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Political Participation during the First Five Years of the New Society in the Philippines

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Mohd. A. Nawawi
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Extract

Like most developing countries, the Philippines before the imposition of martial law towards the end of 1972 was characterized by the fact that the majority of her population, living in the small towns and the countryside, were actually peripheral to the national polity. The political process was largely concerned with the intra-elite conflicts and manoeuvrings. As the government did not derive the bulk of its revenue from the income and resources of the mass of the citizenry, the political system functioned mainly as a giant system of patronage.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , September 1982 , pp. 270 - 278
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1982

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References

This is a revised and shortened version of a paper, entitled “Assessing the Performance of Developing Regimes: the First Five Years of the New Society in the Philippines”, presented at the Third New Zealand Conference of Asian Studies in Auckland, May 1979.

1 I have tried to delineate this political-economic interrelationship in The Political Economy of Political Development: A Case Study of Regional Development in the Philippines Before Martial Law, Development Studies Centre Monograph No. 21 (Canberra: The Australian National University Press, 1980), esp. Chapter 7Google Scholar.

2 A recent study interestingly revealing the policy implications of bureaucratic conflicts is Hansen, Gary E., The Politics and Administration of Rural Development in Indonesia: The Case of Agriculture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

3 de Guzman, Raul P. et al. , “Increasing the Administrative Capacity of Provincial Government for Development: A Study of the Provincial Development Assistance Project in the Philippines”(Paper presented at the SEADAG Development Administration Seminar on Factors of Administrative Productivity,New York City,Mar. 1973)Google Scholar.

4 Rono, Jose, “DLGCD — Five Years After”, Fookien Times Philippines Yearbook, 1977, p. 297Google Scholar. The extent of this coordination is not clear. Apparently, the Provincial Development Assistance Project, set up in 1967 with the USAID assistance, remained directly under the Office of the President. In addition to the BLG, the department has two other bureaus, in charge of community development and the cooperatives.

5 Segovia, Per la A., “Administrative Reorganization, Institutional Development and Management Improvement”,Administrative Reforms and Bureaucratic Behavior (Conference Papers, National Conference on Public Administration in the Seventies: Promise and Performance,Manila,June 1977), pp. 18–19Google Scholar.

6 With a number of adjustments made after the decree, the country was divided into 12 regions plus Metro Manila which constituted an extraordinary region. The regular regions were: Ilocos, Cagayan Valley, Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog, and Bicol in the north; Western Visaya, Central Visaya, and Eastern Visaya in the middle; and Western Mindanao, Northern Mindanao, Southern Mindanao, and Central Mindanao in the south.

7 Aside from Metro Manila, which is headed by a governor, Western and Central Mindanao actually had commissioners appointed by the President. Hence the RDC's in these regions were automatically chaired by these commissioners.

8 Even the number of departments or ministries was increased from 19 to 21, although it initially dropped to 15.

9 Iglesias, Gabriel U., “Political and Administrative Issues in Regional Planning and Development”,Regionalizalion (Conference Papers, National Conference on Public Administration in the Seventies: Promise and Performance,Manila,June 1977), p. 405Google Scholar.

10 This point was emphasized to me by the provincial development officer of Negros Oriental, in Dumaguete Gty, in Dec. 1978.

11 Introduced in early 1977, this programme had novel features. While requiring some contribution in the form of labour and material from the barangay, it directly benefited the barangay members who alone could be hired as paid construction workers.

12 I.L.O., , Sharing in Development: A Programme of Employment, Equity, and Growth for the Philippines (Geneva: ILO, 1974), Table 54: 247Google Scholar. Philippines, Philippine Development Report, 1977 (Manila: NEDA, 1978), Table 6: 17Google Scholar.

13 Marcos, Ferdinand E., Five Years of the New Society (Manila: Marcos Foundation, 1978), pp. 162 and 167Google Scholar; emphasis original.

14 Although the decree did not identify them, the sectors seem to have been generally four, namely, industrial labour, capital or business, the professions, and agriculture. As for the other new members, the decree only specified the inclusion of one or more barangay captains. In practice, the council invariably included the president of the youth organization.

15 Besides the chairman of the Regional Development Council, each region was given seven other representatives, representing, in addition to the four functional groups, the barangay councils, the youth organization, and local government. It is not clear how these representatives were actually selected.

16 The contribution to the guarantee fund is calculated as one cavan of rice each season for each hectare, i.e., about 1.5 per cent of harvest. In addition, each member was required to pay a membership fee of ten pesos and to let the society keep in his account five per cent of the value of any loan he secured from the government.

17 Any person could join, unless owning more than seven hectares of rice or corn land, 10 hectares of coconut land, or 24 hectares of sugar land. By one estimate, around the end of 1975, only about 40 per cent of SN members were tenants or ex-tenants while the rest were owners and non-farmers. Overholt, William H., “Land Reform in the Philippines”, Asian Survey XVI (May, 1976): 440Google Scholar.

18 It has been officially claimed that, as of December 1977, more than 17,500 SNs with a total membership of almost 900,000 had been registered. Philippines, Development Report, p. 58.

19 In July 1977, Luis Tame, the former communist leader and the chief of FAITH, and Jeremias U. Montemayor, the FFF head, were officially appointed as special assistants to the President on agrarian reform. Times Journal, 20/7/1977, p. 10.

20 Times Journal, 29/7/1977, pp. 1, 6.

21 In February 1977, the maximum age limit was raised to 21, perhaps partly to make possible for the President's daughter, Imee, to assume the national chairmanship.

22 Nawawi, Mohd. A., “Regional Development under the New Society in the Philippines”, Southeast Asian Affairs, 1975 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1975)Google Scholar.