LEARNING MATERIALS IN

PHILIPPINE POLITICS, GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP

Prof. Cherry de Leon-Generoso

LESSON 5 – Philippines Institutions: the Military, the Church, and the

Media

OVERVIEW:
This lesson focuses on the influential power of the military, church
and media. This will also tackle the political power of the non-policymaking
and non-governmental political institutions.

OBJECTIVES:
To show the students the political power of non-policymaking
governmental institutions and non-governmental political institutions.

COURSE MATERIALS:
1. Government-Media Relations in the Philippines
Read the articles:
Article 1:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2643617?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents
Article 2: http://countrystudies.us/philippines/90.htm

The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press and also provides

free access to records, documents, and papers pertaining to official acts.
Government officials, however, tended to be leery of reporters, who
sometimes ran stories gathered from a single source or based on hearsay.
Libel suits were frequent in the 1980s.

Traditionally, major newspapers published in Manila have been

owned by elite families. Prior to 1972 Philippine newspapers were
freewheeling, often publishing unsubstantiated stories, but willing to expose
wrongdoing in high places. When Marcos declared martial law in 1972, he
confiscated the assets of newspapers owned by families not part of his
coalition. From 1972 to 1986, although newspapers were not officially
government-owned or government-supported, they were controlled by
Marcos's relatives, friends, and cronies. After the August 1983 Aquino
assassination, newspapers gradually became more politically independent.

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LEARNING MATERIALS IN
PHILIPPINE POLITICS, GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP
Prof. Cherry de Leon-Generoso

When Marcos fled in 1986, the Commission on Good Government

confiscated the assets of crony-owned newspapers and the exuberant
Philippine press revived quickly; in many cases newspapers were operated
by the families that had controlled them prior to martial law. In 1991 there
were approximately thirty daily newspapers in the Philippines. Twelve
mainly English language broadsheets provided serious news. Fourteen
tabloids, mostly Tagalog and Cebuano, offered sensationalism. Four
newspapers were printed in Chinese. Only one newspaper, the Manila
Bulletin, had consistently shown a profit. Another, the Inquirer, began to
show a profit in 1990. Most other newspapers were losing concerns used
by the businesspeople who owned them to influence government policy
and officials.

Television stations in Manila were very profitable to the wealthy

investors who owned them. They also emerged as a significant political
factor, and coup attempts often featured assaults on television stations.
There were very few television stations outside Manila. Radio reached
people in remote areas, even villages without electricity. Radio stations in
the provinces tended to be owned by wealthy local families involved in
politics.

2. Church-State Separation and Challenging Issues Concerning

Religion
Read the article:
Article 1: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/3/197/htm
Article 2: http://countrystudies.us/philippines/88.htm

During the Spanish colonial period, the Catholic Church was

extensively involved in colonial administration, especially in rural areas.
With the advent of United States control, the Catholic Church relinquished
its great estates. Church and state officially were separated, although the
church, counting more than 80 percent of the population as members,
continued to have influence when it wanted to exert it. For much of the
Marcos administration, the official church, led by archbishop of Manila,
Cardinal Jaime Sin, adopted a stance of "critical collaboration." This meant
that although Sin did not flatly condemn Marcos, he reserved the right to
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LEARNING MATERIALS IN
PHILIPPINE POLITICS, GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP
Prof. Cherry de Leon-Generoso

criticize. Below the cardinal, the church was split between conservative and
progressive elements, and some priests joined the communistdominated
National Democratic Front through a group named Christians for National
Liberation. Cardinal Sin was instrumental in the downfall of Marcos. He
brokered the critical, if temporary, reconciliation between Aquino and Laurel
and warned the Marcoses that vote fraud was "unforgivable." In radio
broadcasts, he urged Manileños to come into the streets to help the forces
led by Enrile and Ramos when they mutinied in February 1986. The
church, therefore, could legitimately claim to be part of the revolutionary
coalition.

