Quote of the Day: 'Angry Votes' and Populism: Will History Rhyme?

A short breadth of the past political leadership: (bold mine)

With the demise of the Marcos regime, oligarchical democracy was quickly restored in the Philippines, with a new Constitution and congressional elections in 1987 returning established provincial landowning and business families and major Manila-based corporate interests to positions of control over both houses of Congress (and, after the 1988 local elections, mayoral and gubernatorial positions across the archipelago). A US backed counter-insurgency campaign, featuring aggressive military operations against the NPA and anti-communist vigilante mobilization against activist in urban and rural areas alike, helped to decimate the left, even as the restoration of electoral competition and turnover prompted a broader demobilization of extra-electoral political participation among the population at large. By 1992, when presidential elections were held, Aquino’s anointed candidate, (Ret.) General Fidel Ramos, won a narrow plurality, in large measure thanks to the advantages of the incumbent administration backing and business support. The elevation to the presidency of a long time senior military officer from Marcos years signaled strongly the enduring conservative constraints on democracy in the Philippines.

Yet the restoration of the oligarchical democracy in the Philippines has not gone unchallenged. The 1998 presidential elections saw the landslide victory of Joseph “Erap” Estrada, an action film star whose Partido ng Masa (Party of the Masses) campaign enjoyed tremendous popular support across the archipelago and was inflected by decidedly populist undertones. Once in office, Estrada proceeded to alienate the establishment business community, the conservative Catholic Church hierarchy, and “respectable” elements of the middle classes, with increasing media attention and growing street demonstrations focusing colorful stories of corruption and abuse of power, alcohol consumption and incoherent policymaking, philandering and favoritism in the allocation of the public posts, patronage and power. By late 2000, the House of Representatives voted to impeach Estrada, as Estrada’s allies in the Senate engaged in stalling and subterfuge to sabotage further judicial proceedings, “People Power” once again mobilized on the streets of Manila, with strong business and Catholic backing as in early 1986 (Hedman 2006). In January 2001, Estrada was forced out of the office, arrested, and imprisoned to face a range of corruption charges against him, even as his vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, was sworn in as his successor, winning a second, full year (six year) term in 2004 of office in the elections of 2004.

This is from the Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian History p.124-125. There is a lot to comment from this insight but I’ll leave it as it is.