A Critical Analysis of Social Movements in the Philippines

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A Critical Analysis of Social Movements in the Philippines de Cadiz, Gerry B. Eastern Visayas State University

A Critical Analysis of Social

Movements in the Philippines

Prof. Gerry B. de Cadiz

Eastern Visayas State University

Tacloban City, 06500 P H I L I P P I N E S

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A Critical Analysis of Social Movements in the Philippines Prof. Gerry B. de Cadiz1 Eastern Visayas State University, Tacloban City, 06500 PHILIPPINES

Abstract

The changed political milieu in the Philippines after the downfall of the Marcos

regime in 1986 generated greater interest among academics and movement

participants to scrutinize the concepts of state and civil society; the dynamics of

state and civil society relations and of intra-civil society relations; and more

recently, globalization as a process that shapes these relationships. The nature of

battles and rebellions in Philippine history ranged from personal, religious,

economic, and civic to political motives. The major threat to democracy and

economic development in the Philippines continues to be the inability to bridge the

gap between formal political rights and social equity. The political and

socioeconomic costs of poverty and inequality are the main corrosive elements to

freedom and liberty in the country.

Keywords: Philippines, history, social movements, revolution, people power

INTRODUCTION

History is rendered exciting by the many stories of battles, rebellions and social

movements which range from the violent, bloody ones to the peaceful people power

(WikiPilipinas, 2007). Precolonial Philippines is often glorified as a harmonious and

bountiful period. The advent of colonialism ushered the beginning of a tumultuous history

1 Prof. Gerry B. de Cadiz is the Director of Institutional Planning and Development and a Faculty of Educational Programs

Management in Eastern Visayas State University, Tacloban City, Philippines. He is an active member of international learned organizations, a prolific scholar with paper presentations in global fora and a high-impact researcher with publications in social sciences, management and education research networks. E-mail: [email protected]

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marked by exploitation and oppression which resulted in numerous revolts, social

movements and revolutions that have defined the character of the Filipino people.

A battle is a means by which disputes are settled. In many instances, it is the last

resort when dialogues and negotiations seems futile. A revolution is defined as a "drastic

and all-encompassing change" in the mode of thinking and in the behavior of an individual

or an entire society. It is a transition period in history that ushers a significant

transformation. A revolt, on the other hand, refers to an "attempt to overthrow" the ones

in power, and the refusal to accept the impositions of someone. It is an act of showing

disgust and defiance of the established authority.

A social movement is comprised of a group of people having similar principles and

ideology trying to achieve a certain, definite goal. This group can make use of direct actions

in loose and informal organizational structures. The nature of battles and rebellions in

Philippine history ranged from personal, religious, economic, civic to political motives.

Weaponry was never an issue in Philippine battles, because what really mattered were the

principles that a group or an individual is fighting for.

Studies on state-civil society relations focus on the changes in the structure of

political opportunities brought about by the end of the Marcos dictatorial regime, and the

challenges that faced civil society groups in adjusting their perspectives, strategies, and

style of work based on this altered socio-political milieu. In Volume 2 of the TWSC’s

Philippine Democracy Agenda (1997), the role of the state in social transformation and

democratic consolidation and the role of civil society in continuously testing the limits and

potentials of the Philippine state were examined through several sectoral case studies.

These studies recognized that the expansion of democratic space is an important context

for more interactive state-civil society relations. Experiences of civil society groups show

that the success or failure of efforts to influence policy-making institutions depend on the

particular issue that is up for decision making, the sectors involved in deciding the issues,

and on civil society’s capability to engage the state in policymaking venues.

The changed political milieu in the Philippines after the downfall of the Marcos

regime in 1986 generated greater interest among academics and movement participants to

scrutinize the concepts of state and civil society; the dynamics of state and civil society

relations and of intra-civil society relations; and more recently, globalization as a process

that shapes these relationships. A number of studies conducted along these lines by the

UNRISD-Philippine Research Team are useful in identifying specific themes that need to

be addressed in this study on transnational social movements in the Philippines.

