Political Parties in Constitutional Reform

Political Parties in Constitutional Reform
Joel Rocamora
Institute for Popular Democracy, Summer 2002

• Parties and Reform
• Understanding Phillipine Parties
• Parties and Election
• Reforming Parties
• Biobliography

Parties and Reform

There are many reasons for reforming the 1987 constitution. Some of
the reasons have to do with legal infirmities such as unclarities in the
amendment process itself. Others have to do with provisions that have
not been implemented for fifteen years because they require implementing
laws that our legislature have not passed. The most important reasons
are clustered around a set of amendatory proposals for reforming government
and the political system as a whole. What has not been tackled is what
changes can be put in place for improving our political parties.

Public perception of our political parties is, to put it mildly, rather
uncharitable. “Our political parties don’t stand for anything.
They have different names, but they are practically the same. And the
politicians have no loyalty to their parties at all; they are loyal only
to themselves. So they flit from one party to another, like so many butterflies
and bees in a flower garden.” (Neal Cruz, “Don’t Change
the Charter, We May Get a Worse One”, Philippine Daily Inquirer,
April 23, 2002) We do not have to agree with Mr. Cruz’ insulting
cynicism about parties. But it would be accurate to say that even if put
more gently, his assessment is widely accepted.

Beyond public perception, the role of political parties in the last
four administrations should worry party leaders. President Arroyo is a
member of Lakas-NUCD. Why should she use resources, personal or otherwise,
to build a Kaibigan ni Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (KGMA)? In the May 2001
elections, the government’s electoral vehicle, the People Power
Coalition (PPC), seemed to carry the reform sentiments of People Power
2. In practice, PPC ran a very traditional campaign in what was arguably
the most fraud ridden election in decades. Because neither the PPC nor
the parties within it had significant mobilizational capacity as parties,
campaigning was mainly a matter of negotiating with local politicians
who do have vote generation capability. After the election, PPC ceased
to exist.

Former President Estrada had his own KGMA, the JEEP ni Erap. The May 1998
election may be remembered as a watershed in the development of Philippine
political parties. Of the seven main candidates for president, only two
ran with established parties. The others ran as coalition party candidates
or with makeshift political parties. As the politics of personality were
expressed in new ways, party structures seemed to have become even weaker
and more marginal to the overall political process: throughout his term,
Estrada relied on loose and ill-defined coalitions and did not even bother
to pay attention to his own political party.

Pres. Cory Aquino started the diminution of political parties when she
refused to become a party member. Aquino could have built a political
party which could have provided a channel for the powerful reform thrust
of the anti-dictatorship movement. She could have formed a new reform
party, perhaps with the PDP of her then Minister of Local Government Aquilino
Pimentel, then placed a lot of new reform local executives in place after
she fired local government officials in 1987. Instead she allowed her
relatives to build another party, the Laban nang Demokratikong Pilipino
(LDP), which restored to power a lot of old local warlords and ‘bosses’
many of them pro-Marcos.

Pres. Aquino then dealt a cruel blow to the LDP
when she refused to support the party’s candidate for president and instead
supported the eventual winner, Pres. Fidel V. Ramos. Ramos had to cobble together
a new party, the Lakas-NUCD as his campaign vehicle. More serious attention
was given to party building during FVR’s term as part of his overall ‘strong
state’ orientation. But the attempt to build a party on the Malaysian
UMNO model collapsed when Lakas-NUCD member Renato De Villa refused to accept
his defeat in the party nomination process and ran for president under a new
party. Lakas-NUCD survived the defeat of its presidential candidate in 1998
because Estrada’s early departure prevented the full scale transfer of
Lakas members to the LAMMP and returned it to power with GMA.

Understanding Philippine Parties

Philippine political parties, strangely enough, are often defined by
what they are not. Following the conventional Western definition, the Philippine
Omnibus Election Code of 1985 says “A political party is an organized
group of persons pursuing the same ideology, political ideas or platforms
of government.” (Leones, Moraleda, 1996:2) But nobody would accuse
Philippine political parties of being such an animal. Philippine political
scientists cannot even agree whether the Philippines has a multi-party
system, a two-party system or even, as some have seriously suggested,
a one-and-a-half party system. (Tancangco, 1988:87-89)

Because Philippine political parties are so organizationally indeterminate,
it is difficult to analyze them on the basis of their internal development.
More than parties in the West, it is more fruitful to analyze the development
of Philippine political parties in relation to other institutions. Philippine
political parties cannot be understood outside of their development in
relation to the Philippines’ presidential form of government, the
nature of local - central government relations and elections. Most importantly,
they are best understood in relation to political factions and political
clans.