Aquino is a deeply religious woman who has opened cabinet

meetings with prayers and sought spiritual guidance in troubled times.
Although there were reports that the Vatican in late 1986 had instructed
Cardinal Sin to reduce his involvement in politics, Aquino continued to
depend on him. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines issued
a pastoral letter urging people to vote yes in the 1987 constitutional
plebiscite. In March 1987, Sin announced that he was bowing out of
politics, but two months later he broadcast his support for ten Aquino-
backed candidates for the Senate and recommended that voters shun
candidates of the left. In 1990 Sin defined his attitude toward the
government as one of "critical solidarity."

The church was very pleased with provisions of the 1987 Constitution
that ban abortion and restore a limited role for religion in public education.
The Constitution is essentially silent on the matter of family planning. The
church used its very substantial influence to hinder government family-
planning programs. Despite the fact that the population grew by 100,000
people per month in the late 1980s, Cardinal Sin believed that the Marcos
government had gone too far in promoting contraception. He urged Aquino
to "repeal, or at least revise" government family-planning programs. In
August 1988, the bishops conference denounced contraception as
"dehumanizing and ethically objectionable." For churchmen, this was an
issue not to be taken lightly. One bishop called for the church to "protect
our people from the contraceptive onslaught" and the bishops conference
labelled rapid population growth a "nonproblem." In 1989 the United States

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LEARNING MATERIALS IN
PHILIPPINE POLITICS, GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP
Prof. Cherry de Leon-Generoso

Department of Commerce projected the Philippine population at 130 million

by the year 2020--in a country the size of California.

3. Civil-Military Relations
Read the article: http://countrystudies.us/philippines/89.htm

The Philippines had an unbroken tradition of civilian control of the

military until martial law was imposed in 1972. Under Article 2 of the 1987
Constitution, civilian authority is again, "at all times, supreme over the
military." Many military leaders found this difficult to accept. Under Marcos,
they could count on authorization to take a hard line against communists
and Muslim separatists, on opportunities to run civilian businesses and
industries, and on being consulted on most matters.

Under Aquino, the officers could feel a chill coming from Malacañang.
Aquino retired all "overstaying generals," signed cease-fires with the
communists and the Moro National Liberation Front, harbored "leftist"
advisers in her presidential office, released political prisoners (including
New People's Army founder Jose M. Sison), and only grudgingly improved
military pay. Aquino also established a Commission on Human Rights to
investigate and publicize instances of military abuse and only later
broadened the commission's mandate to include atrocities committed by
the New People's Army.

Military Factions

In 1983, the year of crisis resulting from the Benigno Aquino

assassination, members of the Philippine Military Academy class of 1971
formed the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM). Notable among its
leaders was the chief of Enrile's security detail, Colonel Gregorio "Gringo"
Honasan. RAM first demonstrated against corruption in the armed forces in
1985, while Marcos was president. Most RAM officers, including Honasan,
have not supported a political idealogy. They viewed themselves as
protectors of the people against corrupt, incompetent civilians. Others
espoused an agenda with a populist, or even leftist tone. By 1990 RAM
was said to no longer stand for Reform the Armed Forces Movement but
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LEARNING MATERIALS IN
PHILIPPINE POLITICS, GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP
Prof. Cherry de Leon-Generoso

rather for Rebolusyonariong Alyansang Makabayan, or Revolutionary

Nationalist Alliance.

The military in 1991 contained many factions based on loyalties to

military and civilian patrons, military academy class ties, linguistic
differences, and generational differences. One faction consisted of those
still loyal to Marcos; others consisted of those loyal to Enrile or to Ramos.
Discord existed between Tagalogs and Ilocanos. Graduates of the
Philippine Military Academy in Baguio were at odds with reserve and
noncommissioned officers. Within the Philippine Military Academy faction,
loyalties ran according to year of graduation. Another faction, the Young
Officers' Union (YOU), was made up of a younger group of officers, distinct
from RAM. YOU leaders were well educated; some were intelligence
officers who had penetrated the communist underground and might have
gained some respect for communist organizing principles, revolutionary
puritanism, and dedication to ideology. They studied the writings of the late
Filipino nationalist Claro M. Recto, espoused a doctrine they called
Philippine nationalism, and were reported to believe that a social revolution
could be sparked by a military uprising. By 1991 politicized military officers
began to focus less on Aquino than on her possible successors. Whatever
political leaders it supported, the Philippine military in the 1990s was
expected by some observers to remain fractured, factionalized, and
frustrated, and civilian control was by no means guaranteed.

