Limits of a revolution

Twenty-eight years after the people power revolution, democracy remains in place.

Another member of the Aquino clan is in power, and so far he has not been personally implicated in corrupt deals.

The 1987 Constitution remains in place, unchanged by politicians who want to tinker with it for personal gain.

Members of the now defunct Aviation Security Command have served their sentence for the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr. The Manila International Airport where Ninoy was shot was named after him.

State-sanctioned violations of human rights have stopped.

Thousands have received land under the agrarian reform program.

In 1986, nominal Philippine GDP per capita was $591, with the exchange rate at P20.39 to the US dollar. Last year it was $2,792, with the peso trading at 42.45 to the greenback. In Asia, the Philippines was the second best performing economy after China in 2013. It was also the year that the Philippines achieved investment grade.

Philippine elections are fully automated and the vote count faster. Several political families that reigned in the Marcos era have faded away.

Metro Manila has become a shopping mecca, with development continuing to move outward especially toward the south. We saw the rise of Bonifacio Global City.

*      *      *

That’s looking on the bright side. Now for the other side:

Twenty-eight years after the people power revolution, dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ widow, only son and eldest daughter, and Imelda’s relatives in Leyte remain in power.

No Marcos heir or crony has ever been convicted of any offense related to ill-gotten wealth.

The 1987 Constitution remains in place, unchanged.

The family of the second Aquino president remains in control of what has become a symbol of failed land reform, Hacienda Luisita.

We still have not officially established who ordered the assassination of Ninoy Aquino and alleged communist hitman Rolando Galman.

Scores of left-leaning activists, journalists and legal professionals have been murdered, tortured or have disappeared, with the perpetrators believed to be state forces. The worst case of election violence left 58 people dead, more than half of them media workers, in 2009.

International Monetary Fund estimates show that in 1986, nominal GDP per capita in Singapore was $6,853. It was $1,711 in Malaysia, $814 in Thailand and $506 in Indonesia. Last year the figures were $52,918 for Singapore, $10,429 for Malaysia, $5,879 for Thailand and $3,499 for Indonesia.

Even Vietnam, where the figure stood at $556 in 1986, is inching closer to the Philippines’ nominal GDP per capita, with $1,896 last year.

Growth, as even government economic managers have acknowledged, has not been inclusive and has not created meaningful jobs. Growth figures owe much to the remittances of some 10 million Filipinos who work overseas because they lack better alternatives in their own country.

With a handful of exceptions, the same surnames dominate local big business, banking and finance.

The poverty level has barely improved, to the consternation of administration officials.

Elections continue to be marred by accusations of fraud.

Dynasty building has reached shameless, greedy proportions, with no limit or end in sight.

We’re still embroiled in scandals involving plunder at high levels of government, extortion, embezzlement and smaller-scale corruption throughout the bureaucracy, and smuggling.

P-Noy’s daang matuwid is threatened by the controversy over his Disbursement Acceleration Program. The buzz in recent days is that the Supreme Court ruling on the constitutionality of the DAP may cost Butch Abad his job as budget chief.

There’s little to see in the traffic-choked streets of Metro Manila except shopping malls.

We lack roads, we don’t have a modern railway system, and Ninoy must be turning in his grave over the state of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Soon we may not have electricity. The same crisis that crippled the economy in the last year of Corazon Aquino’s presidency may also bedevil her only son’s last years in power.

*      *      *

Yesterday people power drove out the president of the Ukraine. Similar movements are underway in Thailand and Venezuela.

While circumstances are different, people in those countries may want to look at the Philippines for lessons on the limits of popular revolutions.

Without institutional strengthening, without the sweeping overhaul of weakened systems – something that should be easier in the euphoric afterglow of a successful revolt – people power cannot deliver on its promise.

There are also lessons to be learned from the Arab Spring, where some people are learning in the worst way what it means to be careful what you wish for.

The importance of the 1986 people power revolt will not be diminished in the eyes of Filipinos old enough to remember what it was like to live in fear under a dictatorship.

But a revolution and its cause need nurturing. People power ended a dictatorship and restored democracy but did not put an end to corruption and rights violations. The revolt did not dismantle the system that allows government officials to treat public coffers as their personal piggybank.

People power astounded the world. The follow-through must be just as impressive.