THE ON-GOING PHILIPPINE REVOLUTION

After almost a decade of decline and division, the major left-wing movements appear to be

regaining support. The NPA has gone through a period of rectification and self-criticism

and while continuing to engage in sporadic military actions have concentrated its efforts in

reorganizing support in the villages.

Political and social organizing against the thousands of daily abuses has once again

brought it back into contact with villages that were NPA strongholds. While most of their

gains are in more remote areas, distant from the major cities, and military installations,

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their increasing support has led the military to discard the idea that the NPA is simply a

"police problem" to be handled by the military police (Petras, 1999).

The NDF seems to have regained some of its public recognition through its various

campaigns particularly in the anti-VFA movement, as well as its efforts to form multi-

sectoral opposition to neoliberalism, IMF policy prescriptions, and to work with a plurality

of international groups that are not Maoists.

Borras (1999) expounds on what is referred to as the “bibingka1 strategy” for the

successful implementation of land reform. Accordingly, his study examined successful

cases of land reform in the Philippines and analyzed the interaction between state and

nonstate actors at different levels. It show that positive outcomes of the reform process in

land redistribution is determined not by state action alone; it is also determined in part by

the confluence of political actions of a wide range of state and nonstate actors. He argues

that the combination of building a strong movement for land reform at the grassroots level

and nurturing alliances with strategically positioned reformists within the bureaucracy can

effectively counter the strength of landlord resistance to land reform, thus paving the way

for the state’s expropriation and redistribution of private estates.

The foregoing analysis of Petras gave light to concept of Philippine revolution as

an alternative to neoliberalism. Probably the most significant emerging forces are found

in the KMU and the KMP, the urban trade union and peasant movement. The KMU is a

social political trade union, which combines a struggle over day-to-day issues at the

workplace with a broader opposition to imperialism and capitalist exploitation. I was

impressed by the way in which all the workers pitched in to prepare the meals during the

convention, brought their own sleeping bags, and engaged in informal discussion. It was

an egalitarian and comradely climate. With the exception of some construction workers'

unions in Japan and the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement, the KMU did not seem to

have significant international ties with other militant confederations, as in South Korea,

India, Italy and others.

The KMP is probably the single most important mass organization on the left in the

Philippines. Led by a peasant organizer, Rafael Mariano, the KMP through its regional

affiliates has been in the forefront of the struggles fighting land grabbers, speculators,

government agencies, and their military cohorts who are forcibly evicting peasant

producers. With close to 500,000 affiliates and sympathizers through regional or local

organizations the KMP represents the best hope that the Filipino peasants have in resisting

the growing encroachment of capitalist land speculators, real estate developers, tourist

operators, plantation owners, and landlords.

The NDF like the NPA continues to recycle a Maoist view of Philippine society as

"semi feudal" and "semi colonial" at a time when capitalist relations have reconverted

landed estates into international tourist havens and landlord investors bankroll speculative

ventures of every sort. While rents and interests continue to be paid by indebted tenants,

the merchant landowners now channel these rents into new exploitive business ventures or

bank their earnings overseas through international capital networks. The idea of fighting

"semi feudalism" has also served as a bridge for many ex-leftist leaders, including NPA

commanders, to join "modernizing" capitalist enterprise or become part of the Aquino,

Ramos, and Estrada regimes, which have their own brand of "anti-feudalism”, turning

landed estates into upscale country clubs.

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Apart from the traditional left, the Catholic Church is deeply divided. Cardinal Sin

represents the Vatican line of collaboration with the neoliberal regimes and rigid opposition

to birth control, nationalism, and social transformation. On the other hand, the rank and file

nuns and priests are active in the barrios, schools, and in the countryside working with

leftist social movements. At a meeting at the University of the Philippines over half of the

1,000 students attending (topic "Imperialist Globalization and Alternatives") were from

Catholic high schools and private colleges, in many cases accompanied by their teachers

and principles.

