The analogy is so ridiculous, I can only suspect it is being done merely to provide convenient excuse to mount yet another demonstration tomorrow: the anniversary of that dark day when our democracy and all its institutions were put on suspended animation. That demonstration is intended not to condemn what happened over three decades ago but to continue this vain effort to bludgeon the administration and prevent it from governing effectively.
If the opposition forces have been suffering from successive defeats of late, it is due, in large part, to an appalling failure in imagination.
In place of competent analysis of the uniqueness of every situation, they have been predisposed to inappropriately digging up images from the past and relying on false analogies to clarify the present. They substitute agitprop for proper analysis.
That predisposition produced fiascos for the opposition.
During the weeks of agitation from June to July this year, for instance, the anti-Arroyo forces tried very hard to re-create the imagery of the Edsa Revolution and the so-called Edsa Dos rising. They pulled out old personalities from the closets of history, expecting that a rising will happen when people see them in the streets once more. That failed.
They thought that is a handful of Cabinet members make a very public show of resigning, Edsa Dos could be re-created. That, too, failed.
During the impeachment episode, one pathetic congressman from the opposition delivered a silly soliloquy climaxing with a contrived mention of the "second envelope." That sideshow flopped. It was laughable. It was eventually parodied on the very same session hall a few days later.
After the defeat of the impeachment effort, the forces of the disgruntled tried to mount a show of force by occupying the People Power Monument. The masses did not gravitate towards the event. The effort dissipated.
Now the anti-Arroyo forces who, only last week, were fervently wishing that the military will intervene and produce some sort of transitional revolutionary government, are now to be found fervently contriving parallelisms between Marcos’ declaration of martial rule that resulted in the padlocking of Congress and President Arroyo’s triumph in the halls of Congress by way of a convincing majority vote to dismiss the impeachment complaint.
The best antidote to the agitprop is a clear appreciation of the unique historical conjuncture that produced a period of dictatorship in the Philippines.
The imposition of martial rule in 1972 is an event made possible by historical conditions far larger than one man’s megalomania. It happened at a crucial turning point where the old elites could no longer rule in the old way and the institutions available could no longer govern in the old way.
The early seventies saw a vital shift in economic power away from the traditional plantation economy that sustained the old oligarchy to a more urban-centered, trade-oriented economy with expanding constituencies that were unprepared to rule. That shift diminished the capacity of the old land-based political elites to control a state that was expanding in size as well as capabilities.
The disproportion between an enlarging state and the withering away of the land-based elites was magnified by investment inflows, a growing volume of international assistance, the availability of cheap credit due to the phenomenon of petrodollars and the hegemony of a theory of state-led development that prevailed during that period. All these factors were brought together by the exceptional political acumen of then President Ferdinand E. Marcos whose drive to consolidate power worked along the new lines of the emerging political conditions.
We often forget to appreciate the fact that in its first few years, the dictatorship enjoyed an impressive degree of public support.
The urban middle classes appreciated the return of order and certainty to our community. The new regime proclaimed itself a rebellion of the poor and undertook reforms intending to undermine the economic and political stranglehold of the old families that dominated Philippine life. In a word, the political interests of the new regime and the expectations of the new constituencies coincided.
Economic pump-priming, reliant on external assistance, the easy availability of developmental loans and substantial foreign investments all combined to produce an unprecedented period of boom for our economy. The dictatorship borrowed heavily and invested extensively in expensive infrastructure projects. That, in turn, created substantial opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship.
New engines for wealth creation were created by the loosened grip of the traditional oligarchy. New enterprises evolved and a palpable sense of progress was felt. The state, freed from the paralysis of constant factional bickering, was able to respond more efficiently to the challenges and opportunities of that period.
But, alas, the monopoly on power and the sheer unaccountability of rule created its own antitheses.
The dictatorship lost the revolutionary momentum of its early years and fell into the traps of corruption and cronyism. The functionality of the regime was soon replaced by the dysfunctional contradiction between authoritarianism and the freedom required by a modern market-driven economy.
A process political scientists describe as "regime-aging" began to happen and reflected in a period of political turbulence as new forces emerged to challenge what had become an inefficient form of rule. We know what happened.
The conditions that prevail today are completely different. A state with scarce fiscal resources cannot aspire to command a more complex, far larger and globally linked economy.
Neither martial rule nor, for that matter, some hallucination of a "revolutionary transition government" that plays in the demented minds of some anti-Arroyo personalities will work at this time. Command economies, the final basis of authoritarianism, can no longer be functional in new conditions that require government to be an enabler rather than controller of national life.