THE present worsening peace and order situation in the country has a historical antecedent from President Corazon C. Aquino’s regime and other post-Marcos administrations. President Rodrigo R. Duterte merely inherited the intractable problem. This is so because the erroneous social and economic policies of past administrations created more crises, instead of shaping the future.
It was so terrible, in fact, that during Aquino’s watch the United States government withdrew all US Peace Corps volunteers from the country, an unprecedented move following the kidnapping of a Japanese national and an American Peace Corps volunteer by the New People’s Army in Negros Occidental.
When Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile decried the peace and order situation in August 1990, the two abducted foreigners were still not released by their captors.
“Sadly, the Philippines has acquired the not too flattering image and distinction of being one of two countries in the world, Liberia being the other, where the US opted without warning and without notice to the host government to pull suddenly all Peace Corps volunteers,” Enrile said.
“The president herself promised almost two years ago to jail one big fish to prove her determination and sincerity to finally eradicate graft and corruption in her administration,” Enrile told the Senate. “Until now, nothing has happened. The nation is waiting with great anticipation for the president to fulfill her promise.”
He then listed a number of scandals that plagued the Cory administration: the Garchitorena land scam; the Tarlac mess; the Roppongi land sale; and the Luzon Petroscam.
Compounding the problem was the rapidly increasing population. One and a half million babies are born every year.
Three more Filipinos join the population every minute, all of them requiring child and health care and educational infrastructure, not to mention shelter, clothing and food.
That, Enrile said, “would require more money and resources which we hardly have.”
Worsening economy
When Mrs. Aquino ascended the Presidency in 1986, the official peso-dollar exchange rate was 19.13 to $1. By 1990 it was 23.87:$1.
At the end of 1985, Enrile observed, there were 1,232 listed items of goods which were either banned from entering the country or covered with high tariff duties to discourage their importation.
In line with the import liberalization policy of the Aquino administration, as dictated by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, by April 1988 all but 296 of the items were allowed to enter with low tariff duties.
“As a consequence of this liberal and indiscriminate importation policy, the country imported more than what it exported. In other words, we bought more goods and services from foreign markets than what we sold to them,” Enrile said.
“In addition, our economy had to incur heavy trade balance deficits from 1986 to 1989. Look at the trade balance deficits: $202 million in 1986; $1.017 billion in 1987; $1.085 billion in 1988; and $2.153 billion in 1989, or a total of $4.457 billion in four years.
“If we were to include the estimated trade balance deficit for 1990, the total would reach an enormous amount of $7.294 billion or P173.59 billion,” Enrile said.
The Aquino administration financed the immense trade balance deficits by borrowing massively, either from local sources or from abroad.
“The claim of the Aquino administration that these trade deficits arose from large importation of capital equipment and machineries to be used by new foreign investments is not supported—in fact, it is belied—by Central Bank figures,” Enrile said.
During the Aquino administration, foreign investments amounted to just $130.51 million in 1986; $95.21 million in 1987; and $70.70 million in 1988.
The total new foreign investments attracted by the Aquino administration from 1986 to 1988 was $296.42 million, just slightly higher than the $259.76 million foreign
investment which entered the country in 1985—the last full year of the Marcos administration.
“If this were not convincing enough to show the unreliability of the boast of the Aquino administration, I do not know what would,” Enrile lamented.
In the center of history
The senator’s lament is not easily dismissed.
After all, the respected lawyer, legislator and public servant, now enjoying his retirement from politics, was always in the center of contemporary Philippine history, from the time he served in the Marcos administration as defense minister, through his celebrated breakaway that ushered the People Power Revolution, to serving President Cory Aquino as her first defense secretary, and his election to both Houses of Congress, until he became Senate President.
Many observers at the time, in and out of the Aquino administration, agreed with most of the senator’s observations, much of which were common perceptions of the failings of the Aquino administration.
Aquino’s first agriculture secretary, Ramon V. Mitra Jr., who later became Speaker of the House of Representatives and vocal critic of the Aquino regime, had this to say: “Repeatedly over the past 46 years, our democracy has been besieged by the hammer of rebellion and insurgency at one end and by the spectacle of weak and ineffective government at the other.
“At no time has this been more sharply highlighted than during the five-year period from 1986 to 1990—a period which began with so much promise and concluded with so much pessimism and uncertainty.
“Over this brief time, the country became known to the world as the setting of pervasive coup attempts and as one of the last bastions of communist insurgency in the planet.
“The series of crises that have bedeviled the nation has put to doubt for some whether our present system can arrest the experience of decline and begin the process of national modernization.”
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.