Carl Lande, perhaps the most influential student of Philippine politics
in the last four decades, defines Philippine political parties in terms
of “Members of the (Philippine political) elite, ranging themselves
under the banners of two national parties, compete with each other for
elective offices. Each is supported by his kinsmen, both rich and poor,
by his non-kinsmen clients, and by whoever else among the ‘little
people’ of his community can be induced, by offers of material or
other rewards, to vote for him. The two rival parties in each province,
in short, are held together by dyadic patron-client relationships extending
from great and wealthy political leaders in each province down to lesser
gentry politicians in the towns, down further to petty leaders in each
village, and down finally to the clients of the latter: the common tao.”
(Lande, 1969:156)

Filipino sociologist Randolph David’s definition goes further
than Lande’s politically neutral anthropological definition. “Political
parties in the Philippines,” David says “are therefore nothing
more than the tools used by the elites in a personalistic system of political
contests. The elites themselves do not form stable or exclusive blocs
or factions. Their boundaries are provisional and porous at any point
in time. They revolve around political stars rather than around ideologies.
They nurture networks of followers and supporters who are dependent on
them for money, jobs, favors and political access, not party members loyal
to party principles and alert to any perceived betrayal of party causes.”
(David, 1994: 24-25)

Lande’s and David’s descriptions, it should be noted, are
separated by some three decades, three constitutions, and by at least
fourteen years of Marcos’ dictatorial regime in the 1970s and 1980s.
The period before Marcos’ declaration of martial law in 1972 was
marked by the dominance of two major parties, the period after 1986, by
what might be characterized as a multi-party system. Neal Cruz picks up
the criticism another decade later. But the parties remain apparently
the same.

The most important characteristic of Philippine political parties is that
they are parties of the elite. In some senses, parties anywhere in the
world are elite formations whether one defines elite in functional terms
as those who lead or in sociological terms as those who hold economic
and political power. But many parties at least attempt to organize regularized
support from a broader segment of the population or to institutionalize
discourse justifying maldistribution of economic and political power.
These efforts result in more or less stable membership, regularized patterns
of interaction within and between parties, and characteristic forms of
ideological or political self-definition.

In contrast, Philippine political parties are unabashed ‘old boys
clubs’. There are non-elite individuals, mostly men, who identify
with one or another party, but all of them are followers (“retainers”
might be a better word) of elite individuals. These individuals are linked
together in shifting coalitions from barangays all the way to the national
government in Manila. “Philippine political parties are two vast
national coalitions of local political organizations, bound together by
the vertical hierarchy of public offices and their rewards and the social
hierarchy of wealth.” (Shantz, 1972: 113)

Other distinct characteristics of Philippine political parties, the shifting
character of membership and leadership and the absence of ideological
or programmatic differences between parties is linked to the nature of
differentiation in the elite. Historically, class fractions have remained
relatively small. No one upper class group has attained a level of economic
power sufficient for it to dominate other fractions and impose its interests
and its program on the state. (Rivera,1995) This is in contrast with Latin
America, for example, where divisions among upper class groups have been
expressed in differentiation between political parties.

Although there were quasi-parties in the 19th century, the first political
party in the 20th century was the Partido Federal. Founded in 1900, Partido
Federal was an unabashed exponent of American rule at a time when guerrillas
were still fighting against American occupation. At this time, nationalist
groups could not organize themselves into parties because the Americans
imposed an anti-sedition law declaring advocacy of independence a crime
punishable by death. (Banlaoi,1996: 49) “The colonial government
of the United States suppressed not only the revolutionary struggle but
the revolutionary history as well. The subsequent development of political
parties was initiated as a counter- revolutionary measure, negating the
Malay, revolutionary heritage.” (Shantz,1972:18)

By this time, the Partido Federal had been relegated to its well-deserved
place in the dustbin of Philippine history. The Nacionalista Party won
72 percent of seats in the National Assembly election in 1907. Although
many other parties were formed, the Nacionalista Party dominated Filipino
politics from 1907 to 1941 when the Japanese invaded. Party politics throughout
this long period was, for all intents and purposes, factional politics
within the Nacionalista Party. The most important factions were those
headed by Manuel Quezon, the dominant leader, and by Sergio Osmena. (Banlaoi,1996)