There is today a vast array of active movements fighting in barrios, plantations,

factories, schools, and campuses. The fundamental problem is their fragmented nature and

sporadic activity. With the breakdown of the radical umbrella movements in the mid-

1980s, no single organization has emerged capable of bringing the groups together.

While the struggles against neoliberalism and globalization seem to brook

consensus, there is not the same level of emotional energy that linked forces against the

personal dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. The imperial dictates of the market are

omnipresent, the cruel consequences of land foreclosures are visible in the ugly slums of

Manila. What is needed is a revitalized Philippine road to socialism free from the baleful

consequences of outdated dogmatic formulas.

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE

How effective have local, bottom-up efforts to protect the indigenous life ways of the

Philippines proven to be? Nadea (2001) confirmed that grassroots efforts like the Basic

Ecclesial Communities (BECs) are more effective than abstract theories. Religion as an

aspect of ideology calls for examination of its historic and structural relations to indigenous

social life.

Otherwise, students of the anthropology of religion run the risk of losing contact

with their partners of study, by creating theories with no concrete relation to them. A closer

investigation reflected on the alternative thrust of BECs in relation to the whole arena, its

roots and origins, of development presently occurring in the Philippines. The second part

of this paper offers similar religious, liberation movements in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

The alternative perspectives of village self-help movements in Thailand and Sri

Lanka correspond to the liberational BEC perspective in the Philippines. Some of the

conjunctural possibilities for the investigation of such alternatives from an anthropological

perspective have been made, while, nondogmatic and creative Marxist frameworks provide

room for alternative researches that can guide social policy.

For this reason, church workers involved in social justice and sustainable ecology

movements, like the Philippine's liberational BEC movement and village self-help

movements in Thailand and Sri Lanka, have found it useful to employ selective

post-Marxist concepts in their analyses. They have selectively combined schools of thought

in a distinctively indigenous fashion. The liberational BEC movement is an instance of this

kind of new social movement that is grounded in theory and practice.

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SOCIAL MOVEMENT UNIONISM: REALITY CHECK AND PERSPECTIVE

The Alliance of Progressive Labor (APL) contends that social movement unionism is a

strategy directed at recognizing, organizing and mobilizing all types of workers and unions

for engagements in different arenas of struggle. This strategy is not limited to “trade union”

organizing and has been developed precisely to respond to new work arrangements where

employee-employer relationships do not exist or are not clear.

Social movement unionism, then, seeks to protect the rights of all workers, not just

the wage earners. It is “social” because it does not deal only with economic rights and

political rights that trade unions usually deal with. Rather, social movement unionism seeks

to address even the “social costs” of oppressive economic and political systems. It

recognizes the broadness of workers’ interests and the diversity and complexity of work

arrangements. As such, it is geared toward the struggle for workers’ rights in all aspects —

economic, political and socio-cultural—and at all levels— local, national, global. In short,

the strategic objective of social movement unionism is nothing less than social

transformation.

TECHNOLOGY AS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ENHANCER

Technology analyst Howard Rheingold takes the Philippine adventure as a harbinger of

what he calls Smart Mobs: “people who are able to act in concert even if they don’t know

each other” (Rheingold 2003: xii). He stresses the enormous enthusiasm of Filipinos for

Short Message Service (SMS) since its introduction in 1995. As of 2000, the Philippines’

84 cellular mobile subscribers per thousand people topped richer countries such as Costa

Rica (52) and Belize (70), despite falling far short of Iceland’s spectacular 783 and

Norway’s almost equally remarkable 751.

Undoubtedly early 21st century social movement activists have integrated fresh

new technologies into their organizing and into their very claim making performances.

