Despite Market Woes, It’s No Blue Christmas in Manila

Amid the economic gloom that stretches from Tokyo to Bangkok, the Philippines suddenly has become an oddly joyous place as it conducts what may be the world’s longest Christmas celebration--20 days from mid-December to early January--that turns this capital into a giant yuletide party.

Clerks at the department stores wear Santa Claus caps, and Christmas carols fill hotel lobbies and cafes. Huge gold stars hang from light poles along Roxas Boulevard. Tinsel adorns the wildly painted minibuses known as jeepneys, and newspaper advertisements offer Christmas specials on 9-millimeter snub-nosed revolvers.

It’s not that the Philippines, Asia’s only Roman Catholic country, has escaped the Asian economic flu unscathed: Car sales are down 40%; the peso has lost a third of its value.

But all in all, this former American colony--which Asia long dismissed as an English-speaking, Westernized anomaly--is emerging from the regional crisis in seemingly better shape than many of its flashier, wealthier neighbors.

The banking system in this country is sound, Western analysts say, and its economy does not need major restructuring. And while the International Monetary Fund has gone to the rescue of Indonesia, Thailand and South Korea, the Philippines is about to end 30 years of the international financial agency’s tutelage.

Much of this good fortune can be traced back to Ferdinand E. Marcos, the Filipinos’ late, deposed and oft-despised president. When Marcos was overthrown in 1986, the governments of Corazon Aquino and, later, Fidel V. Ramos set out to end the era of “crony capitalism.” The banking and financial sectors were overhauled and liberalized; 165 reformist laws were passed; privatization was speeded up.

These steps--combined with a more cautious blueprint for development than Thailand chose--have left the Philippines in an enviable position, especially compared with its troubled neighbors, diplomats say.

Although Ramos has neither ended corruption nor dealt effectively with the kidnapping-for-ransom of 500 Chinese businessmen in the past year, Western and Asian analysts generally agree that he has emerged as one of the region’s most capable leaders. The Asia Times named him Man of the Year in 1996, saying the Philippines was the “one true bright spot” in a region with little to cheer about economically.

Ramos, 69, a cigar-chomping West Point graduate, led the military mutiny that brought Aquino to power with Marcos’ flight to Hawaii. As her defense secretary, he foiled several coup attempts. Elected president in 1992, Ramos moved quickly to deregulate telecommunications, reform taxes and attempt to weaken the stranglehold of the country’s small, Spanish-descended oligarchy.

After much dithering, Ramos announced in September that he would abide by the constitution limiting a president to six years in office and would step down next summer when his term ends.

Earlier reports that he would seek such a legal change--a charter shift that Filipinos dubbed a cha-chaas--to stay for a second term had filled Manila’s streets with hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters, including Aquino and Cardinal Jaime Sin, archbishop of Manila.

Despite the demonstrations, many people, particularly those in the business community, think Ramos is still the best man for the job. But what they fear is history repeating itself.

In Marcos, they saw a president-turned-dictator stay for 21 years. To this day, Marcos’ body remains in an air-conditioned crypt in his hometown of Batac, unburied because the Congress here continues to debate whether he should be interred in Manila’s Cemetery of Heroes.

One of Ramos’ accomplishments as president, political analysts say, is to have moved the Philippines out of its quasi-regional isolation and into the mainstream of Southeast Asia.

That shift has psychologically loosened Filipinos’ ties to the United States--something that started when the U.S. military left its bases at Clark and Subic in the early 1990s--and strengthened the country’s links to the 10-member Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations.

“When I was here 10 years ago, I used to think of the Philippines as being about two miles west of Catalina Island,” one American diplomat said. “Now, it seems 5,000 miles west. The people are much more aware of their surroundings, much more a part of Asia. You sense a far greater degree of self-confidence here than you would have a few years ago.”