The campaign anchored on the ideal of reform politics has successfully captured the hearts and minds of a rather huge plurality of Filipinos, exemplified best by the election of Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to the presidency. Notwithstanding doubts concerning his competence, PNoy, as he is now called, has been seen as the beacon of democratic renewal the way his parents were. The timing of his candidacy and eventual victory could not have been any more perfect, especially given the manner with which the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regime undermined the very democracy Filipinos loved, cared, and even died for.
The crucial task now is that of actively observing the actions of the PNoy administration. The manner with which the Aquino regime will realize the necessary measures addressing the most pressing concerns of the country is indeed a hot topic, indicated by the amount of news, commentaries, and discussions devoted to the subject matter circulating in mainstream media. Here in our university alone, the student government has launched a project aimed at educating and informing the whole student population about the dynamics of Aquino’s first 100 days in power.
Yet at such an early point in the game, PNoy is drawing some challenges and criticisms from various fronts of the Philippine polity concerning his actions and decisions. There is the issue concerning his appointment of almost the whole of the Abad family in crucial cabinet positions. There are also questions concerning PNoy’s silence on the extremely important issue of the Hacienda Luisita settlement. Most recently, reports are coming that certain congressmen would resist the President’s prohibition on their placing their names and pictures on billboards and other such signs for projects funded by the state, on grounds that it is one of the best ways—if not the only way—by which they (the congressmen) become transparent and accountable to their respective constituents.
However, it is to the first of the three Executive Orders issued by the President—the one that created the Truth Commission aimed at investigating the alleged abuses of the preceding regime and prosecuting those responsible for such abuses—that the most intense resistance and disapproval have been directed to by some quarters. As has been reported, certain allies of the former president, led by the current House Minority Leader Edcel Lagman, are of the opinion that, aside from its supposed unconstitutionality and illegality, the Truth Commission “is an exercise in futility, an adventure in partisan hostility, a launching pad for trial [and] conviction by publicity and a mere populist propaganda to mistakenly impress the people that widespread poverty will altogether vanish if corruption is eliminated without even addressing the other major causes of poverty.”
At first glance, such judgment might make some sense. The Truth Commission indeed can be construed as Aquino’s way of exacting revenge against Macapagal-Arroyo and her cohorts. It really did not help as well that a huge part of PNoy’s first State of the Nation Address (SONA) was all about exposing the dire (economic) situation of the country largely attributable to the misdeeds of the previous regime. The realism of PNoy’s SONA indeed nearly became a rather populist (as claimed by some because it was delivered in Filipino) indictment of the supposed crimes of the nearly decade-long Macapagal-Arroyo regime.
Yet at a deeper level such judgment misses out something very crucial to grasping the policy line of the Aquino administration, which we have to understand before falling to the opinion that indeed PNoy is just another populist president. There is no better way than to hear it from the man himself. PNoy, in an ambush interview about the said Executive Orders, reportedly said: “The fundamental principle is this, we are trying to correct our society, we’re trying to correct the errors, mistakes, and deliberate actions that injured the public good and possibly there were people who benefitted from that status to try and preserve that status quo.”
With those words one of the basic properties of the Aquino policy line is revealed. For what needs to be understood concerning these recent albeit dubbed controversial policies is the fact that such are part of the whole repertoire of the PNoy administration’s attempts to address the most fundamental of the challenges it is facing: that of (re)building state legitimacy and institutions—both severely hampered especially during the last five years of the personalized politics of the Macapagal-Arroyo regime. Construed in this way, the concern of Aquino in issuing such executive orders is larger than the supposed targets themselves, since the main issue being dealt with is the strengthening of the state itself, whose interest must never be equated to the interests of a single personality or a particular group of people. PNoy understood such a crucial task and committed himself to accomplish it, although slowly, and despite the dangers, primary of which is being tagged as a plain nit-picker out to hunt and destroy the enemy.
This is not to say that we should stop being critical of the moves of PNoy in the next few days, as admittedly there still are issues of grave matter that the Aquino administration needs to clearly deal with. Yet at least for this case on the Truth Commission and others like it, it might be helpful to think first in terms of the bigger struggle of making the government legitimate and trustworthy once more, before falling into rather rash judgments.
*Gino Trinidad graduated from the AB Political Science Program in 2008 and gained his MA in Global Politics in 2009. He is currently a lecturer with the Political Science Department.