Significant changes in social movements are, indeed, occurring during the early 21st

century. As compared with the 20th century, internationally organized networks of

activists, international non-governmental organizations, and internationally visible targets

such as multinational corporations and international financial institutions all figure more

prominently in recent social movements, especially in the richer and better-connected parts

of the world. Even domestically oriented movements such as the anti-Estrada campaign in

the Philippines receive, on the average, more international attention and intervention than

their 20th century counterparts (Van Wezemael, 2011).

SOCIAL MOVEMENT IN ACTION

Opinions of the population oftentimes shaped the purpose behind any social movement. In

the economic sphere, for instance during the G-20 Summit, social movement groups

implied that while they support moves for different nations to come together in order to

develop sustainable and viable solutions to the crisis, they believe the process to come up

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with the necessary solutions should not only be more open and participatory but more

importantly, will not be used as a venue to "resurrect the dead."

The G-20 Summit can take two options to address the crisis. It can either push for

the continuation if not the completion of the neoliberal framework of less and less

government intervention in the market and trading or return to a "regulated-type of

capitalism such as the Bretton Woods system under the Roosevelt era.

Lidy Nacpil, Regional Coordinator of Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement for

Debt and Development, demanded the following to address the crisis.

1. New structures and institutions based on new principles. What are needed are

national, regional and global financial institutions based on economic democracy

and equity, ecological sustainability and environmental justice, gender, racial,

ethnic and international justice and equality, and self-determination and

sovereignty of peoples and nations.

2. End market fundamentalism and the "one size fits all" formula: The world doesn’t

need another dose of neoliberal prescriptions that has preached deregulation,

privatization, the over-leveraging of banks and trade and capital liberalization that

have damaged communities and the environment.

3. End the power of the IMF, World Bank: The present crisis has again demonstrated

how we are all impacted by these powerful global institutions whose policies have

been instrumental in its creation. Reforms to give them enhanced role, such as those

being discussed in current debates, are unacceptable.

4. Regulate the global economy effectively. Governments should take immediate

action to develop a new international regulatory architecture with democratic

checks and balances that is aimed at preventing future financial crises and

promoting the interests of workers, small-hold farmers, consumers, and the

environment. The United Nations should play a central role in its development.

CONTEMPORARY SOCIAL OUTLOOK

The major threat to democracy and economic development in the Philippines continues to

be the inability to bridge the gap between formal political rights and social equity. The

political and socioeconomic costs of poverty and inequality are the main corrosive

elements to freedom and liberty in the country. As proposed by Bertelsmann (2009), there

are four crucial challenges that the Philippines has to hurdle in 2010 and beyond.

First, the country needs to put its political institutions in order. The 2010 national

and local elections will serve as an institutional safety valve that will address the lingering

legitimacy crisis of the Arroyo administration. There is also a need to ensure clean, honest,

orderly, peaceful and efficient conduct in the 2010 and successive elections. Almost a full

decade into the 21st century, politics in the Philippine are still conducted using 19th-

century technology. It is imperative to harness the available information and

communication technology to modernize the electoral system. The full implementation of

automation in the 2010 national and local elections should be a test case for effective

electoral administration in the country. On the other hand, decentralization can bolster

institutionalization of political parties by establishing stable links with civil society

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organizations and local communities so as to avoid the reliance on governmental resources

(e.g., pork-barrel allocations) to oil local political machines.

Second, given the global economic crisis, there is a need to navigate the emerging

threats and opportunities provided by a global environment, which is characterized by

rapidly changing markets, disruptive technologies and knowledge-based competition. To

realize this strategy, there is a need to address the weakest link in national developmental

efforts – the bureaucracy.

Third, efforts must be made to strengthen the congruence between governance

structures and the requirements of economic and social development. Greater attention

must be given to the extent and quality of public goods and services oriented aimed at

reducing poverty and fostering human development. A lack of access to education, health

and justice inhibit the capacity of individuals to combat poverty and underdevelopment. In

this regard, public-good provisions that guarantee equal access to participation in society

– regardless of one’s social background – play a central role. Social reform efforts must

focus on the visible delivery of services and safety nets, especially in education, food

security, health and jobs.

