A Death Wish Haunts Manila

President Corazon Aquino has survived the latest military mutiny against her freely elected government, but at a heavy and perhaps even devastating cost. Investor confidence in the Philippines, which was just starting to recover from the economic depredations of the late Ferdinand Marcos’ long dictatorship, has been severely jolted. Respect for the rule of law has been shown to rest on the shakiest of foundations. The undisguised cynical opportunism of rival politicians--led by Vice President Salvador Laurel, who refused to condemn the mutiny--has been flaunted.

Most of all, the attempted coup has again put the bright light of exposure on the Aquino administration’s serious shortcomings--on its internal divisions, its easy tolerance of official corruption, its gross inefficiencies in providing essential public services. Aquino has always been a reluctant politician, uneasy with the burdens of administration, ready from the day she took office to step down after a single term. From the beginning, too, there has been no shortage of rival power-seekers who are eager to make her tenure even shorter. Aquino’s weaknesses as a leader have no doubt encouraged the plotting against her.

Whether electoral democracy can survive much longer in the Philippines is now being increasingly questioned. Some Filipino analysts suggest that generals loyal to Aquino may soon move to seize power in an effort to arrest a worsening economic and political crisis. Generals, though, are notoriously inept at managing economic growth or making the mass of people believe that they have a real stake in national life, two things that the Philippines and Filipinos need most.

The bright promise of the Aquino revolution has faded. Promised land reform, so bitterly opposed by the oligarchs who still dominate national political life, hasn’t been delivered. The corruption that was institutionalized in the Marcos years remains unchecked. Basic services continue to break down. The United States has led an international effort to finance reform and strengthen democracy, and timely U.S. help last week may well have prevented the quick triumph of the mutineers. But there are clear limits to what the United States can do to help the country with which it has such long ties. It can’t dictate an end to corruption, or force reforms in the near-feudal system of land ownership, or assure that Filipino politicians will begin to put the interests of constitutional good government ahead of their own often greedy ambitions. These are things Filipinos must do for themselves. That progress along those lines has been depressingly and perhaps fatally slow is all too clear.