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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Failure of Liberal Democracy? By Antonio C. Abaya March 13, 2002 As one East Asian country after another surpassed the Philippines in economic development in the past twenty five years, Filipinos consoled each other that while South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand may have overtaken us in per capita income, export earnings, tourist arrivals, industrial capability, agricultural output, domestic savings, tax collection, quality of education, schoolchildren�s ratings in science and math, and just about every other indicator in the books � and Indonesia was about to do the same � we, however, were more politically developed than they were because we were a liberal democracy, while they were all recent refugees from authoritarian rule (some of them are, in fact, still under authoritarian rule) who had little or no experience in such liberal-democratic niceties as a free press and �free and honest elections� open to anyone who cared to run for office. But in the past ten years or so, that boastful claim to being more politically developed than our neighbors has worn thin and meaningless and cannot even be touted now as anything but a consuelo de bobo. First, our experience with authoritarian rule, under Marcos, was a disaster. While the South Koreans, the Taiwanese, and the Thais emerged from their authoritarian rule richer, more prosperous and more confident, we Filipinos found ourselves poorer, deeper in debt and less optimistic about our future. (According to liberal-democratic standards, the Malaysians and the Singaporeans are still under authoritarian rule, poor devils, but they became much richer than we are. The Hong Kong Chinese passed from British colonial rule to mainland authoritarian rule, kawawa naman, but they have also become much richer than we are). After overthrowing the authoritarian Marcos regime, we looked forward in 1986 to a new era of prosperity and a new beginning under Cory Aquino, the walking saint of liberal democracy, only to be disappointed when it became obvious soon enough that, though technically a �revolutionary president�, she was in fact not capable of doing anything revolutionary. To be fair, the liberal-democratic Aquino Government did manage to post substantial economic growth, from below zero in 1986 to an average of almost six percent in 1988-89, but the economy was subsequently wrecked, almost single-handedly, by Gringo Honasan in his (second) failed coup attempt of December 1989, a singular achievement for which he was rewarded with a Senate seat in 1995 by a grateful liberal-democratic Filipino electorate who apparently preferred to remain poor, destitute and in perpetual chaos. The wholesale fraud in the 1992 and 1995 elections, for which no one has been punished even though voluminous documentary evidence were presented by protesting losing candidates, put in serious doubt our pompous claims of being more politically developed than our neighbors. The election to the presidency in 1998 of a criminally inclined ignoramus has settled that argument quite conclusively: the Philippines is not only economically retarded, it is also politically backward. The conclusion of many thoughtful and concerned Filipinos now is that liberal democracy has been a failure in the Philippines. ***** My musings on these matters on the Internet have drawn several reactions. Let me reprint some of them (in italics) and my responses to them. Yes, we do need an alternative (to our present system), but not to liberal democracy. The very fact that Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Suharto�s Indonesia all successfully developed and modernized themselves under regimes that were/are not liberal-democratic is incontrovertible proof that there are viable alternatives to American-style liberal democracy. We don�t have liberal democracy. Ours is an oligarchic Philippine-style democracy. What we need perhaps is true liberal democracy. But how do you define �true liberal democracy�? And where does it exist in this part of the world? This is similar to the argument that �Christianity has not failed. It just hasn�t been tried.� History has shown that dictatorship is not an option. That is unless we want to end up dead or disappeared. History has shown no such thing. Besides, you are lumping all �dictatorships� in one basket, as if the parameters of their �dictatorship� were completely identical. You are, in effect, saying that Lee Kwan Yew�s Singapore � which liberals like to call a dictatorship � was no different from Hitler�s Third Reich and Stalin�s Soviet Union and Mao�s People�s Republic. Simply not true. Even Marcos� regime was more benign than Hitler�s or Stalin�s or Mao�s. The Filipinos who wound up dead or disappeared during the Marcos years were almost totally communist militants who were trying to overthrow the Marcos dictatorship in order to replace it with their own Maoist dictatorship, not with a liberal democracy in the mold of Thomas Jefferson. Yes, South Korea, China, Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong and Indonesia began to modernize their economies under dictatorships. (Malaysia has had a British style democracy). Except for China and Singapore, all have successfully managed the transition to liberal democracy. (Hong Kong has been absorbed by China). But, on the other hand, how many more economies of countries around the world, including the Philippines, have been driven to the ground by vicious and megalomaniac dictatorships? Many, many more� Liberals would be horrified by your uninformed statement that Malaysia has a British-style democracy, because it definitely does not, even if, like Singapore, it has a Westminster-type parliamentary system. Like Singapore, Malaysia does not allow freedom of the press of the type extant in the liberal democracy of the Philippines. Like Singapore, Malaysia does not tolerate vociferous political opposition like the ones allowed in the liberal democracy of the Philippines. Like Singapore, Malaysia keeps in its statute books the Internal Security Act, inherited from the British colonial government, which allows the state to throw in jail, indefinitely and without trial, anyone suspected of being a subversive (i.e. communist). Marcos also did that here and he was stridently labelled a dictator by both liberals and communists. It is, however, true that not all dictatorships and authoritarian regimes succeed in creating prosperous societies. This was/is especially true of such regimes in Africa and Latin America as well as the Marcos regime here and those of the Kim Dynasty in North Korea and the SLORC generals in Myanmar, all of which have languished in various levels of underdevelopment. The key to the success of the authoritarian regimes in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Suharto�s Indonesia lay in their deliberate policy of gearing their economies to the export of manufactured goods instead of just commodities. Marcos� biggest sin was not that he was authoritarian and corrupt. All the other leaders in this part of the world at that time were also authoritarian and corrupt, with the solitary exception of Singapore�s Lee Kwan Yew, who was authoritarian but was apparently incorruptible. Marcos� biggest sin, in my opinion, was his failure to build an export-oriented economy, which was/is the basis for the prosperity of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia , Thailand and Suharto�s Indonesia. In next week�s column, I will explain why. ***** This article appeared in the April 1, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |