Political Parties and Corruption

The Philippines: Political Parties and Corruption

Nathan Gilbert Quimpo

Southeast Asian Affairs, Volume 2007, pp. 277-294 (Article)

Published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies

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Southeast Asian Affairs 2007

THE PHILIPPINESPolitical Parties and Corruption

Nathan Gilbert Quimpo

The Philippines, it is often said, has mediocre or weak political parties and aninchoate or ill-developed political party system. A political party, as defined bythe country's Omnibus Election Code, is an organized group of persons pursuingthe same ideology, political ideas, or platform of government. Political activistand analyst Joel Rocamora quips, however, that nobody can accuse any of thePhilippines' main parties of being such an animal.1 Dominated by the country'spolitico-economic elite, they are built around personalities, rather than aroundpolitical programmes or platforms. In fact, ideologies and platforms are justadornments for them. A major Philippine daily newspaper aptly describes whatthe parties stand for: "The usual motherhood statements are passed off as politicalprogrammes".2 Apart from being indistinguishable from one another in theirpolitical beliefs and programmes — or lack of these — the Philippines' mainparties have weak membership bases and seem to come alive only during electiontime. Elections are often marked — or marred — by lavish spending, vote-buying,fraud, and violence. In Philippine party politics, turncoatism is a venerabletradition3 — politicians flit like butterflies from one party to another. Post-Marcosparties, in particular, are said to reflect the undeveloped or malformed characterof the Philippine political party system. Far from being stable organizations, theyhave proven to be nebulous entities that can be set up, merged with others, split,resurrected, regurgitated, reconstituted, renamed, repackaged, recycled, or flusheddown the toilet any time.4 Most politicians belonging to the main parties havecome to be derogatorily called trapo, which is short for "traditional politician",but ordinarily means an old rag used for wiping off dust and dirt that oftenbecomes grimy or greasy.

Nathan Gilbert Quimpo is an Associate Professor in Political Science and InternationalRelations, University of Tsukuba, Japan.

278Nathan Gilbert Quimpo

A scrutiny of Philippine trapo parties leads one to question certain prevailingnotions about political parties and about the relationship of political parties andparty systems with political development and democratic consolidation. First, inthe new typology of political parties drawn up by Richard Günther and LarryDiamond, there are two types of elite-based party — the traditional local notableparty and the clientelistic party.5 Under this typology, the Philippines' trapoparties would be classified as the latter. However, I argue that the trapo partieshave gone far beyond simple clientelist politics and morphed into patrimonialisticparties, instruments of an oligarchic elite for the prédation of the state and itsresources through various means — the use of traditional patron-client ties, non-personalistic forms of patronage, rent-seeking, outright corruption, fraud, coercion,and violence.

Secondly, the institutionalization of political parties and party systems isoften regarded as being very important or even crucial for a country's politicalmodernization and democratic consolidation. Scholars like Samuel Huntingtonhave tended to draw a linear development of parties and party systems fromweak to strong, from uninstitutionalized to institutionalized.6 Under the traditionalcharacterization of political parties and party systems, the Philippines' main partiesand its party system would be regarded as weak and uninstitutionalized. I argue thatwhile seeming to be feeble, sapless creatures, the trapo parties, taken collectively,are quite rapacious and formidable. The system of chameleonic and patrimonialistictrapo parties has, in fact, become the foremost institution of the Philippines'"patrimonial oligarchic" or "predatory" state. The degeneration of Philippine partiesfrom clientelist to patrimonialist politics and the institutionalization of the trapoparty system indicate that the building of strong and truly democratic politicalparties and party system in the Philippines is turning out to be an excruciatinglydifficult and complicated process.

From Clientelistic to Patrimonialistic Parties

Traditional patron-client relationships have long been an important feature ofPhilippine politics. In his now classic 1965 study on Philippine politics, CarlLande observed that the Philippine polity was structured less by organized interestgroups as in Western democracies than by networks of personal relationships,largely involving exchanges of favours between prosperous patrons and their poorand dependent clients. The two main parties at that time consisted of verticalchains of these patron-client ties that stretched from the national all the waydown to the village level, clustering into competing factions at various levels.

The Philippines: Political Parties andCorruption279

Catering to the needs of members of all social classes, ethnolinguistic groups,and geographical regions, the two parties were very similar in their ideologicalpositions, programmes, and sources of support. Switching from one party to theother was common. The parties took on "the role of general benefactor, offeringto every sort of individual some limited but tangible reward . . . and rewardingeach town which supported them with some visible public works project".7

Landé's seminal work on traditional political clientelism in the Philippinesbelonged to a genre of studies conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s thathighlighted the element of personalism in Philippine politics.8 Benedict Kerkvlietcalls the interpretation of Philippine politics put forward by Lande et alia as thepatron-client, factional framework, one which basically holds that the country'spolitics is "about personal relations and networks linked by kinship, friendship,exchange of favours, influence, and money".9

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of scholars noted that traditionalpatron-client relationships were on the wane and that the traditional faction basedon patron-client bonds was giving way to a less personalistic form of politicalorganization, one that had been prevalent in the United States at the turn of thetwentieth century — the political machine. To secure political support, the machinerelied much more on particularistic, material rewards rather than on the deferentialexchange of favours in old-style patron-client relationships.10 The Philippines'two main parties continued to be indistinguishable in ideological stance andpolitical programmes. No longer associated simply with personalism, clientelistpolitics came to be defined as "a system of exchange which is particularistic,non-programmatic, and non-ideological".11

The term clientelistic party is relatively newly formulated, but it aptly describesthe Philippines' main political parties prior to Marcos' imposition of authoritarianrule in 1972. "Clientelistic party" appears in a new typology of political partiesdrawn up in 2001 by Günther and Diamond, who note that political parties are"not what they used to be" and that today's parties are much more variegatedthan the traditional West European party models of a century and a half ago.Putting clientelistic party as a subcategory of elite-based party, the two scholarsdescribe it as follows:

The clientelistic party, as we shall define it, is a confederation ofnotables (either traditional or of the newly emerging liberal-professionalor economic elite), each with his own geographically, functionally, orpersonalistically based support, organized internally as particularisticfactions. Such a party typically has a weak organization and placeslittle or no stress on program or ideology. Its principal function is to


coordinate the individual campaign efforts of notables, usually indirectlyor loosely, for the purpose of securing power at the national level.Their campaign activities, in turn, are based on hierarchical chains ofinterpersonal relationships of a quasi-feudal variety, in which relativelydurable patterns of loyalty are linked with the exchange of services andobligations.12

Günther and Diamond cite cases in some modernizing societies whereclientelistic exchange of favours and particularism evolved into outright vote-buyingand other forms of overt corruption, and where "more coercive forms of patron-client exchanges tended to emerge, often involving the threat to withholdeconomic benefits from the client unless his or her political support is pledged".They observe, however, that the influence of clientelism tends to decline in thecourse of modernization and the rising "cognitive mobilization" of the votingpopulace.13

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Philippine elections became increasinglytarnished by various irregularities, such as campaign overspending, vote-buying,"flying voters", falsification of election returns, as well as political intimidation,harassment, and even killings. These reflected the intense contestation amongfactions of the country's politico-economic elite for economic and political power.The corruption, fraud, and violence at election time became so bad that Philippineelections — and politics in general — were said to have come under the rule ofthe three Gs: "guns, goons, and gold". In the 1971 elections, a record 534 violentincidents and 905 deaths were reported.14

With masses of students and youth rallying and sometimes rioting in thestreets against tomad na burgis ("the slothful bourgeoisie"), Philippine clientelistpolitics underwent a severe crisis in the early 1970s. The old order could notsurvive. Instead of shedding clientelism and moving towards a more modernand programmatic politics, however, Philippine democracy gave up the ghost.Ostensibly to end "the rule of the oligarchs" and to crush Communist and Musliminsurgents, Marcos declared martial law and imposed one-man rule. Under Marcos'dictatorial rule, political clientelism turned into what David Würfel termed aspatrimonial or neopatrimonial authoritarianism.15 Making full use of his dictatorialpowers, Marcos exploited the resources of the state for his personal aggrandizement.The dictator and his wife, Imelda, together with his cronies, engaged in whatBelinda Aquino described as "the politics of plunder".16 Transparency Internationalestimates that the Philippine dictator embezzled US$5-10 billion during his twodecades in power, and ranks him as the world's second most corrupt leader inthe contemporary era, behind Soeharto of Indonesia.17


In an attempt to gain legitimacy for his authoritarian regime, Marcos soughtto "normalize" political processes after a few years of ruling simply throughpresidential proclamations and decrees. In 1978, without lifting most of hisauthoritarian decrees and without fully restoring civil and political liberties, hecalled for elections for the Interim Batasang Pambansa (Interim National Assembly),essentially a rubber-stamp parliament. These were followed in subsequent yearsby local, presidential, and regular Batasang Pambansa elections. The dictator setup his own political party, Kilusan ng Bagong Lipunan (KBL) or New SocietyMovement to take part in these pseudo-democratic processes. It dominated allthe elections during 1978-84.

The KBL marked the shift from clientelistic to patrimonialistic party politics.The parties of the pre-authoritarian period had actually already begun the processof mutation into a new animal. The extent of the patronage, bribery, fraud,coercion, and force — or "guns, goons, and gold" — in which they were engagedhad grown out of all proportion to the usual clientelist politics. Marcos' partycontinued with all these dirty practices and brought the chicanery, intimidation,and violence to even higher levels. What mainly distinguished the KBL frompre-martial law parties, however, was that it was no longer just a means forsecuring or maintaining power or for defending particularistic interests. Marcosand his cronies, who dominated and controlled the KBL, indulged in brazen andall-out plunder of the state's resources. Many of their underlings in the partyquickly picked up the tricks of the trade. The party drew hordes of ambitious,self-serving individuals (including those of the sycophantic ilk), served as thevehicle for getting them elected or appointed into power, and once they were inoffice, provided the network and connections for the systematic exploitation ofthe government's resources.

Not all in the KBL were of the patronage, corrupt, or plundering types. Therewere also some do-gooders, who perhaps naively thought they could achievemeaningful reforms under a patrimonial dictatorship. Among these do-gooderswere some technocrats who were close to international financing institutionslike the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). UnderMarcos' patrimonial regime, squeaky clean Cesar Virata, Finance Minister andlater Prime Minister, provided a most interesting counterpoint to the corruptdictator-president. The IMF-WB, dumbly enough, showered billions of dollarsin "development" loans to the corrupt dictatorial regime without realizingwhere the money really went. Filipinos now continue to pay the price for thisfolly.


Patrimonialistic Parties Galore in the Post-Authoritarian Era

Democracy was restored in the Philippines after Marcos was ousted through a"People Power" uprising in 1986. Many scholars, however, have tended to qualifythe country's democracy with a variety of deprecatory adjectives: elite democracy,18cacique democracy,19 oligarchic democracy,20 low-intensity democracy,21 electoralclientelist regime,22 a "weak state" captured by an oligarchic elite,23 and so forth.Most of these characterizations show that the country's politics continues to becontrolled by factions of an entrenched politico-economic elite that resort tovarious means to maintain their hold on wealth and political power.

Political corruption and violence in post-authoritarian Philippines have reachedsuch staggering proportions that over the past decade or so, political pundits havecome up with even more damning characterizations of Philippine politics, showinghow these ills have become very much embedded in the country's political system.Paul Hutchcroft describes the Philippines as having a patrimonial oligarchic state,a weak state preyed upon and plundered by different factions of the elite, who takeadvantage of, and extract privilege from, a largely incoherent bureaucracy. Accordingto him, it is not just one person and his/her cronies but the oligarchic elite as awhole that engages in plunder. He argues that the main obstacles to the country'ssustained economic development lie in the weaknesses of its political developmentand that the Philippines' patrimonial oligarchic state and booty capitalism haveput the country in a developmental bog.24 The Philippines' "powerful politicalfamilies", writes Alfred McCoy, resort to various tactics and methods to maintainthemselves in power, but most especially to political violence and "rent-seeking",with the former being prevalent in the provinces, and the latter concentrated inthe capital. In the "synergistic" interaction between the state and the rent-seekingpolitical families, "the privatization of public resources strengthens a few fortunatefamilies while weakening the state's resources and its bureaucratic apparatus".25 JohnT. Sidel depicts bossism as a common phenomenon in the Philippines, describingbosses as strongmen who achieve monopolistic control over both coercive andeconomic resources within certain areas and who often use mafia-style methodsin their operations. Sidel agrees with Hutchcroft and McCoy on the Philippinestate's being an object of oligarchical plunder. In contrast to them, however, heportrays it not as a weak state, but as a strong and predatory state — "a complexset of predatory mechanisms for the private exploitation and accumulation of thearchipelago's human, natural, and monetary resources".26

Under the typology of states drawn up by Peter Evans, who examined statesin both their internal organization and their relation to society, the Philippineswould be classified as an intermediate state, standing somewhere between the


developmental state and the predatory state, but probably closer to the latter."Predatory states", explains Evans, "extract at the expense of society, undercuttingdevelopment even in the narrow sense of capital accumulation. Developmentalstates not only have presided over industrial transformation but can be plausiblyargued to have played a role in making it happen."27

The global corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI) includes thePhilippines among the countries with severe corruption problems. On a scale of1 to 10 with 10 as the "cleanest", the Philippines has consistently gotten a scorein the vicinity of 3.0 over the last decade on TI's annual Corruption PerceptionIndex, even sinking to 2.5 in 2003, 2005, and 2006.28 The Economist IntelligenceUnit estimates that 20 to 30 per cent of the country's national budget is lost tocorruption each year.29 In a recent study of the Hong Kong-based Political andEconomic Risk Consultancy Ltd. (PERC), foreign businessmen have ranked thePhilippines as the second most corrupt country in Asia, after Indonesia.30 SenatorMiriam Defensor Santiago insists, however, that the Philippines is "not numbertwo but the most corrupt country in Asia", acknowledging that its officials haveentered into agreements disadvantageous to the government.31

Highlighting the gravity and pervasiveness of the corruption problem inpost-authoritarian Philippines is the fact that the immediate past President andthe current President have been embroiled in big graft scandals. President JosephEstrada was forced to resign by "People Power" after being implicated in amulti-million-peso illegal gambling racket. Transparency International has puthim as number 10 in its list of the top ten corrupt leaders, estimating that he hasstolen US$78-80 million in just three years of being in power. The Philippinesis the only country with two ex-rulers in the top ten list — Marcos and Estrada.President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Estrada's successor, has been accused ofelectoral fraud, corruption, and other improprieties but has avoided, at least thusfar, being ousted through impeachment or popular upheaval.

The Philippines is perhaps the only democracy in the whole world whereviolence has become a regular feature of elections — dozens get killed in everyelection. At least 87 people were killed and 45 injured in 183 violent incidentsin connection with the elections for barangay (village) leaders in 2002.32 In theMay 2004 national elections, at least 147 people were killed in election-relatedviolence,33 making the elections the bloodiest since 1986. Immediately afterboth the 2002 and 2004 ballots, President Arroyo declared that the elections hadgenerally been peaceful.

Like the clientelistic parties of the pre-authoritarian era, the trapo parties ofthe post-authoritarian period recognize, and operate within, the country's formal


democracy. It would seem that Philippine party politics is just back to the good,old pre-martial law days. To win elections, trapos and trapo parties sometimesstill rely on deferential patron-client ties. Often, however, they simply resort toless personalistic forms of patronage. When this still does not suffice, then perhapsvote-buying or a bit of vote-fixing or coercion would do the trick. In extremesituations, the boss-politician and his party-mates could resort to the full regaliaof "guns, goons, and gold".

In one crucial sense, however, the trapo parties have "outgrown" the clientelistpolitics of pre-authoritarian times. Imbibing a great deal from the political cultureof corruption of the authoritarian era, the trapo parties have carried on with thepatrimonialist tradition of Marcos' KBL. This is not at all surprising since theclientelistic parties, as mentioned earlier, were already beginning to morph intopatrimonialistic parties even before the imposition of authoritarian rule. Theperpetuation of patrimonialist tradition has been greatly aided by the fact thatformer KBLs have been happily flitting from one trapo party to another. And alsoby the fact that Marcos and his wife and cronies have shown how easy it is tosteal and get away with much of the loot and even to "imeldifically" flaunt yourwealth — without ever going to prison. The post-Marcos patrimonialistic partiesserve as the conduits, the instruments, for trapos — the political representatives ofan increasingly predatory elite — in getting to power in order to be able to extractas much privilege from the state as possible. The patrimonial parties are tools ofthose who seek to be, as Imelda Marcos once put it, "smarter than others".34 Theperception of the Philippines' main parties as being corrupt is widespread. Filipinosregard political parties as one the three sectors most affected by corruption (thetwo others being Congress and the police).35

Patrimonialistic parties are catch-all affairs.36 After all, as a clientelist politicianof old — the late Senate President Eulogio "Amang" Rodriguez — put it, politicsis addition. It does not really matter what your political beliefs are. For as long asyou can help make the party or ticket win — and especially if you have the money,name, political office, looks, or personality — you are most welcome. Candidatesdo not need to have political, organizational, or management experience; mediasavvy and winnability are more important. Showbiz and sports stars provide glitterand entertainment and attract crowds. Because of the nature of their real aims,trapo parties do not work like real parties. In the main, a trapo party operates asan old boys' network, but sometimes also in part as a fans' club and often alsoin part as mafia. Sometimes, the top man is literally addressed as "boss".

The hyper-fluid character of patrimonialistic parties provides great opportunityfor trapo opportunism after elections. Many of those who have won under


opposition parties switch over to the administration side. There is a very simplereason for this: that is where most of the patronage money (for example, porkbarrel) and the juicy government appointments and contracts are. What happensto the platforms these trapos carried when they ran under the opposition banner?They just go down the drain. As for the principles that these politicians uphold. . . what principles are you talking about?

Those who stick it out with, or switch to, the opposition are not exactlyknights in shining armour. They're just waiting for their turn. Corruption in thePhilippines, writes David Kang, swings like a pendulum. Once a faction of theelite gains power, it busily goes about "lining its own pockets, aware that in thenext round its fortunes might well be reversed".37 An Estrada crony once remarked,somewhat indiscreetly, right on television, "weather-weather lang yan" (to eachhis own time).38

Under the Philippines' presidential system, the presidency, which has beenendowed with tremendous powers of appointment to state agencies and state-ownedcorporations among other things, has become the citadel of patrimonialist politics.Estrada has shown how a president in post-authoritarian Philippines can makeuse of the chief executive's office for personal gain. In this regard, his successormay not be far behind, or may even be ahead. According to Randy David,President Arroyo is a patrimonial president who has become adept at "governanceby patronage", personally distributing public welfare benefits — such as healthinsurance, temporary employment, student loans and home lot certificates — tothe poor in ways that would make them feel indebted towards herself.39 Throughthe skilful use of patronage (especially the release of pork barrel funds40) and withthe able support of the wily old pro, Speaker Jose de Venecia, she succeeded inreducing the opposition to a miniscule minority in the Lower House of Congressupon the start of her second term.41 It is not surprising that an overwhelmingmajority of congresspersons twice defeated motions for her impeachment.

In pre-martial law times, Philippine politics, despite all the clientelism, stillmanaged to produce statespersons of strong moral fibre like Lorenzo Tañada,Jose W. Diokno, and Jovito Salonga. With today's patrimonialistic parties,statespersons are close to becoming an extinct species. Anybody who runs undertrapo parties or coalitions gets tainted to some degree. Those who run underthese parties or coalitions know very well — but sometimes pretend not toknow — that they stand to benefit from the rampant vote-buying that theirparty or coalition mates do at the local level, from the cheating and coercion atvarious levels and from the "protection" of votes through a "Hello, Garci" phonecall at the top level.42


Not everyone in the trapo parties is corrupt. There are the out-and-outcorrupt types and there are those who engage in a bit of corruption. Then thereare patronage types, who provide jobs and positions, and expect political supportin return, and maintain that there is nothing wrong or illegal in what they do. (Tohell with the merit system; Philippine politics is weather-weather — the spoilssystem). The old-style patrons extend very personalized favours, and expect utangna loob (debt of gratitude). And then there are the reformers, who think they canreform the "party" or delude themselves into believing such.

The Philippines' patrimonial oligarchic state allows for a number of reform-oriented politicians to exist in a sea of trapos. These honest public servants manageand strive to maintain isles of state efficiency, transparency, and accountability. Whenthey have finished with the maximum number of years allowable for a particularpublic post, however, patrimonialist politics takes over or makes a comeback. Thereason is simple: there is no reform-oriented party to carry on what they began. For alltheir advocacy of "good governance" and "new public management", the reformersdo not really challenge the trapo parties. Almost all of them, in fact, are membersof these patrimonialistic parties. Many of them have earnestly tried to reform theseparties, but their efforts have always come to naught as the trapos are too well-entrenched. They have often ended up condoning the patrimonialists' behaviour orbeing swallowed up by the system. The trapos welcome the reformers as it is goodfor the former's own image to be seen in the latter's company. The patrimonialisticparties splash the pictures of these poster children for good governance all over theelection billboards, alongside those of their jaded ticket-mates.

The Institutionalization of the Patrimonial Trapo SystemThe institutionalization of political parties and the party system, it is often said,plays an important role in a country's political development and democraticconsolidation. "The stability of a modernizing political system, declares Huntington,depends on the strength of its political parties." He views political parties and theparty system in modernizing societies as "[t]he principal institutional means fororganizing the expansion of political participation".43 On parties and democraticconsolidation, Diamond explains:

Only political parties can fashion diverse identities, interests, preferences,and passions into laws, appropriations, policies, and coalitions. "Withouteffective parties that command at least somewhat stable bases of support,democracies cannot have effective governance." Therefore, some degree ofparty system institutionalization — of parties with effective, autonomous


organizations, and developed, relatively stable linkages to voting blocsand social organization — seems an important condition for democraticconsolidation.44

A party can be judged to be strong, continues Huntington, if it has institu-tionalized mass support, organizational complexity, and party loyalty among itsmembers. The process of party development, that is, from weak to strong,usually goes through four phases: factionalism, polarization, expansion, andinstitutionalization.45 For a democratic party system to be institutionalized, writeScott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully, four conditions must be obtained:stability in the rules and the nature of inter-party competition; stable roots ofthe major parties in society; legitimacy accorded to the electoral process and toparties; and party organization.46

By the standards outlined by Huntington, Mainwaring, and Scully, thePhilippines' political parties and its political party system are weak anduninstitutionalized. Using the said standards, some scholars have tried to figureout what phase of development the Philippine parties and party system have thusfar achieved or what conditions for institutionalization they have already met.Such an exercise is useless. It can well be argued that there is no point in talkingabout the strengthening or institutionalization of what are mere caricatures ofdemocratic political parties and a democratic party system, or of what are nothingmore than instruments of patronage and patrimonialism. It can likewise be wellargued, however, that the Philippines trapo "parties" and trapo party system,are in fact quite strong and institutionalized. The trapo parties are strong in thesense of being predatory. Their fuzzy or nebulous character may seem to be asign of weakness, but this actually suits their predatory purpose. It allows them toescape scrutiny and accountability and allows the clientelistic or patrimonialistictypes of politicians to get away with almost anything. If, as Mainwaring and Scullyput it, "institutionalization refers to a process by which a practice or organizationbecomes well established and widely known, if not universally accepted",47 thenthe trapo party system has already become institutionalized too. The practiceor system of ever-flitting politicians and ever-changing political parties hasestablished itself. There is no significant challenge to the trapo parties, that is,within the Philippines' legal constitutional system. They have become the onlygame in town.

The only political force that has posed a significant challenge to clientelistand patrimonial rule in the Philippines has been the Left. Instead of seeking tochange the system through parliamentary means, however, the dominant bloc in theleft — the "national democratic movement", which is aligned with the Maoist


Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) — has opted to engage in an armedstruggle to overthrow the "reactionary" order. Up until 1986, it boycotted allelections. After its disastrous boycott of the 1986 elections, the revolutionaryLeft has participated in elections but its involvement in the "electoral struggle"has been subordinate to armed struggle, its principal form of struggle. Unlikeits counterparts in Latin America, which have had a long electoral tradition, thePhilippine Left has had very limited experience in the electoral arena as well asin governance. Encountering no major challenge, the trapos have developed andinstitutionalized the trapo party system and mastered the manoeuvres and tricksof the electoral game.

The emergence, persistence, and institutionalization of parties that are evenworse than clientelistic parties in the Philippines run completely contrary to theview of a good number of modernization and democratic consolidation theoriststhat socio-economic modernization or globalization brings about the erosionof clientelism and particularism and the development of more transparent anddemocratic parties. The patrimonialistic parties are in fact a means of adaptationof the Philippine oligarchic elite to modernization and globalization. Theyare part of the mechanism of what Barbara Harriss-White and Gordon Whitedescribe as the "new corruption, [which is] rooted in the logic of economicand political liberalization, reflecting the activity of rapacious local elites nolonger subject to the domestic and international constraints of the Cold Warera and increasingly pervaded by criminal or 'mafioso' forces".48 The systemof patrimonialistic trapo parties is an institution of the Philippines' patrimonialoligarchic state, and it plays a key role in the deepening of political corruptionin the country.

Günther and Diamond contend that the exchange of favours on whichclientelistic parties are based may contain the seeds of these parties' own eventualdestruction. In the wake of popular indignation against corruption, they go down inelectoral defeats. The two authors specifically cite the case of the Philippines.49 Itis true that in 2001, several months after Estrada was ousted by "People Power",his party lost the elections. Günther and Diamond fail to take into account,however, that the other major parties in the Philippines are just as patrimonialistic(not just clientelistic). Estrada's successor, Arroyo, her family, and her party arenow mired in a slew of corruption scandals. In a 2005 Pulse Asia survey, 57 percent of Filipinos rated Arroyo's performance in fighting graft and corruption ingovernment as inferior to that of Estrada's.50 In a 2006 Transparency Internationalstudy, 31 per cent of respondents in the Philippines assessed that the current(Arroyo) government's actions in the fight against corruption as "not effective".


Worse, in the same survey, 23 per cent stated that the government does not fightcorruption at all, and 24 per cent said that not only does the government notfight it but it actually encourages it.51 Filipinos have already staged two "PeoplePower" uprisings against corrupt presidents, but quickly afterwards, patrimonialisticparties were back. Not even popular upheavals could truly put an end to them.Since trapo parties control governmental institutions not just at the national levelbut also at the local level (municipal, city, and provincial), the patrimonialisticparties have easily regenerated themselves after such upheavals.

Conclusion

With the rise of patrimonialistic trapo parties, the process of setting up andinstitutionalizing truly democratic political parties and party system in thePhilippines is becoming an excruciatingly more arduous and complex process.It is not simply a forward linear process of turning weak or uninstitutionalizedparties and party system into strong and institutionalized ones. Patrimonialisticparties are a movement in the opposite direction. Since patrimonialistic parties,by their very character, are virtually impossible to reform, one would have todeal squarely with the problem of defeating the patrimonial parties in elections,an arena that they now thoroughly dominate.

The only way to dislodge the patrimonialistic parties in a democratic mannerwould be to build new parties that are truly reform-oriented, that rigorously screenout politicians who have engaged in patrimonialist politics, and who activelycombat trapo political culture. Parties promoting reform politics would have towage an intense political battle with the trapo parties. They would, of course,find themselves to be not on a level playing field. The trapo parties would drawfrom their usual bag of tricks. The reform-oriented parties would have to makesure not to stoop to the trapo level. If they try to beat the trapo parties at thelatter's own game, they run the risk of becoming trapo parties themselves. Someof the parties in the party-list system that are fighting for "new politics" — andthat are not mere fronts of the Maoist CPP — fit the bill of reform-orientedparties. Unfortunately, few of them have actually cared and dared to challengethe trapo parties in elections outside of the party-list ballot, which is only forthe Lower House of Congress and is limited to only 20 per cent of the seatsthere.

Those seeking to dismantle the trapo party system — and patrimonialistpolitics in general — in the Philippines would have to prepare themselves fora long process, involving gradual change as well as ruptures. Some of these


ruptures could be of the "People Power" type, but some others could also beof the more regressive type, for example, coups or military revolts, that throwout the democratic baby with the bathwater. It must be noted that in Thailand,when attempts at amassing "People Power" to pressure the patrimonialisticPrime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, to resign failed, the military deposed himand took over.

The much-ballyhooed constitutional or Charter change ("cha-cha") from apresidential to a parliamentary system, now being advocated by certain quarters,will not suffice to rid the country of patrimonialist politics. None of the major"cha-cha" proposals for a parliamentary system squarely addresses the issueof dismantling the politico-economic stranglehold of the country's patrimonialoligarchic elite. Under a parliamentary system, the patrimonialistic trapo partieswould just continue to operate as they do now or resurface in regurgitated form.With Arroyo, de Venecia, and other well-known trapos being actively involvedin the "cha-cha" campaign and even trying to ram this through in Congress,more and more Filipinos now suspect that certain trapos and trapo parties areintending to use the shift to a parliamentary system as a means to extend theirhold on power.

Reform-minded politicians who are presently in trapo parties would perhapsdo well to seriously consider getting out of these patrimonialistic parties andgetting into truly democratic parties or building new ones. By continuing towork in unholy cohabitation with trapos, they are only helping to legitimize andperpetuate the trapo system of patronage, corruption, and plunder.

Notes

1 Joel Rocamora, "Political Parties in Constitutional Reform" (Institute for PopularDemocracy, Summer 2002), http://www.tni.org/archives/rocamora/parties.htm (accessed18 December 2006).

2 Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Parties", Editorial, 13 January 2004, p. A5.3 Felipe B. Miranda, "Leadership and Political Stabilization in a Post-Aquino Philippines",

Philippine Political Science Journal, no. 33, 1991, p. 159.4 Nathan Gilbert Quimpo, "The Left, Elections and the Political Party System in the

Philippines", Critical Asian Studies 37, no. 1 (March 2005): 3.5 Richard Günther and Larry Diamond, "Types and Functions of Parties". In Political

Parties and Democracy, edited by Günther and Diamond, pp. 12-15 (Baltimore: JohnHopkins University Press, 2001).

6 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 1968).


7 Carl H. Lande, Leaders, Factions and Parties: The Structure of Philippine Politics(New Haven: Yale University, 1965); Lande, "The Philippine Political Party System",Journal ofSoutheast Asian History 8, no. 1 (1967): 19-39; Lande, "Parties and Politicsin the Philippines", Asian Survey 8, no. 9 (1968): 725-47.Frank Lynch, Mary Hollnsteiner, and Jean Grossholtz were other notable scholarswho produced work of this type.Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, "Contested Meanings of Elections in the Philippines". InThe Politics of Elections in Southeast Asia, edited by R.H. Taylor, p. 136 (New York:Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996).James C. Scott, "Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change", AmericanPolitical Science Review 63, no. 4 (1969): 1142-58; Scott, "The Erosion ofPatron-Client Bonds and Social Change in Rural Southeast Asia", Journal ofAsian Studies 32, no. 1 (1972): 5-37; Kit Gordon Machado, "Changing Aspects ofFactionalism in Philippine Local Politics", Asian Survey 11, no. 12 (1971): 1182—99.

Thomas C. Nowak and Kay A. Snyder, "Urbanization and Clientelist Systems in thePhilippines", Philippine Journal of Public Administration 14, no. 3 (1970): 261.Günther and Diamond (2001, pp. 3^1, 14-15).Ibid., p. 15.John L. Linantud, "Whither Guns, Goons, and Gold? The Decline of FactionalElection Violence in the Philippines", Contemporary Southeast Asia 20, no. 3 (1998):301.

David Würfel, Filipino Politics: Development and Decay (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1988).Belinda Aquino, The Politics of Plunder: The Philippines under Marcos, 2nd ed.(Quezon City: National College of Public Administration, University of the Philippines:1999).http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604, 1 178342,00.html (accessed 1 8December 2006).Waiden Bello and John Gershman, "Democratization and Stabilization in thePhilippines", Critical Sociology 17 (Spring 1990): 35-56; David G. Timberman, AChangeless Land: Continuity and Change in Philippine Politics (Singapore: Instituteof Southeast Asian Studies, 1991).Benedict Anderson, "Cacique Democracy in the Philippines: Origins and Dreams",New Left Review 169 (1988): 3-31.Damien Kingsbury, South-East Asia: A Political Profile (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2001).Barry Gills, Joel Rocamora, and Richard Wilson, eds. Low-Intensity Democracy:Political Power in the New World Order (London: Pluto Press, 1993).Jennifer Conroy Franco, Elections and Democratization in the Philippines (New York:Routledge, 2001).


23Alfred W. McCoy, '"An Anarchy of Families': The Historiography of State andFamily in the Philippines". In An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in thePhilippines, edited by Alfred W. McCoy, pp. 1-32 (Madison: University of Wisconsin,Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1993).

24Paul Hutchcroft, Booty Capitalism: The Politics ofBanking in the Philippines (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 1998).

25McCoy (1993, pp. 1-32). Borrowing from James Buchanan, McCoy explains that "rentsare created when a state gives an entrepreneur an artificial advantage by restricting'freedom of entry' into the market" (p. 11).

26John Sidel, Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1999).

27Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1995).

28Doris C. Dumlao, "International Survey Rates RP's Corruption Severe", PhilippineDaily Inquirer, 19 October 2005, p. Al; Transparency International, http://www.transparencyintl.org/ti-phils.htm (accessed 29 December 2006).

29Peter Cordingley, "The Cost of Corruption", Asiaweek, 19 October 2001, http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/magazine/threesixty/1,8782,179107 ,OO.html (accessed29 December 2006).

30Philippine Daily Inquirer, "Philippines No. 2 on Asia Graft List", 9 March 2005,p. Al.

31Sun Star, "Palace Admits Corruption an Old Problem in RP", 10 March 2005,p. 1.

32TJ. Burgonio and Anselmo Roque 2002, "Election Violence Latest Count: 87 Dead,45 Hurt", Philippine Daily Inquirer, 17 July 2002, p. Al.

33Mynardo Macaraig, "Afghanistan Learns from Philippine Elections", Philippine DailyInquirer, 18 May 2004.

34To explain the Márcoses' political and financial success, Imelda Marcos once said:"Some are smarter than others." See Manuel L. Quezon III, "The Rule of Law",Philippine Daily Inquirer, 22 September 2005, p. All.

35See Transparency International, "Report on the Transparency International GlobalCorruption Barometer 2006", http://www.transparency.sk/prieskumy/061207_globa.pdf (accessed 29 December 2006).

36Under the broad genus of "electoralist parties", Günther and Diamond list "catch-all","personalistic" and programmatic parties. Electoralist parties are a different classificationfrom elite-based parties; the two categories may overlap. A trapo party sometimes startsout as a personalistic party, that is, one whose "only rationale is to provide a vehiclefor the leader to win an election and exercise power" (Günther and Diamond 2001,p. 28), but it often later evolves into a catch-all party. A good example is Estrada'sparty, Laban ng Makabayang Masang Pilipino (LaMMP) or Struggle of the Patriotic


Filipino Masses, which later became the catch-all Puwersa ng Masa or Force of theMasses.

37David C. Kang, Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea andthe Philippines (Cambridge: Camnbridge University Press, 2002), p. 150.

38Sheila S. Coronel, "The Pare Principle", i Magazine 4, no. 4 (October-December1998), http://www.pcij.org/imag/PublicEye/pare.html (accessed 29 December 2006).

39Randy David, "Governance by Patronage", Philippine Daily Inquirer, 14 March 2004,p. A5.

40According to Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya, Jr., the President has the solediscretion to pick the senators and congresspersons to be given entitlements tothe Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), commonly known as the porkbarrel. Senator Juan Flavier recently advised opposition legislators complainingabout the non-release of their pork barrel to stop attacking President Arroyo andinstead be nice to her. See Delmar Cariño and Juliet Labog-Javellana, "To Get Pork,Butter up the Boss, Senators Told", Philippine Daily Inquirer, 26 November 2006,p. Al.

41Arroyo served as President starting 2001, completing the remaining three-year-term of deposed President Estrada. She won her own six-year-term as president in2004, but the opposition later initiated impeachment proceedings against her foralleged electoral fraud and corruption.

42The charge of electoral fraud levelled against President Arroyo arose after audiotapesallegedly containing wiretaps of her conversations with Commission on Elections(Comelec) official Virgilio Garcillano in June 2005 when the election count was stillongoing. In the conversations, which began with the greeting "Hello, Garci", Arroyoreportedly asked Garcillano to make sure that she would win by at least one millionvotes. Arroyo later acknowledged having talked with an unnamed Comelec official"to protect her votes".Huntington (1968, pp. 398, 408).Larry Diamond, Developing Democracy Toward Consolidation (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 98-99.Huntington (1968, pp. 408-20).Scott Mainwaring and Timothy R. Scully, "Introduction: Party Systems in LatinAmerica", in Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America,edited by Mainwaring and Scully, pp. 4-5 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1995).Mainwaring and Scully (1995, p. A).Barbara Harriss-White and Gordon White, "Corruption, Liberalization and Democracy:Editorial Introduction", IDS Bulletin 27, no. 2 (April 1996): 4. According to thetwo authors and to Sidel, the shift from authoritarianism to democracy in countrieslike the Philippines has not reduced corruption but may have even made it worse.

43

44


Corruption has merely been decentred from the national elite of the old regime tolocal bosses who choose their own national politicians (Harriss-White and White,pp. 2-3).

49Günther and Diamond (2001, p. 15).50Felipe B. Miranda, "Filipinos at Yet Another Crossroad of History", http://pulseasia.

newsmaker.ph/main.asp?mode=&page=article&articleID=5761744170&section=39911312870 (accessed 29 December 2006).

51Transparency International, "Report on the Transparency International Global CorruptionBarometer 2006", http://www.transparency.sk/prieskumy/061207_globa.pdf (accessed29 December 2006).

Political Parties and Corruption

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