While education continues to be the largest single governmental budget item

outside debt servicing, educational expenditure as a percentage of GDP is the lowest in the

ASEAN region. There is a lack of a solid network to compensate for social risks, especially

in the area of health care, and to prevent poverty in a well-focused way. While there may

be institutional mechanisms for justice in place, for many citizens, accessing justice

remains a theoretical right.

Lastly, there should be an end to the disruptive and elitist politics of the past. As a

related issue, there must also be a negotiated peace settlement to the enduring conflicts

with communist insurgents and Muslim secessionists. Negotiating a peaceful settlement of

internal armed conflict is a complex political process. Possible outcomes of the peace

process are contingent on the delicate interplay of international, regional and domestic

political transformations and the internal dynamics of the social movements.

STRUGGLE AND IMPLICATIONS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT

What do Philippine struggles of 2000 and 2001 tell us about 21st century social

movements? Tilly (2003) made at least four critical analysis of the entrance of social

movements in the 21st century. He noted that: first, despite guerrilla warfare in some parts

of the country, at least the Philippine capital region had institutionalized social movements

in recognizable forms. With plenty of local color, the marches, picketing, and press releases

of December and January clearly belonged to the international social movement repertoire,

formed part of a sustained campaign to bring down the president, expressed program,

identity, and standing claims, and involved repeated displays of WUNC. The confrontation

over garbage dumping in Antipolo, furthermore, indicates that social movement tactics

extended beyond the anti-Estrada campaign. The Philippines’ incomplete democracy

offered a favorable environment for social movements. As we have already observed for

the later 20th century, across the world democracy and social movements kept each other

company during the early 21st century.

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Second, by the same token the Philippines fell into the substantial category of

socially and geographically segmented countries with regard to social movements. Despite

the performances of Estrada’s Manila supporters and their leaders, participants in recent

Philippine social movements came overwhelmingly from the middle classes (Rafael 2003).

Geographic differences divided the Philippines even more sharply than class differences.

In such embattled regions as Mindanao, public politics did not involve social movements

but warlords, religious leaders, bandits, hostage-takers, patron-client net-works, militias,

and guerrilla forces. Nearby Malaysia and Indonesia similarly segmented into capital

regions where social movement campaigns maintained political footholds and large areas

where no one could hope to make political gains by combining non-violent social

movement performances and WUNC displays in sustained campaigns. Not only

authoritarian countries but also authoritarian segments of partly democratic countries

remained outside the world of social movements.

Third, international connections clearly mattered in this momentous national

conflict. Most obviously, US officials monitored the anti-Estrada campaign closely, and

managed almost instant diplomatic recognition of the Macapagal regime. Intense

international media coverage (stimulated in part by deliberately staged parallels with the

1986 ouster of Ferdinand Marcos) meant that Manila’s activists had no choice but to act

on the local and world stages simultaneously. Does that make the events of 2000-2001 an

instance or consequence of globalization? Not in the sense that intensification of

international connections constituted or precipitated the mobilization against Estrada. At

most we can say that by the start of the 21st century the Philippines had integrated

sufficiently into worldwide circuits of power and communication that Philippine rulers

lacked the options of obfuscation, seclusion, and repression that remained available to their

counterparts in Myanmar, Belarus, and Liberia.

Fourth, the widespread use of mobile telephones and text messaging does not in

itself make the case for the anti-Estrada campaign as a new sort of media-driven social

movement. Manila’s crowds may have formed more rapidly or in larger numbers than

before because of cheap, quick communications. But the overall contours of popular

mobilization in December and January – at least as seen from this distance – greatly

resemble those of earlier, pre-cellular Philippine social movements as well as earlier social

movements elsewhere in the democratic and semi-democratic worlds: plans for civil

disobedience, published challenges to authorities, calling up of previously established

organizations, assemblies in symbolically charged locations, demonstrations, marches,

human chains, and prominent involvement of national leaders.