Together, these two highly skilled politicians were the major figures
in the Nacionalista Party, a purportedly pro-independence party which
was to dominate Philippine politics for much of the next four decades.
Together with others of similar background, they represented a qualitatively
new type of national politician. Unlike the earlier group of Manila-based
politicians who had become "solely dependent on American patronage,"
the new Nacionalista leadership enjoyed "a more permanent political
base upon which to collaborate and compete with the colonial authorities."
Unlike many other provincial-based politicos, as well, they had also been
quick to see that it was possible to combine a provincial base with access
to national power.

Parties and Election

Although elections were held during the Spanish colonial period and during
the short period of revolutionary government at the turn of the ninetenth
century, the experience of elections most relevant to the current situation
trace back to the American period starting in 1900. The elections in 1900
for municipal officials was limited to those towns already pacified by
the occupation army. Elections were by viva voce. Although broader than
elections during the Spanish period which were limited to former officials,
the right to suffrage was, at this time, confined to a very small, elite
segment of the population.

Over the course of the next decades, the electorate expanded. Property
requirements were lifted; the age limit was lowered first to 21 in 1935,
then in the 1970s to 18; reading and writing English or Spanish was replaced
with simple literacy liberally interpreted to mean ability to write one’s
name and that of candidates; then in 1937, women were given the right
to suffrage. The number of registered voters rose steadily from 123,294
in 1905, to 1.6 million in 1935 to 32 million in 1992.

These changes in the character of elections provide a useful way to conceptualize
changes in the nature of Philippine political parties. The increase in
the size of the electorate, combined with urbanization and extensive radio
and TV use has changed the way election campaigns are organized and therefore
also the character of political parties. Elections during the Spanish
period provide a kind of “pre-history” of Philippine political
parties. There was no need to organize parties because elections were
no more than discussions among officials, incumbents and former officials.

Elections in the early American period did not significantly expand
the electorate in quantitative terms. But while the expansion may not
seem like much from a contemporary vantage point, by expanding elections
outside of the circle of officials, the Americans brought other sections
of the elite into the circle of governance and began the process of shaping
the elite into an instrument of local rule. Political parties were formed
at this time, but electoral campaigning was mainly a matter of organizing
elite factions.

Where elections during the Spanish and early American colonial periods
were limited to the elite, once the electorate broke elite boundaries,
elites now had to convince non-elites to vote for them. At first, patron-client
ties and deeply embedded traditions of social deference were sufficient.
The organizational requirements of electoral campaigning remained simple.
This allowed elites to concentrate on the task of building factional coalitions
in ascending order of complexity as elections moved from municipal, to
provincial, to the national level.

This process was facilitated by the fact that differentiation in the
elite at this time was not very complex. Most of the elite were landowners
so differentiation focused on geographic representation and whether they
were exporters of agricultural products or not. Combined with Quezon’s
organizational skills, this was a major reason for the dominance of the
Nacionalista Party. This sociological situation changed radically after
the second World War.

The Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945 weakened the Philippine elite
by disrupting the colonial economy. Landlord control over their tenants
and farm workers was attenuated because landlords moved out of the countryside
and their collaboration with the Japanese occupation army impaired their
moral hold on the peasantry . New elite factions, especially guerrilla
leaders, moved into this power vacuum. Although the returning Americans
facilitated the political exoneration of prewar elites, many guerrilla
leaders were able to consolidate their positions through electoral politics.

The more complex differentiation in the elite after World War II complicated
the organizational task of political parties. Where factional dynamics
could be accommodated within the Nacionalista Party before, a two party
system came into place during the first postwar elections in 1946. Nacionalista
Party leader Manuel Roxas bolted the party and formed the Liberal Party.
Prewar leader Sergio Osmena allied the Nacionalista Party with guerrilla
leaders in the Democratic Alliance.

The next stage in the development of political parties was set by the
candidacy of guerrilla leader Ramon Magsaysay in the presidential elections
of 1953. Where campaigning for national positions in the past had been
mostly a matter of negotiations among provincial elites, Magsaysay went
directly to the people during his campaign. With the help of the American
CIA, Magsaysay formed the Magsaysay for President Movement and traveled
extensively throughout the country. In the process, he undercut patron-client
ties already weakened during the Japanese occupation.

