Philippine ‘People Power’ at 35: a strange metamorphosis under Duterte
- Despite his ‘war on drugs’, attacks on media and ‘red-tagging’ of political opponents, Rodrigo Duterte is more closely linked to People Power than often thought
- Most Filipinos continue to support Duterte’s claim that he is their true champion even though his promises for ‘real change’ have proved hollow
Even where the origins of the term were forgotten, Philippine “People Power” became a template for pro-democracy uprisings in Asia – in South Korea in 1987, Myanmar in 1988, China in 1989 and Indonesia in 1998 – as well as beyond, with former dissident and Czech president Václav Havel having thanked Filipinos for helping inspire the 1989 Eastern European democratic revolutions.
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Duterte even paid tribute to Marcos – granting his family’s wish for a “hero’s burial” denied by his predecessors after the dictator’s death in 1989.
Yet Duterte is more closely linked to Philippine People Power than is commonly realised. Duterte’s mother, Soledad, was a strong supporter of Cory Aquino. After becoming president, Cory appointed Rodrigo deputy mayor of the southern city of Davao, and he became mayor just two years later. When Duterte ran for president in 2016, he was the candidate of a party founded to oppose the Marcos dictatorship. Even the current targeting of leftist activists through “red-tagging” of supposed communist sympathisers fits a pattern of human rights abuses that occurred during previous presidencies (including the administrations of Cory and Benigno Aquino) that were dependent on the armed forces to shore up political power.
For most Filipinos, it now seems to be Duterte, the most popular post-Marcos president, who embodies the “people” in People Power. The pro-Aquino “yellows” – People Power was also called the “Yellow Revolution” – are widely seen as out of touch, with their human rights discourse and promises of political reform no longer resonating as corruption has persisted and the vast majority of Filipinos have remained poor.
After being battered by Marcos’ corrupt rule, the Philippine economy recovered, becoming one of the region’s fastest growing economies. But by failing to undertake significant land reform, loosen a narrow oligarchy’s stranglehold on the economy, fund social welfare adequately, and launch a major industrialisation drive while increasing low agricultural productivity rather than focusing largely on the service sector, growth proved highly unequal, doing too little to help the poor.
Patronage politics, necessary for getting things done in a country with a highly personalised political system and weak parties, institutionalised corruption and made building strong institutions difficult.
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This helps explain why the Philippines, a seemingly stable electoral democracy, proved susceptible to strongman rule. This created an opportunity skilfully exploited by Duterte, who promised “real change” – a pledge that proved hollow, with the brutal killings in the drug war having largely targeting the urban poor and his government’s highly militarised and mismanaged pandemic response resulting in the highest caseload per capita in Southeast Asia and one of the region’s steepest economic declines.
But most Filipinos continue to support Duterte’s claim that he is their true champion after the dashed expectations of three-and-a-half decades of flawed liberal democratic governance.
Mark R. Thompson is head of the department of Asian and International Studies and director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre at City University of Hong Kong.