The fourth point, however, marks the limits of knowledge based on such sources as

the Philippine Star alone. Media reports help us greatly in specifying what sorts of actions

we must explain, what major actors (individual and collective) appear in public, and which

publicly avowed alliances form among actors. But by themselves they do not answer the

worrisome questions raised by the correspondents of Time Asia: To what ex-tent did the

popular mobilization exert an independent influence on the outcome? Could a cabal of

Macapagal, Sin, Aquino plus invisible backers in the military and finance have incited

street politics as camouflage for a power grab? Without much closer observation of

interactions among the campaign’s participants, we cannot say for sure.

The most plausible reading of the evidence at hand, runs like this: organizations

and political entrepreneurs long opposed to Estrada played a significant part in mobilizing

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widespread popular dissatisfaction with Estrada into a sustained campaign. The Senate’s

impeachment trial provided a visible focus for that campaign. Vast marches and

demonstrations ratified the campaign to national and international audiences as they

reduced Estrada’s capacity to use force against his opponents. The fact that Estrada’s

supporters (who continued their agitation long after January 2001) also employed social

movement tactics suggests both that genuine social movement politics came into play

during January 2001 and that -- at least in the Manila region -- the social movement had

become widely available as a way of pressing popular claims.

References

Alliance of Progressive Labor. Fighting Back with Social Movement Unionism: A Handbook

for APL Activists. Accessed on November 7, 2009 from

http://www.apl.org.ph/aboutus.htm

Borras, Saturnino Jr. 1999. Bibingka Strategy in Land Reform Implementation: Autonomous

Peasant Movements and State Reformists in the Philippines. Institute for Popular

Democracy, Quezon City.

Encarnacion-Tadem, Teresa et al. 1997. Dynamics of Contemporary Transnational Social

Movements: Case Study on the Philippines, UNRISD-Philippine Research Team,

Third World Studies Center, UP Diliman, Quezon City.

Freedom from Debt Coalition. Philippine social movements storm US Embassy, an article

submitted on November 18, 2008 by FDC to Indymedia located at

http://www.indymediascotland.org

Nadea, Kathleen. New Social Movements: Christian and Buddhist Movements --Philippines,

Thailand, Sri Lanka. A study in 2001 of the East Asian Pastoral Institute available at

http://eapi.admu.edu.ph

Petras, James. The Philippines Revolution: What are the alternatives to neoliberalism? Z

Magazine, March 1999. Accessed on November 11, 2009 from

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com

Revolutions, Revolts and Social Movements. An online article accessed on November 5, 2009

from http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Revolutions%2C_

Revolts_and_Social_Movements

Rheingold, Howard. 2003. Smart Mobs. The Next Social Revolution. New York: Perseus

Publishing.

Stiftung, Bertelsmann. BTI 2010 — Philippines Country Report. Accessed on November 11,

2009 from http://www.bertelsmann-transformation-index.de/en/.

Tilly, Charles. Social Movements Enter the Twenty-first Century, A Conference Paper on

Contentious Politics and the Economic Opportunity Structure: Mediterranean

Perspectives conducted on October 17-18, 2003 at the University of Crete, Rethimno.

Accessed on May 23, 2010 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/94496584/ Tilly-Social-

Movements-Enter-the-XXI-Century.

Van Wezemael, Joris Ernest. “Online and Offline Social Movements: Critical Perspectives”.

Journal of Critical Studies in Business & Society (Special Issue). Accessed on

November 15, 2009 from http://vanwezemael.wordpress.com/

Wui, Marlon and Glenda Lopez (eds.). 1997. State-Civil Society Relations in Policy-Making,

Vol. 2 of Philippine Democracy Agenda. Third World Studies Center, Quezon City.

http://eapi.admu.edu.ph/

A Critical Analysis of Social Movements in the Philippines

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