Corazon Aquino, who died in 2009, is viewed as a saint because some people often compare her to the monster that was Marcos. But ,look at what she had done as president should tell us that she was one deeply FLAWED SAINT.
"DEBT REPUDIATION was probably the BIGGEST MISTAKE OF CORY AQUINO "
1. When Cory took power, the Philippine foreign debt was around $26 billion. As a supposedly revolutionary government, her regime was well within its right to repudiate that debt, most of which were odious debts anyway. But Cory did not.
She succumbed to the pressure of international creditors, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, as well as governments such as the US, which propped up the Marcos (a support that, in turn, allowed him to amass all that debt) and then later propped up Cory. The pressure was such that even Cory’s finance secretary at that time, Jaime Ongpin, threatened to resign if Cory repudiated our debts.”I don’t want the responsibility for a debt repudiation policy on my shoulders, because in my judgment the consequences would be beyond the ability of this government to control,” Ongpin said, according to a New York Times report.
She and her advisers, as well as the central bank, even resisted attempts by legislators and economists to put a cap on debt repayments, to allow the country more breathing space as it tried to pick up the pieces caused by Marcos’s devastation of the Philippine economy. Ongpin said Cory “would have to find someone else to administer the new policy” if the debt-cap proposal was implemented. (Twenty-five years later, Cory’s son, President Noynoy Aquino, also refused any limit on debt repayments, vetoing a provision in the 2011 budget that restricts the government’s borrowings by up to 55 percent of the GDP.)
To be sure, repudiating the debt would have had serious consequences, something that Ongpin and his friends at the IMF and World Bank had warned about (then again, Ongpin et al were also against the idea of a debt-repayment cap of at least 10 percent of export earnings). There are arguments, however, that the advantages to a nation of debt repudiation far outweigh its cost and that, in any case, given the extreme popularity of the Edsa revolt worldwide, the Philippines would have no trouble finding other creditors. Besides, the Philippines was under a revolutionary government at the time. Such a repudiation, or at least a repayment scheme that would be easy on Filipinos and the government, would have been the right thing to do. But Cory did no such thing.
And so, to this day, we are saddled by the effects of this (in)decision, with the largest chunk of our national budget going to interest payments alone, taking away money that should be going to education, health care and other basic services.
Perhaps more than anything else, these debts prevented the Philippines from developing, from breaking from its past. In fact, if there’s one thing that makes Edsa an ersatz revolution, it’s Cory’s failure or refusal to repudiate Marcos’s onerous debts.
2.HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS - While the Marcos dictatorship was responsible for horrendous human rights abuses, it was during Cory’s term that the “total war policy” against leftists and their perceived supporters was launched systematically and cold-bloodedly – a policy that continues to this day, albeit going by other names like Oplan Bantay Laya.
It was during her term that cannibal vigilantes went on a rampage in the provinces, used by the Philippine military to terrorize villagers and activists.
While Cory Aquino restored democratic institutions and became a symbol of integrity in governance, her regime remained beholden, if not hostaged, by the military and Washington. This resulted in massive human-rights abuses that, based on data from human-rights groups, were even worse in terms of number of victims than those committed so far....
PROOF: "816 desaparecidos – the disappeared, or victims of enforced disappearances — during the six years of Cory’s regime. The Task Force Detainees of the Philippines, at the time the country’s leading human-rights group, recorded more than 1.2 million victims of dislocations due to military operations, 135 cases of massacres, 1,064 victims of summary executions, and 20,523 victims of illegal arrest and detention. "
3. AGRARIAN REFORM FAILURE - Cory was also responsible for the monumental failure of the country’s agrarian reform program. She promised to make it the centerpiece program of her administration and she failed at it miserably, as we can see now. Then again, to believe that a landlord would give away her land just like that is to believe a liar when she says “Trust me.”
It was Cory’s regime that crafted and passed a faulty agrarian-reform law that gave too much leeway to landlords, allowing them to duck the program, and not enough resources to peasants and farmers that would allow them to develop whatever land they would get out of it.
The program was a failure because the Congress was, and still is, dominated by landlords. It was designed to fail. Cory, of all people, should know how silly the idea that landlords would just easily give up their lands.
Proof: HACIENDA LUISITA remains in the hands of her family, when it should have been the first one to be parceled out to farmers if she really wanted the program to succeed.
(Need I point out that the Mendiola Massacre and the Lupao Massacre – atrocities that victimized peasants and farmers mainly — occurred during Cory’s term as well?)
Make no mistake: I believe in what many say that Cory was honest and was never corrupt. But she was way too naive and way too vulnerable to the pressures brought to bear on her. More importantly, she simply failed to transcend her own and her family’s interest for the larger good.
Apparently, she was also conflicted about the principle of “people power” itself. This was evident in her 2008 apology to Estrada. Filipinos who struggle for good governance and accountability should take that as an insult and a repudiation of what they stand for.
Corazon Cojuangco Aquino an icon of democracy and moral leadership? To many, perhaps. But to me, she is an icon of everything that is wrong with this country.
DEMOCRAZY!!
References:
Asian correspondent.com
Bulatlat.com
