Jennifer Franco - Elections and Democratization in the Philippines

Edited by
ANDREW APPLETON
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY

Published in 2001 by

Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

First issued in paperback 2016

Copyright 2001 by Jennifer Conroy Franco

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers.

Conroy Franco, Jennifer.

Elections and democratization in the Philippines / Jennifer Conroy Franco.

p. cm. -- (Comparative studies in democratization)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8153-3734-5 (alk. paper)

1. Elections--Philippines. 2. Democratization--Philippines. I. Title. II. Comparative studies of democratization.

JQ1418.C65 2000

959.9--dc21

00-057318

ISBN13: 978-0-8153-3734-8 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-1-138-99341-9 (pbk)

This book is dedicated to the memories of Margaret Zelinski Conroy and Felisa Perez Franco, and is for my parents.

I am indebted to numerous people in making this book, especially those who served as midwife during its first birth as a doctoral dissertation. Members of the Philippine human rights network in Boston, Massachusetts from 1987 to 1991, especially Boone Schirmer and Polly Parks, showed me views beyond the medias high polities images of the Philippines then prevalent. While still with the Philippine Peasant Institute, Francisco Lara, Jr. encouraged me to probe deeper into contemporary Philippine electoral politics and facilitated my first research trip in 19911992. A Fulbright Foreign Scholarship grant made possible a second trip from August 1992 to May 1993, while a Davis-Putter Scholarship grant provided the means to return a third time. While in the Philippines, the staff of the Forum for Rural Concerns and the Philippine Peasant Institute helped arrange interviews and field trips to case study areas and provided me work space whenever I was in Manila. Staff of the Alternate Forum for Research in Mindanao (AFRIM), along with Attorney Sol Jubilan and the Catholic Church Diocese of Kidapawan generously provided technical assistance while in North Cotabato. My acknowledgements would be incomplete without mention of the Nachura family and the Lizarda sisters, whose efforts to provide me homes away from home went beyond the call of duty. Special thanks also goes to Mayette, the National Secretariat for Social Action librarian, who pointed me to rare documents on alternative rural organizing under martial law. I am especially indebted to those who agreed to be interviewed for this study. Their personal political experiences in the 1970s and 1980s revealed to me the difficult choices Filipinos faced in those decades. Meanwhile, Jojo Abinales, Corinne Canlas, Dominique Caouette, John Gershman, James Putzel, Joel Rocamora and Etta Rosales each good-naturedly suffered though earlier, less-than-half-baked drafts of the dissertation. Later, Manuel Quiambao, the only other person apart from my professors and myself who read from start to finish the entire penultimate draft, offered numerous incisive comments that made the overall narrative and analysis more complete. My in-house advisers, Seyom Brown and Lawrence Fuchs of Brandeis University, provided valuable input throughout, always relevant and on the mark. My external adviser, Jonathan Fox (then of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, now of the University of California at Santa Cruz), encouraged me to trust my political instincts, while showing how social science tools could be used to check them. Thanks also goes to Benedict Kerkvliet for his encouragement. Finally, I am most grateful to my family who supplied essential support over the years, including money, food, shelter, companionship, and when things got really rough, comic relief. Special thanks goes to my niece Megan Lovelace for her organizational assistance, to my mother who took time out of her own dissertation struggle to help me in mine, and to Saturnino Borras, Jr. for his patience and enthusiasm.