Park Chung Hee Era

by Byung-kook Kim

  Just as Park had amended the constitution in 1969 in order to circum-vent a two-term limit that would remove him from office in 1971, Marcos sought constitutional revision of the two-term limit that would have removed him from office in 1973 (riding on strong reformist sentiment that already existed in favor of cleaning up Philippine politics, culminating in the opening of a Constitutional Convention in June 1971).55 Unlike Park in 1969, however, Marcos faced a much more developed system of elite contention within long-standing democratic institutions, as well as much stronger societal opposition; as a result, he encountered far greater difficulty in engineering a smooth and predictable process of constitutional change. Marcos took a beating in the congressional elections of 1971, with major opposition gains and even higher levels of “turncoatism” from the ruling party than had been experienced by previous presidents in midterm polls. As Thompson explains, Marcos was guilty of “two political sins”: family and friends were strongly favored over partymates in the allocation of state patronage, and the president had touted the idea of having the First Lady succeed him as the Nacionalista presidential candidate in 1973.

  The elections themselves achieved new heights of violence, epitomized by the bombing of the opposition party’s senatorial rally in August 1971.56

  Faced with this combination of a stagnating economy, student unrest, growing political opposition, and problems forcing his self-serving version of charter change through the Constitutional Convention, Marcos came to

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  see martial law as the best option for perpetuating his rule. Such a radical step required careful preparation, particularly since Marcos lacked what was so important to Park: an external threat “that was omnipresent but also convenient for stifling domestic or foreign opposition to any action that the government cared to make.”57 Marcos substituted his genius at political manipulation, constructing a plot intended to strike fear in the populace and thereby justify martial law as the only way for the country to preserve itself from multiple threats of disorder. In August 1972, Manila was rocked by a series of bombings that were blamed on the Communist Party but nonetheless suspected at the time (and later confirmed) to have been orchestrated by the Palace itself.58 The denouement came on September 21, 1972, when President Marcos declared martial law and thereby brought an end to over thirty-five years of postwar democratic institutions.

  Dictatorships Compared: Regime, State,

  Economy, and Society from 1972 to 1979

  At virtually the same time, therefore, two major Asian leaders resorted to martial law in order to ensure their perpetuation in office—Park when he was unable to obtain a fourth term through constitutional means, and Marcos as he faced major obstacles to gaining a third term. The authoritarian transitions in the two countries, however, varied enormously. In Korea, one finds a comparatively smooth and uncontested shift from semi-authoritarian to authoritarian rule. Along with draconian new security measures, Park proclaimed a new ideology based both on a Korean yushin, or restoration, inspired by Japan’s Meiji Restoration, and on a “Korean democracy” that exalted the virtues of executive dominance (built on the fiction of purportedly democratic institutions that were severely weakened but not dismantled). Rights were severely restricted, the National Assembly was emasculated, and presidential elections became meaningless exercises dominated by a body of presidential appointees. Legitimacy was to come, most importantly, from the regime’s relentless pursuit of heavy and chemical industrialization (HCI).59

  Societal opposition was far more vocal and active in the Philippines than in Korea, and Marcos feared widespread popular resistance to his declaration of martial law. Whereas Park had seemingly felt secure in his ability to impose martial law, and did not need to arrest opposition forces, Marcos knew he could take no chances. He took his opponents by surprise, with nighttime arrests of “some 8,000 individuals—senators, civil libertarians,

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  journalists, student and labor leaders, and even scions of a few of the country’s elite families.” Opposition newspapers, meanwhile, were closed down. As in Korea, this U.S.-supported dictator declared the unsuitability of American-style democracy, and proclaimed the advent of a Philippine-style “democracy” more suited to the needs of the “new society” that he would be building. In addition, he claimed to be leading a “revolution from the center,” able to deal with the dual threats facing the country from left and right.60

  The sudden nature of this authoritarian onslaught served Marcos’s purposes, and through arrests and repression and torture he quite easily stifled those most likely to register fierce opposition to martial law. At the same time, many elements of society were genuinely convinced that extreme measures were necessary to deal with the country’s problems, and were ready to give him the benefit of the doubt as he centralized power in the Palace, disarmed the private armies of local bosses, and proclaimed ambitious goals for land reform. The Communist Party had yet to emerge as a major threat to the government, but was active enough to provide easy rationalization for repressive measures. Nonetheless, even Marcos seems to have been somewhat surprised at the relative quiescence of the traditional (that is, nonleftist) opposition, given his earlier fears of their potential to put up resistance.

