion campaign was one that took the U.S. to
the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. U.S. forces took part in the
Philippine war against Spanish colonialism in 1898, supposedly to
help free the Filipinos, only to set up an occupation government in
1901.
The U.S. occupation of the Philippines, although clearly
in the furtherance of American corporate interests, was justified
with the guise of “tutelage in the democratic way of life.”
In line with this, the U.S. established an electoral system in the
Philippines.
The first Philippine elections were held in 1907. In
these elections to the National Assembly, only propertied men 21 years
old and above, and able to write or speak Spanish or English, were
eligible to vote and qualified to run. The U.S. tapped the local elite
for “national” leadership as historically, moneyed classes
in colonized countries have tended to collaborate with occupying powers
in order to retain their positions of social privilege.
The next decades would see the further entrenchment
of a Philippine elite leadership serving as the local appendage of
U.S. imperialism.
Direct U.S. occupation of the Philippines continued
until 1946, when independence was “granted” after decades
of determined struggle by the Filipino people, but the Philippines
continues to be bound by economic and military “agreements”
which shape Philippine policies to ensure that these will be favorable
to the U.S. agenda.
In the post-“independence” setting, the U.S.
has interfered in the electoral process whenever personalities or
parties it considered threats to its interests surfaced.
In 1946 the U.S. supported moves to unseat from Congress
six elected members of the Democratic Alliance (DA), a broad formation
of leftist elements and progressive liberals united on the program
of assertion of sovereignty and advancement of nationalist industrialization.
Staunch opponents of the Bell Trade Act which granted U.S. corporations
equal “rights” with Filipino businessmen in exploiting the
country’s economic resources, the DA’s representatives constituted
a block to a two-thirds vote on the said bill. President Manuel Roxas
and his political allies, with the aid of the U.S., filed ouster cases
against the DA representatives on spurious grounds of electoral “terrorism.”
They succeeded in unseating them and the Bell Trade Act was able to
pass in Congress.
The late 1940s and early 1950s saw the emergence of
Claro M. Recto, a brilliant statesman who advocated nationalist industrialization
and an independent foreign policy. As a senator in 1953-57, he came
into frequent clashes with President Ramon Magsaysay, a staunch U.S.
ally. When Recto competed against Magsaysay in the 1957 presidential
elections, the CIA orchestrated a sophisticated smear campaign against
him and his running mate Lorenzo Tañada. At the same time it
built up the candidacy of Magsaysay, organizing and funding the National
Movement for Free Elections which served the dual purpose of a pro-Magsaysay
propaganda arm and election “monitor.”
It worked; Recto and Tañada were badly defeated.
Carlos P. Garcia emerged from that election as the new
president—Magsaysay having perished in a plane crash while on
the campaign trail. Though far more moderate than Recto, he adopted
certain parts of the latter’s economic program, embarking on
a Filipino First Policy. For this, the Garcia administration suffered
from continuous U.S. harassment and almost met its end through CIA-supported
coup attempts.
No illusions
The Philippine electoral system creates an illusion
of empowerment among the Filipino people. It is always projected as
a “civilized” way of effecting change in the country’s
conditions.
But throughout the Philippines’ history, the Filipino
people’s will has always ended up in the dustbin of the electoral
process. Philippine elections have always served to lend a semblance
of legitimacy to the leadership of politicians from classes with a
historical record of willingness to sacrifice the national welfare
for the sake of U.S. economic and foreign policy interests. The emergence
of leaders constituting a counter-current to the status quo has invariably
been met with maneuvers by the U.S. and its local henchmen.
The coming presidential elections should not be expected
to be any different. As it has always been, the U.S. bet is a sure
winner and he or she who dares to go against the flow from within
the existing framework may very well expect to be harassed in various
ways. The U.S. is the real decision-maker in the present Philippine
electoral process; no one has been able to ascend to Malacañang,
and stay there, without its blessings.
There should thus be no illusion on the part of the
electorate that by depending entirely on the present electoral process,
the people can catapult into power a leadership decidedly committed
to the national interest. Such a leadership can only come to power
through the concerted action of the Filipino people to break the chains
of Philippine bondage to the U.S. economic and foreign policy agenda.
Sources:
Barbara Mae Dacanay with Estrella Torres, “Commission
on Elections Agrees with Arroyo Plan to Invite International Observers,”
Gulf News, Feb. 22, 2004
Jerome Aning with Inquirer wires, “U.S. to Field
50 Observers to Monitor May Elections,” Philippine Daily Inquirer,
Feb. 26, 2004
Concepcion Paez, “Guess Who’s Coming to Our
Elections?” Newsbreak, March 29, 2004
Maila Ager, “2 Foreign Groups Sign Up to Monitor
May 10 Election,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 23, 2004
“Anakpawis Presses Arroyo to Prohibit the Entry
and Interference of U.S. Intelligence Experts in the May 10 Polls,”
Anakpawis News Release, April 24, 2004
Gil C. Cabacungan Jr., “U.S. Sending 100 Observers
to Monitor RP Polls,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 26, 2004
United States Agency for International Development,
http://www.usaid.gov/
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs,
http://www.ndi.org/
National Endowment for Democracy, http://www.ned.org/
Roland G. Simbulan, The Bases of Our Insecurity, Second
Edition, Quezon City: BALAI Fellowship, Inc., 1985
Bobby Tuazon, Edberto Villegas, Jose Enrique Africa,
Paul Quintos, Ramon Guillermo, Jayson Lamchek, and Edwin Licaros,
Unmasking the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialist Hegemony and Crisis,
Quezon City: Center for Anti-Imperialist Studies, 2002
Project for the New American Century, http://www.pnac.org/
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research,
http://www.aei.org/
Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited,
Manila: Tala Publishing Corporation, 1975
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The Continuing Past, Manila: Foundation for Nationalist Studies, 1978
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2004