The Magsaysay campaign in 1953 generated significant changes in political
parties. Where municipal party organizations were relatively simple in
prewar years, at this time, elite families began constructing municipal
political machines. “The new faction was a machine, an organization
devoted primarily to the political support of its leader and the maintenance
of its members through the distribution of immediate, concrete, and individual
rewards to them. Closely related to these changes was an increase in the
importance of provincial and national considerations and a decline in
the importance of local considerations in shaping the faction’s
character and its actions in all arenas.” (Machado,1974: 525)

The continuing rapid growth of the electorate, combined with the expansion
of mass media in the 1960s amplified the impact of changes brought about
by the Magsaysay campaign. National campaigns now had to be organized
on the basis of the segmentation of the vote into what can be called the
“controled vote” mobilized by local party leaders and the
“market vote” which required increasingly elaborate campaigns
adding media strategies to Magsaysay-style barnstorming.

“It is the imagery of the urban-based national media which fuels
a national campaign. Rural leaders frequently try to anticipate the direction
of change in order to be associated with leaders who have strong images
as national candidates…Many national politicians pay vast sums of
money to representatives of the mass media for a good image, not to win
votes but to bandwagon sub-elites concerned about their future successes.
Once the tide begins to flow, the national politician assumes judicious
urban financiers will follow.” (Shantz,1972: 97)

These developments led to significant change in political parties. The
vastly increased financial requirements of national campaigns strengthened
the national leadership vis-a-vis local party leaders because the amounts
required could only be raised from sources at the center, especially in
Manila. Since campaign costs for local contests also increased, local
candidates became more dependent on national party leaders for their own
campaigns.

Marcos accelerated this process even more. There was a geometric jump
in campaign expenses during the 1969 election campaign due mainly to Marcos.
In addition, “… the Marcos administration sought to broaden
the flow of resources and executive contacts beneath the congressmen and
into the municipalities, minimizing its dependence upon the political
brokers in the legislative branch who have historically proven to be such
a disappointment to incumbent presidents seeking reelection.” (Shantz,1972:148)
The centralizing effect of these moves culminated in Marcos’ declaration
of martial law in 1972 when he cut out Congress altogether.

Because no elections were held for many years, combined with Marcos’
monopoly of political power, the pre-martial law political parties were
severely weakened. Even after Marcos’ downfall in 1986, both the
Nacionalista Party and the Liberal Party never recovered their power and
dynamism. Marcos built his own political party, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan
(New Society Movement), creating a virtual one-party state. It was not
until the last years of the Marcos period that other political parties
such as UNIDO arose to challenge KBL in elections.

The system of constitutional democracy put in place by Pres. Aquino
created a contradictory situation for the development of political parties.
The presidential form of government put in place by the 1987 constitution
restored the conditions for a two party system. But the two dominant parties
of the pre-martial law period were, apparently irretrievably, weakened.
Other parts of the constitution including the party list system pushed
in the other direction, towards a multi-party system. Indeed, in the ten
year period since 1987, the Philippines has had what appears to be a multi-party
system, but with rather weak parties. (Interview with Aquilino Pimentel,
February 19,1998)

Reforming Parties

One of the explicit goals of this conference is strengthening our political
parties. Apart from Speaker De Venecia’s laudable bill on campaign
finance, I propose that we examine how our political party system can
be strengthened through constitutional reform. My first proposition is
that we do not have to devise explicit provisions in the constitution
on what kind of party system we have, whether it will be a ‘two
party’ or ‘multi-party’ system. The party system we
have will be determined by other provisions in the constitution, most
importantly, provisions on the electoral system and form of government.

Our electoral system, and the actual practice of elections have been
one of the most important factors shaping political parties. The intensely
personalized character of parties derive partly from the fact that individual
candidates are elected in a “first past the post” system.
“During elections, it is not so much the political parties that
are the real mobilizing organizations but the candidate’s electoral
machinery and network of relatives, friends, political associates and
allies.” (David, 1994:1) Because at the base of the electoral system,
the municipality, the power and status of families are at stake, all means
are availed of including cheating and violence to achieve victory.