  Five key factors explain this outcome. First, “the Marcos regime left most members of the Philippine elite alone.” Only two major politicians were held in prison longer than a few weeks, and relatively few families experienced confiscation of their properties. Second, the centralization of state patronage in the hands of one leader meant that “government lar-gesse was available only to those in his good graces.” Given the dominance of patronage over policy in Philippine politics, “it is understandable that most formerly anti-Marcos politicians did not denounce the regime but instead tried to ingratiate themselves with it.”61 Third, Marcos obtained critical support from the United States. As a man whose primary loyalty was to personal interests rather than to any state or national interests—however defined—Marcos saw that American strategic needs presented ample opportunity for private gain. Especially at a time when the military bases were offering such important support to U.S. forces in Vietnam, Marcos could approach Washington aid-givers from a strong position. Indeed, the United States rewarded martial law with large increases in grants and loans.62 Fourth, this American seal of approval gave the regime ready access to billions of dollars of multilateral assistance and commercial loans.

  The abundance of external resources, soon to include cheap petrodollar loans at negative real rates of interest, gave many the impression that the

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  country was on the road to rapid development. Fifth, Marcos also began martial law with the good fortune of high international commodity prices, which, Rigoberto Tiglao explains, “generated windfall profits for the Philippine economic elite, dispelling whatever doubts it still had about the Marcos dictatorship.”63

  With the opposition effectively tamed and U.S. support firmly in place, Marcos consolidated his dictatorship without any strong challenge. A combination of carrots and sticks pushed the delegates of the Constitutional Convention to rapid and overwhelming passage of a charter drawn up by the Palace, and in early 1973 the new constitution was given sham approval through the convening of “citizen’s assemblies” throughout the country. The judiciary was forced into submission, and Congress voted to dissolve itself in exchange for appointment to an Interim National Assembly (the promised basis of the new parliamentary-style government for which elections were not actually held until 1978).64 Whereas Park was confident enough to accommodate a National Assembly within his authoritarian structures, Marcos dismantled the Congress altogether and offered only the prospect of a new assembly in its stead.

  In summary, both Park and Marcos wrote constitutions ensuring executive dominance and worked assiduously to achieve a maximum personal concentration of power. Yet there remained enormous
differences in the character of the two regimes, as demonstrated in the following examination of institutions, government-business relations and development strategies, and societal opposition.

  Institutions: Ruling Parties, Bureaucracies, and Military Ruling Parties. The ruling Democratic Republican Party in South Korea had become of marginal importance to the Park regime by the late 1960s, as those (notably Kim Chong-p’il) who favored a strongly institutionalized party were pushed to the sidelines. After the inauguration of the yushin regime, explains Hoon Jaung, the DRP was “nothing more than a puppet of the president who maintained a highly centralized personal leadership within the regime.”65

  Marcos had no allegiance to the Nacionalista Party on whose ticket he won the presidency in 1965, especially after the defection and dissidence of many party members in the 1971 elections. It was not until 1978, in preparation for elections to the long-promised Interim National Assembly, that the Marcos regime launched its own ruling party, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (New Society Movement [KBL]). The rhetoric of a “new society” and the emergence of new faces notwithstanding, the old, infor-

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  mal patronage politics of the pre–martial law years remained the fundamental basis of the KBL. Throughout much of the country, politicians flocked to the KBL for the benefits that it could dispense. Three major cronies of Marcos became regional party chairmen, tasked with ensuring a KBL victory and at the same time given the opportunity to achieve political dominance over other local powerholders.66 The patronage dispensed by this political machine was an important bulwark for the regime, complementing its elaboration of hollow democratic structures and extensive use of coercion. The home regions of the First Couple (Ilocos in northern Luzon and Leyte in the Visayas) were perceived to have been particularly favored, and are the areas in which the regime was widely thought to have enjoyed its greatest degree of popular support.

  In two major ways, however, the emergence of the KBL represented a major break from pre–martial law patterns. To a far greater extent than any Philippine president since Manuel Quezon and his Nacionalista Party in the 1930s, Marcos and his KBL achieved a remarkable centralization of patronage resources. This is not to say that Marcos had the capability to launch a full-scale assault on local power, for the clans were far too entrenched for him to attempt such a thing; he could, however, restructure local power by favoring his allies at the expense of his enemies.67 Second, to a degree unprecedented in Philippine history, the ruling family lorded over all formal political institutions, the ruling party included. One would never use the term “conjugal dictatorship” to describe the Park regime,68 but it is in fact a very apt description of the regime of Ferdinand and Imelda. The First Couple attempted to promote themselves as “Father and Mother of the Nation” in barrio-level youth organizations, and in the Palace hung an oil portrait of the couple, drawing on pre-Hispanic imagery, that portrayed the President as Malakas (strong) and the First Lady as Maganda (beautiful). In addition to her many official positions, the First Lady headed up Manila’s KBL

  ticket in the 1978 elections, using every possible means of electoral fraud to trounce imprisoned opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr., at the polls.69

  In sum, the ruling parties of Park and Marcos were both weakly institutionalized (especially as compared with the authoritarian ruling parties found in nearby Taiwan and Indonesia). Park provided little scope to his ruling party, while Marcos delayed the formation of a new ruling party for many years. When he did form the KBL in 1978, his model was a more centralized version of the patronage-oriented parties of the pre–martial law years. Tellingly, neither the DRP nor the KBL survived the demise of its authoritarian leader.

