aFORNAT! VERTICAL FILE OTe Bd Teno ake he Pie eeeeretiy The evi Barco was ot te sn Gary assim te worldwide march of demos went on faa fewest pe abt why we tek wit OF sevtis peter for 30 ng. ano support Carron Muto she anced sound coup attempt nd worked Nee orate pblems the Maccose ad ned ‘Vie wow ofthe Now Phippines fenton Te RNcee wou ke we believeth the only clos Si ciah states dees ssn relon eh gi 1 ted States—is progressing under our wing, T's not, fr rea.” Our Asia correspondent a nation not only without nationalism birt also without much national p /\ DAMAGED CULTURE BY JAMES FALLOWS. A New Philippines? , offers a dark view of *\! sons chat go far beyond what the Marcoses did or stole, ‘The countties that surround the Philippines have become the world’s most farnous showcases for the econoinic development. Japan, Korea, Taiw Hong Kong, Singapore—all are short on natural resources, butall (as their officials never stop telling you) have clawed + their way up through hard study and hard work. Unforto- nately for its people, che Philippines illysteates the cor- make a naturally rich country poor rable places to live in East Asia— tier than & communist political s to developmen. ‘The culture in question ithas been heavily shaped by nearly &nua- & heap that is home to 13,000 SERIALS DIY.The Agdao burvio, a slim near Davac. on Dfindanao rad years of the “Fil-Am lationship.” The result is ap- parcnily the only nun-commumist society in East Asia in whévia the average living standard is going down. ten beter since Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos fied the country at the end of Febroary last yeas (though most Filis pinos seers to think shat the threats to the Aquino govern ment—ol which the worst was the bloody August coup at- tempt—imperil such progress as the country has made) Not so much money is being sucked out at the top. More people are free to say what they like about the govern: Ww disclaimers, Sore things obviously bat iment, without being thrown in jail. Not so many peasants are iwving, their chickens stolen by underpaid soldiers foraging for food, although the soldiers, whose pay has cen increased, ate still woefully short on equipment and supplies. “The economy hus stopped shrinking, as it had been do- ing in the late Marcos years, and some rich Filipinos have brought capital back home. I was not in the Philippines during the Marcos era and can’t compare the atmosphere firsthand, but everyone says that the bloodiess dethroning, of Marcos gave Filipinos new dignity and pride. Early this year, on the first anniversary of the “EDSA revolution” (named for Epifanio de los Santos Avenuc, where many of the crucial events took place), television stations fan round-the-clock replays of all the most emotional mo- ments: the nuns" attempts to protect the ballot boxes, the Uefection of Marcus's two main military supporters, Juan Ponce Enrile and Fidel Ramos, the abortive swearing-in of Murcos, his sudden disappearance in an American helicop, tet [ewes inspirational and moving and hervic, and as late this summer, just before the attempted coup, some of the same atmosphere remained. Filipinos ate famous for their love of religious icons, A visitor would have 10 be blind not to see the religious element in Corazon Aquino's public role. Stores sell sinall Cory dolls with bright yellow dresses and round-tiinmed glasses. ‘They'se not exactly jcons, but I've seen them displayed in homes and cats as if they were. Even when beginning to grumble about her govetninent, many Filipinos speak of Cory’s goodness, pa ee f tience, and piety in tones that suggest they think of hes as peccular, widowed Blessed Virgin, ant as the only person with even the potential to hold the country togethex Democracy has returned to the Philippines, in s big way, As ifto make up forall the years when they could not Vote: Filipinos have been analyzing the results of one elec- tion and preparing for another almost nonstop since carly fast year Election disputes have returned woo. For three months after the legislative elections last May, long ce- ccqunts dragged on to determine whether Joan Ponce En- file, Marcos's former Defense Minister, whose switch 9 ‘Aquino helped topple Marcos, would get one of the wes ty-four seats in the Senate. Senators are elected nation- wide, in what often resembles a popularity contest. ‘Among the new senators is @ Charles Bronson~style ac- tion. movie star; Enrie is about as well known as the actor, and though he has made many enemies, most foreigners | spoke with found it hard to beticve that in an honest vote count he would have lost to everyone on Aquino's list of ominces, which inchided 2 number of newcomers aud nobodies. Finally, in August, he squeaked in as number twenty-four Democracy has unleashed a Philippine press so varied and licentious as to make even Americans feel nervous of rather, to recall standing in grocery check-out lines look- Jing at Midnight ond Star. Newspapers ate always starting up and closing, but at any given time Manila has ac Teast twenty dailies, most of them in English. Each paper fea- tures its stable of hardworking stat columnists, any of hain is capable of turning out 2,000 to 3,000 words of po- Fitical commentary and inside gossip—the equivalent of a whole American op-ed page—in a single day. Philippine polities has a small-town feel, because so many ofthe ptin- Cipals have known one another all their lives. This adds to the velocity and intensity of gossip—especially the rumors fof impending coups, which have cropped up every week pprten days since Aquino rook power, and which preoccupy political Manila the way scandals preoccupy Washington. ne final disclaimer: it can seem bullying or graccless for an American t criticize the Philippines. Seen from Manila, the United States is strong and rich. Seen from anywhere, the Philippines is troubled and oot, Why pick ‘on people who necd help? The Filipino ethic of delicadeea, their equivalent of saving face, encourages people to raise unpleasant topics indirectly, of, better