Vigilantes

Starting in 1987 a new, unsettling element clouded civilmilitary

relations: vigilante groups that hunted down suspected communists and
other leftists. The first and most famous such group was Alsa Masa
(Masses Arise), which virtually eliminated communist influence from the
Agdao slum area of Davao City. The potential for civilians to accomplish
what the military could not aroused official interest. Soon there were more
than 200 such groups across the country, with names that hinted at their
violent, cult-like nature: Remnants of God; Guerrero of Jesus; Sin,
Salvation, Life, and Property; Rock Christ; and, the frightening Tadtad
(Chop-Chop), which liked to pose its members for photographs with the

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LEARNING MATERIALS IN
PHILIPPINE POLITICS, GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP
Prof. Cherry de Leon-Generoso

severed heads of their victims. Vigilantes often carried magical amulets to

ward off bullets, and their rituals were sometimes performed to loud rock
music.

Domestic human rights groups, such as Task Force Detainees, and

international monitors, such as Amnesty International, publicized incidents
of torture. Amnesty International asserted that torture of communist rebels
and sympathizers had become a common practice. One paramilitary group
in 1988 responded to such criticism by shooting the Filipino regional
chairman of Amnesty International. Six human rights lawyers were killed in
the first three years of the Aquino government. More than 200 critics of the
government were victims of extrajudicial executions. Many vigilantes
carried pistols; others were skilled with long, heavy knives called bolos.

Despite many documented abuses, United States and Philippine

government officials have spoken in support of some vigilante groups.
Aquino cited Alsa Masa's success in Davao as a legitimate exercise of
People's Power. Her secretary of local government, Jaime Ferrer, ordered
all local officials to set up civilian volunteer organizations or face dismissal.
Ferrer was gunned down on August 2, 1987, for this and other
anticommunist activities. The government made a distinction between ad
hoc vigilante groups and the civilian volunteer organizations. The latter,
which included Nation Watch (Bantay Bayan), were to conform to the
following guidelines set forth on October 30, 1987, by the Department of
National Defense: membership in the organizations was to be voluntary,
members would be screened by the police, the organizations were to be
defensive, and they were to eschew identification with individual
landowners or politicians. Ramos fully supported the civilian volunteer
organizations. He described their relationship to the uniformed military as
"synergistic" and in 1989 grouped all 20,000 civilian volunteer organizations
together under an umbrella organization called the National Alliance for
Democracy. In reality, the lines between official and unofficial vigilante
groups are often blurred. Large businesses have donated money to the
National Alliance for Democracy and used its members as strikebreakers to
counter leftist unions.

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LEARNING MATERIALS IN
PHILIPPINE POLITICS, GOVERNANCE AND CITIZENSHIP
Prof. Cherry de Leon-Generoso

REFERENCE:
Batalla, Eric Vincent, and Rito Baring. “Church-State Separation and
Challenging Issues Concerning Religion.” MDPI, Multidisciplinary Digital
Publishing Institute, 15 Mar. 2019, www.mdpi.com/2077-
1444/10/3/197/htm.
Dolan, Ronald E. “Philippines: A Country Study.” Philippines - Church-State
Relations, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991,
countrystudies.us/philippines/88.htm.
Dolan, Ronald E. “Philippines: A Country Study.” Philippines - Church-State
Relations, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991,
countrystudies.us/philippines/89.htm.
Dolan, Ronald E. “Philippines: A Country Study.” Philippines - Church-State
Relations, Washington: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1991,
countrystudies.us/philippines/90.htm.

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