More than any election in the past decade, the May 2001 election was
determined by how much money candidates had. The election was so violent,
so fraud ridden, so badly administered that electoral reform will inevitably
be on many groups’ reform agenda in the next few years. Campaign
finance issues lie at the heart of electoral reform in the Philippines.
If in the past patron-client ties limiting effective participation by
the electorate was the most serious problem corrupting democratic representation,
today rapidly growing election campaign expenses is the key problem.

Running election campaigns have become so expensive that only rich people
or those dependent on rich financiers can run. Qualified, popular candidates
without money and without financial backers cannot win. Even when relatively
honest people do win, they have to spend so much money to campaign that
they invariably become corrupt in order to recover their expenses or to
return the favor of financial backers. Government then gets oriented around
cost recovery instead of rational policy and public service.

By skewing political representation towards the rich, campaign financing
problems reverberate throughout the legislative and bureaucratic processes.
“A good deal of the scale and motivation for political corruption
arises from the nature of the PA (principal-agent) relationship implied
in political contests. Paramount among these are the large amounts of
funds required to run for public office itself in the absence of clear
and credible guidelines on campaign spending and contributions. Such a
circumstance motivates corruption in office either to raise sufficient
amounts for future campaigns and contests, or to recoup huge expenditures
raised from ones own pockets or by third parties."”(De Dios,
Ferrer:2000, 9)

We have become so used to money politics that unconsciously we believe
that ‘that’s just the way politics is’. In fact, elections
in many countries, in particular, in Europe do not require massive expenditures.
There are many factors that can explain these differences in political
practice, but the main factor is the electoral system. The proportional
representation (PR) electoral systems used in Europe push elections away
from personal contests towards party contests. In the process, it will
also lessen the use of money and violence in elections, and create one
of the conditions necessary for reforming our political party system.

The party list system introduced by the 1987 constitution provides an
experiment in PR elections. But the system is so confused that it can
hardly be seen as indicating the potential of PR systems. To start with,
the 1987 constitution mixes up the contradictory requirements of PR and
sectoral representation within the narrow political space of 20 percent
of the seats in the House of Representatives. Congress then added to the
problems by limiting the number of seats a single party can win to three.
The Supreme Court then made things even worse by imposing a formula for
the allocation of seats that guarantees that only a few of the available
seats will be allocated.

What we need is the revision and expansion of the existing party list
system, or an outright shift of the whole system to PR. If voters choose
between parties instead of individual candidates, it will lessen the intensity
of personal and clan contests which are the main sources of violence and
money politics. Parties will then be required to strengthen the organizational
and programmatic requirements for electoral victory. Minimally, parties
will be forced to distinguish themselves from each other enough for voters
to make choices. The shift in the center of gravity of organizational
work away from individual candidates will force parties to strengthen
themselves organizationally.

If our elected leaders do not have to spend so much money to get elected,
and after election to finance requests from constituents, one of the most
important ‘incentives’ to corruption will be lessened. But
there is another way our political parties in effect contribute to corruption.
Because parties do not have programs, policy-making in the legislature
and the executive is mainly a matter of deal making. It is in this context
that rent seeking in its various guises, in amounts ranging from billions
of pesos to penny ante, has become the rule in our political system. In
this system, political parties have become at once the source and the
victim of a pervasive system of patronage.

One of the places where we should look for these problems is in our system
of local-central government relations. Except for the 1972-86 Marcos years,
the pattern in central-local relations was set during the American colonial
period. You have a powerful chief executive with vast fiscal and patronage
powers, a position patterned after the colonial governor general. But
because you do not have a coherent, and stable political party system,
you also have a president who is dependent on local political bosses to
mobilize votes and to implement central government policy. You have therefore
equally powerful (if at different stages in the political cycle) presidents
and local bosses, - a strange political system which is neither centralized
nor decentralized.

The effect of this strange system is illustrated in the fate of elected
administrations. Most presidents elected since independence in 1946 did
not initially have working party majorities. In a few months, however,
enough members of the majority party shift to the president’s party
in order to get in (party) line for patronage and pork barrel. By the
middle of the president’s term, the number of officials who have
to be given patronage shares get to the point at which it is impossible
to make everyone happy. Towards the end of the president’s term,
the unhappy politicians outnumber happy ones, making it difficult for
the president to get reelected or after 1987 when the president was not
allowed to run for reelection, get his candidate elected.

