Democracy in RP is precarious, says Texas study

October 14, 2007  --  Got something to say?
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By Jose Katigbak
WASHINGTON The United States established a weak democracy in the Philippines, which proved short-lived, and an indigenous democracy movement sprouted in the late 1980s, but it remains precarious, according to a study by political scientists from the University of North Texas.
The as yet unpublished study of Andrew Enterline and J. Michael Greig that was reported in an article in the Washington Post said when US President George W. Bush visited Manila four years ago, he drew an analogy between the history of the Philippines, which, he said, became the first democratic nation in Asia six decades ago, and the history he was rewriting in Iraq.
Contrary to what Bush suggested, American involvement in the Philippines began at the turn of the 20th century but it was only after running it as a colony for decades, losing it to Japan during World War II and then wresting it back, that the US established a weak democracy and it proved short-lived, the article said.


Strongman Ferdinand Marcos was in power for two of the six decades Bush hailed, and the country suffered severe repression. An indigenous democracy movement sprouted in the late 1980s but remains precarious,” it said.
Since 2003, Bush has rarely mentioned the Philippines when talking about democracy in Iraq because the implication is it could take 50 years to get a very weak democracy, the Post quoted Enterline as saying.
Bush got some of his historical facts wrong, but his analogy turns out to be unintentionally accurate, the Philippines is an excellent example of the risks, stakes and odds of imposing democracy on another country,” said the Washington Post article written by Shankar Vedantam.
In their study, Enterline and Greig examined 41 cases over about 200 years where one nation has tried to impose democracy on another.
The authors found that a third of all imposed democracies failed within the first 10 years of their establishment.
Strong democracies such as the ones set up in Germany and Japan that last beyond 20 to 30 years seem to survive indefinitely.
But 75 percent of weak democracies, where elections are held but the civic institutions that shore up a democracy are weak or missing, die within the first 30 years.
Their trajectory of failure deepens so that 90 percent have failed by their 60th year, and most have failed well before that,” the newspaper article quoted Greig as saying.
MANILA Thirty five years after the declaration of martial law, children have become actual victims just from witnessing the human rights violations committed against their parents, human rights advocates said.
Alphonse Rivera, officer-in-charge of Salinlahi Alliance for Childrens Concerns, said human rights violations persist even after the end of martial law, with even worse cases documented during President Arroyos watch.
According to the Childrens Rehabilitation Center, 7 percent or 60 of the 888 victims of extra-judicial killings recorded by the human rights group Karapatan since 2001 were children.
This year alone, five children were killed and branded as child combatants when upon investigation, they turned out to be ordinary school children who happened to be in areas where the military personnel were conducting operations,” Rivera said.
The 35th anniversary of the declaration of martial law falls on Sept. 22.
In a forum of children of victims of human rights violations yesterday, Aquilino Koko Pimentel recalled how the detention of his father Aquilino Nene Pimentel Jr., during martial law gave him and his siblings a psychological scar.
The younger Pimentel said that with the present political repression, it is not just psychological trauma that children experience.
Now the randomness of the adults life is also the randomness of a childs life… What is their liability for the ideological or political beliefs of their parents?” he said.
According to the Childrens Rehabilitation Center, even kids have not been spared from torture, citing recent cases of children who were tortured in Sulu by soldiers who were trying to force them to admit that their parents were members of the Abu Sayyaf.
A number of children have also been forcibly used as guides during military operations. Others were used as bait to force their parents, who are suspected to be NPA revolutionaries, to surrender,” the group said.
Gabriela party list Rep. Luz Ilagan said that while the Philippines is skupposed to be a democracy, the human rights violations that are occurring today are due to the policies of President Arroyo.
She blamed Arroyo for her insensitivity to the plight of women and children who are victims of human rights violations. What is painful is the fact that she is a woman and a mother, Ilagan said.
We cant help but recall our past experiences that unfortunately are still happening .What was happening before is still happening now, which shouldnt be the case because were supposed to be in a democracy,” she said.


Posted by News Team | Filed Under Latest News 

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