When Filipinos finally kicked out the conjugal dictatorship of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the expectation was that democracy would be restored and there would be an end to corruption so massive a new word – kleptocracy – had to be coined for it.
The administration that replaced the Marcos regime did not disappoint on the democracy aspect, though repeated coup attempts kept democracy fragile. And while corruption persisted, it did not come close to the kleptocracy that dictatorship helped make possible.
When Filipinos threw Joseph Estrada out of Malacañang, it was chiefly over accusations of corruption that were determined to be true by the Sandiganbayan, which last year convicted him of plunder.
Seven years later, the administration that replaced Estrada’s short-lived one has been such a disappointment in the anti-corruption department that when he says his government was cleaner in comparison, there are many people who nod in agreement. An administration with more confidence in its credibility and stability would not have pardoned and freed Estrada before he could see even the outlines of the national penitentiary, where convicts sentenced to life imprisonment are incarcerated. On the seventh anniversary of EDSA II, Estrada’s camp can even joke that he is a man of conviction.
The administration post-EDSA II has been such a disappointment in many aspects of governance that it has turned off Filipinos from people power. Even while under “rest house arrest,” Estrada’s popularity and political stock rose as public disaffection with his successor deepened. Seven years after EDSA II, and nearly 22 years after the first people power revolt, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has become the first President to be compared with Ferdinand Marcos in his worst years.
Those who lived and suffered through the dark years of the dictatorship know that the comparison is unfair. Yet those who have been around long enough to remember the prelude to the start of the dictatorship and kleptocracy are seeing symptoms of similar tendencies in the Arroyo administration. It is not yet too late for President Arroyo to dispel such fears, brush aside the comparisons with Marcos, and deliver good governance, which was what the people expected of her when she was handed power on a silver platter.