  Bureaucracies. After the declaration of martial law in Korea, Park main-

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  tained his earlier goal of building bureaucratic capacity, with a particular focus on the economic policymaking agencies central to his ambitious goals for HCI; as before, he exercised a highly personal mode of rule over the institutions that he nurtured. In the Philippines, by contrast, the post–

  martial law period was one in which the task of bureaucratic reform was given new attention after relative neglect. Marcos promoted “a sweeping rationalization of the Philippine administrative structure” and created both the National Economic Development Authority and the Development Academy of the Philippines in 1973. NEDA was established as a means of centralizing economic planning functions in one agency, and the talented technocrats at its helm oversaw development efforts in thirteen newly established regions throughout the archipelago. DAP had as a major goal the training of more effective bureaucrats and the improvement of bureaucratic systems.70

  Simultaneous to this “rationalization,” however, was a wildly patrimonial system in which there was no effective separation between the official and private spheres. Although resolution of national problems and defense of the state provided the official rationale for declaring martial law, it became increasingly clear over the course of the decade that personal and regime interests continually outflanked all other motivations for martial law.

  “From one point of view,” Benedict Anderson colorfully explains, “Don Ferdinand can be seen as the Master Cacique or Master Warlord, in that he pushed the destructive logic of the old order to its natural conclusion. In place of dozens of privatized ‘security guards,’ a single privatized National Constabulary; in place of personal armies, a personal Army; instead of pliable local judges, a client Supreme Court; instead of myriad pocket and rotten boroughs, a pocket or rotten country, managed by cronies, hitmen, and flunkies.”71

  While only a few cronies were able to combine access to officially granted privileges with the formal assumption of official positions, First Lady Imelda Marcos was able to have her cake and eat it, too.72 She assumed the posts of governor of Metro Manila, minister of human settlements, chair of the Southern Philippine Development Authority, founder of the Cultural Center of the Philippines, and “presidential envoy plenipotentiary” (often on quite sensitive missions) throughout the martial law years. Funds “saved” from the regular budgets of government ministries were commonly redeployed into special projects of the First Lady, who combined her official roles with enormous informal influence throughout the government. As Marcos faced increasing health problems in the later years of his rule, “she became in many ways the country’s de facto president.”73

  How is one to understand this mixture of administrative rationalization

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  and patrimonial goals? As a former Palace insider explains, Marcos would utilize the skills of competent officials, but at the same time try to limit their “political clout” and keep them “segmented . . . in their fields.”74 The technocrats, in particular, played the essential role of formulating lofty development plans essential to securing loans from multilateral institutions and foreign banks. Once the funds were obtained, “the political leadership then allowed the unconstrained introduction of exceptions that made complete mockery of the spirit and letter of the plans.” In the same way that Weber allows for a “bureaucratic rationalization of patrimonial leadership” that does not undermine the essential nature of that leadership,75

  one can say that Marcos’s bureaucratic reform and use of technocratic skills only streamlined his plunder of the state.76 An important consideration in the relative portions of the mix, it seems, is a regime’s security of tenure; if there is a feeling that the regime will endure into the long term, there is no necessity to maximize gains in the short term. After the declaration of martial law, Marcos likely felt secure enough in his position to know that he, personally, would be able to reap the benefits of a better-run state apparatus.

  Militaries. Park inherited a much stronger military apparatus in the 1960s than did Marcos, and the continual presence of an external threat as well as fear of U.S. force withdrawals under Nixon’s Guam Doctrine led not only to the
rapid modernization of the armed forces but also to the emergence of a robust defense industry to support it. Park viewed the United States as an ultimately unreliable ally, and built up a highly disciplined, efficient, and modern military “under the banner of self-reliant defense.” Although the defense budget grew sixfold between 1972 and 1978, the military as an institution was not given strong roles in either domestic politics or economic policy. Opportunities for rent-seeking by military officers, moreover, were kept in check.

  The military that Marcos inherited in 1965 had little concern for issues of external security; ironically, the only potential external threat faced by the Philippines was that which arose from the possibility that U.S. military bases might draw the country directly into cold war conflict. In the late 1960s Marcos had already deployed the military in “development-oriented” patronage projects. With the declaration of martial law came a major expansion in the size of the Philippine military, from 57,000 in 1971

  to 113,000 in 1976 and 158,000 in 1985. Unlike Park, who responded to the Guam Doctrine with a rush toward self-reliance, Marcos continued and even deepened the country’s reliance on American military aid. Indeed, as explained above, the myriad forms of external assistance that came from hosting U.S. bases were critical to regime sustenance. And

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  while Park put concerns over external defense at the forefront of state policy, Marcos’s primary goal was not to protect the country from external threat but to reward military supporters and ensure their ability to defend the regime against internal challenges. The military came to enjoy new stature: as one officer explained in 1975, “we in the military were mud before martial law. . . . Now the people come to the military tribunal seeking justice.”77