DISMANTLING THE POST-EDSA ORDER

President Duterte should dismantle the economic foundations of the postEDSA order, which is fueling the public unrest and dissatisfaction we see today.

Afriend recently asked me, “What’s Duterte doing? Why is he going against the Prietos and Inquirer and the Lopezes and ABS-CBN?”

He was referring to the government ejectment of the Prietos from the Mile Long property and the subsequent sale of the

Philippine Daily Inquirer to SMC president Ramon Ang. As to the Lopezes, they have recently been on the receiving end of President Duterte’s attacks regarding unpaid debts to government institutions. President Duterte has also vowed to oppose the renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise in 2020.

The answer to my friend’s question is simple: President Duterte is trying to dismantle the political infrastructure of the “yellow faction,” or the elite faction that led and took power after the EDSA people’s revolt in 1986. He’s “de-yellowing” the Philippine political structure if you will, in the same way that the Americans “de- Baathized” Iraq after the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

Both ABS-CBN and PDI, and the families behind them, are linchpins of the Yellow political infrastructure. For example, they were instrumental in the ousting of former president Joseph Estrada in EDSA Dos, and more recently, in tarring former VP Binay in the run-up to the last presidential elections.

As I wrote last year when the dark horse candidate from Davao surprisingly won in the presidential elections ( despite, or because of, his “politically incorrect” curses and tirades), the vote for President Duterte was a vote for systemic change. It was a vote against the post-EDSA order, or the political and economic order established in 1987 with the downfall of Marcos and the assumption of former President Aquino into the presidency.

Nearly 30 years after the establishment of the post- EDSA order, except for the trappings of elite democracy, nothing much has changed: poverty remains endemic, thousands still look abroad for better opportunities, the public is bereft of basic public services, the bureaucracy remains dysfunctional, and the government is rife with corruption.

In the political sphere, President Duterte blamed the overconcentration of political power in Metro Manila as the source of these ills. Hence, his call for federalism. He also saw a weak state that is easily penetrated and influenced by either the growing drug trade, or yellow rent- seekers in business, who are taking advantage of their political influence to gain economic benefits from the state. Hence, his campaign against drugs and the Lopezes and Prietos.

In my analysis, however, the weak state and the rent-seeking are the result of the anti-people and anti-development economic foundations of the post- EDSA order. These economic foundations are: the 1987 Constitution, which sought to protect “yellow businessmen” from foreign competition ( hence the restriction on foreign operation of public utilities and the 100% requirement for ownership of mass media) and the 1987 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, the landmark legislation passed under former president Aquino.

The protective, anti- foreign investment provisions in the Constitution, however, only fostered monopolies and oligopolies in the strategic sectors of the economy: communication, transportation, ports, etc. deemed as “public utilities.” The result has been high cost and poor services both to the public and other sectors of the economy. Fed up with the poor services they were getting, from telecom to transport, an angry public voted against the administration candidate and for Rodrigo Duterte.

There was a growing recognition that these restrictive provisions of the Constitution are harmful to the economy. Former House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, Jr. tried to lead Congress to lift those provisions during the last administration until the reactionary former president Aquino, defending the postEDSA order established by his mother, killed it.

While President Duterte has expressed support for removing those economic restrictions in the Constitution, Constitutional change may take a long time. Fortunately, there is another initiative, supported by the administration, which included it in their priority legislative agenda, and that is to amend the Public