The result was a policy making process that was dominated by deal making,
that made it difficult to pass coherent bills, much less a series of inter
related legislation. Having to operate under incoherent, often self-contradictory
legislation made implementation by the bureaucracy similarly difficult.
Deal-making and negotiation continued into implementation and even the
judicial process. It is in this system that parties are at once one of
the sources of these problems, and also a source of a potential solution.

As a source of the problems in policy making, political parties are
not any more important institutionally than the three branches of government
or even organizations such as KGMA or JEEP, or for that matter university
fraternities. These other institutions often play more important roles
in deal making than parties. But clearly, they cannot be part of the solution.
It is only political parties which can be organized on the basis of political
programs and ideologies. It is more organizationally elaborated programmatic
parties which can provide a link between local and central government/politics,
and in the process also provide a solution to the local/national logjam
in our political development.

In discussions of the differences between presidential and parliamentary
forms of government, ‘logjams’ in the legislative process
are often cited as reasons for a shift from a presidential to parliamentary
form of government. In the Philippine case, the incidence of such logjams
has not been a significant problem. The patronage resources of the president
have often been sufficient to get the bills she supports passed. What
has been a bigger problem are the laws themselves, and the sequencing
of laws, especially economic and political reform. Because law making,
and policy-making in government in general, has mainly been determined
by deal-making coursed through personal networks of politicians, parties
often find themselves marginalized.

One possible solution is a parliamentary form of government where the
executive is elected from within the ranks of the ruling party in parliament,
and can be removed through a vote of no confidence. This will accomplish
several things. It will lessen the powers of an altogether too powerful
president, and shift power to the ruling party, and to parliament as a
whole. Coordination of policy-making through the ruling party should not
just facilitate legislation but also produce better laws, and greater
coherence in the government decision-making process as a whole.

A shift to a parliamentary form of government therefore should, as one
of its products, also produce more programmatic, and more organizationally
solid political parties. This, of course, will not guarantee competent,
much less, democratic parties, whether internally or in its actions in
government. This is the task of reformers who choose to engage in party
building. In the end, whether or not we produce more democratic parties
will depend on the electorate.

Theorists of democracy point out that “democracy is a rather counterintuitive
state of affairs, one in which the disadvantaged many have, as citizens,
a real voice in the collective decision making of politics...Democracy
takes on a realistic character only if it is based on significant changes
in the overall distribution of power” (Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and
Stephens 1992: 41). Philippine democracy has not done much to give the
disadvantaged much of a voice, and to challenge the distribution of power
that results from highly inequitable socio-economic structures. In Anderson’s
terms, Philippine elections have tended to be a mere “shake in the
kaleidoscope of oligarchic power.”

It is now clear, or at least it should be clear, that Philippine democracy
can no longer ignore the interests and demands of those at the bottom
of society. The question arises, however, as to how the needs of the poor
(i.e., the majority of the Filipino people) can be translated into effective
change in a political system that has for so long privileged pork over
policy and personalities over institutions. Demands from below will only
be effectively met through a greater degree of institutionalization of
the political system, most of all the creation of stronger political parties.
[the persistence of weak parties is a major, and unfortunate, element
of continuity in a political system that has experienced major change
in recent years] Fuller political representation will ensure that long-neglected
redistributive measures will finally be given sustained attention. Without
such representation and measures, the threat will always exist that the
demands of the marginalized will continue to be expressed in violent and
socially disruptive ways, through rebellion, criminality, or both (de
Dios/Hutchcroft forthcoming 2002).

Contrary to the currently fashionable rhetoric valorizing civil society
and NGOs, there is no substitute for the role that well-institutionalized
and programmatic political parties can play in promoting both developmental
and democratic goals. As Gabriella Montinola explains,

Meaningful social change has been inhibited because political parties
have failed to structure political competition to allow for the representation
of the interests of the poor and marginalized sectors....Quality of choice
depends on political parties, the main organizations that structure electoral
competition (Journal of Democracy,1999:133).

Valuable as it is, civil society’s episodic intervention to resolve
political crises in 1986 and 2001 falls short of what is needed to build
new political institutions. The Philippines can indeed boast a multitude
of avid civil society organization, and democratic structures have consolidated
themselves more firmly. But many sectors of Philippine society remain
marginal to the overall democratic process, and decidedly undemocratic
forces hold sway in many localities. In the absence of any real reform
of political structures, there is little hope that Philippine democracy
will give much voice to those at the bottom rungs of society-or that economic
reform programs will be crafted in ways that address their needs.

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