still, not co raise them at all, Out of respect for delicadeza, or from a vague sense of guile that the former colony is still foundering, oF teause of genuine fondness forthe Filipino people, the United Seates tolerates polite fictions about the Philip. pines that ie would ruthlessly puncture if dey concerned France or even Mexico, Fdan't pretend thae my view of the Philippines is authoritative, but P've never before been in a country where my initial impressions were so totally at tage withthe standarc,cosnforcing, let'-allpollxogether view, Iscems to ie that the prospects forthe Phifippines tre about as dismal as those for, s95, South Kores are bright, In each ease the basic explanation seems wo be cul NOVEMBER 1987ture: in the one ease a culture that brings out the produe- tive best in che Koreans (or the Japanese, or now even the “Thais), and in the other a culture cha pulls many Filipinos toward their most self-destructive, self-defeating worst, ‘The Post-Kleptocratic Beonomy. Officials in both South Korea and the Philippines have pointed aut to me that in the mid-1960s, when the idealistic (as he then seemed) Ferdinand Marcos begen his first tcrm as President, the two countries were economically even with each other, with similar per capita jncomes ofa few hundeed dollars a year. The officials used this fact co make very different points. The Koreans said it dramatized how uticrly poor they used vo be ("We were like the Philippine” said one somber Korean bureaucrat), while to the Filipinos it was a reminder of a golden, hope- ful age. It demonstrated, they said, that the economy had been basically robust until the Marcoses launched heir kleptocracy. Since the 1960s, of course, the Philippines has moved in the opposite direction from many other Bast Asian countrics. South Korea's per capita annual income is now about $2,500—which gives the country a low-wage advantage over Japan or the United States. ‘That same in- come makes Korea look like a land of plenty relative co the Philippines, where the per eapica income is about $600. “The average income in the Manila area is much higher than that for the country 4s a whole; in many farming se ‘gions the per capita income is about $100. ‘The govern- ment feports that bout two thirds of the people in the country live below che poverty line, as opposed to half in the pre-Marcos esa. There are technical argumfnts about where 10 draw the poverty line, but itis obvious that most Filipinos lack decent houses, can’t afford education, in some areas are short of food, and in general are very, very oot. The official unemployment rate is 12 percent, bur if all the cigarette vendors, surplus bar girls, and other un- dcremployed people are cakesi into account, somethis Tike half the human calent in the country must be unused Cea FIRST THE OVERALL ECONOMIC PICTURE, Some Filipino economists contend that she country is about wo tum the corner, is ready 10 make @ new start €c0- omically 5 it has done politically. Is the world price of sugar stagnane? Plantation owners can flood seaside sugar- ‘cane fields and raise shrimp, which bring high prices and for which Japan has an insatiable demand. Are Amesican, Japanese, and Buropean companies shifting, their produc- tion sites worldwide? Why not build mote of the plants in the Philippines, which believes it has a well-educated work force and relasively low wages. Just befure the first anniversary of the EDSA revolution 1 spoke with Jaime ‘Ongpin, an intense, precise businessman in his lace for ties, who had become the new Finance Minisiey i the immediate future, he said, the ctends looked good The government was breaking up soave of the cartels fol by ‘Marcos’ “cropies” and exposing them so competition. Con scuction and small-business activity were picking up. The [price of eopra (the country’s leading export) was finally ris- ing. And the economy might giow by five or six percent this year—more than the economies of Japan and the U.S. Another economist, Bernardo Villegas, hes been predict- ing an East Asian-style sustained boom for the Philippines. ‘Many man-onthe-street Filipinos share a version of this view, which is thac Marcos was the source ofall eheig prob- lems, s0 his removal is itself a solution. ‘There is some truth to what they say, especially as it concerns Marcos's last ten years in office, when he had graduated from his eatlier, nationalistic, land-teform-and-induscrialization phase and formed the “eonjugal dictatorship” with his wife, Sui, for all the damage Marcos did, it's mot eleas that he caused the country’s economic problems, as opposed 1g in- tensifying them. Most of the things that now seem wyang witi the cconomy—grotesque extremes of wealth and poverty, land-ownership disputes, monopolistic industries in cozy, corrupt cahoots with the government—have been ‘wrong for decades. When reading Philippine novels or his- tory books, 1 would come across @ passage that resembled whac I'd seen in the Manila slums or on a farm. ‘Then 1 would read on and discover thar the description was by an American soldier in the 1890s, or a Filipino nationalist in the 1930s, or foreign economist in the 1950s, ar a young politician like Ferdinand Marcos or Benigno Aquino in the 1960s, “Herc is a land in which 2 few are speccaculatly rich hile che masses remain abjectly poor, . .. Here isa land consecrated to democracy but run by an encrenched plu- tocraey. Here, t00, are a people whose ambitions run high, but whose fulfillment is low and mainly restricted 10 the self-perpecuating elite.” ‘The precise phrasing belongs 10 Benigno Aquino, in his early days in politics, but the thought has been expressed by hundreds of others. Kore- ans and Japanese Jove to tauat Americens by hailing out did, pompous predietions that obviously have not come ‘rue. “Made in Japan” would always mean “shoddy.” Ko- rea would “always” be poor. Hah hah hah! You smug Yan- hhees were so wrong! Leafing back through Filipinology has the opposite effect: its surprising, and depressing, 10 see how litle has changed: GrpraL g yyy Vos