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However, it is a little bit funny to think that the reason why President Duterte
may not have yet inaugurated a return to constitutional authoritarianism or to
dictatorship is that the military does not want to go that way. Although he has
offered the military that if they want to form a junta, he said “You just tell me and
I will step aside”. So we have a funny case may be what’s really different from what
you have in Thailand. So it would appear that the Philippine military is one of the
staunch defenders of constitutionalism and democratic governance in the Philippines
today. So, I just wanted to give you that background, but let me now just give you
a little bit more from what is presented in my slides. I just go very quickly.
Well, the Philippines is 105 millions. It’s not too small, right? I mean it’s…
I think number 12 most populous country in the world. It’s an archipelago of 7,641
islands, which makes it different from Thailand which is more or less a homogeneous
country and has had a long history of having been independent all throughout without
any colony experience. But the Philippines, because of its makeup, has 187
ethnolinguistic grouping, six major languages, and Metro Manila alone has 13 million
people. And we were a colony of Spain for 300 years which makes us almost look
like, at least in our culture, Latinos. Our values are closer to Latin Americans, to Spain
than Asia. And we were a colony of the United States for over 40 years. In 1946 -
1972 we had our Presidential Democracy, right after the war. And in 1972 - 1986
we had martial law and constitutional authoritarianism. Now we have our 1987
Constitution. And that is the constitution we have until now. Two and a half years ago,
Rodrigo Duterte became President of the Philippines. And that is the story until now.
The government under our 1987 Constitution is a presidential democracy, three
separate but equal branches of government. We pattern our democracy after the
American system because we were a colony when we did it. So, to gain acceptance
of the Americans, we almost copy their constitution: president, Congress, Supreme
Court. The only major of difference is that the US is federal; we were unitary. And
we have the background for legislature.
Today we have 17 administrative regions. They are not governments. They are
just administrative regions. But we have 81 provinces, which have their elected
governors, 122 cities with elected mayors, 1500 municipalities with elected mayors
and councils, and 64,000 barangays all elected every three years. We have a very
robust electoral system. In May this coming year, we are going to have another
election. These are for almost all levels including senators and congressmen, except
for the president and the vice president. The next presidential election will happen in
2022, when the six years of President Duterte ends. Our President cannot be
re-elected. He’s only one six-year term. The reason why we did that was because
Marcos stayed too long. He was there from 1965 to 1986. He was the first one to
be re-elected. Once he was re-elected, He used the power of presidency to keep
himself in power. So, we don’t want a president running for re-election because of
that. And our next midterm election as I have said is May 20, 2019. And just like in ª£¸²£ª±¡¡²¥¸h¡¢h¢µÈ
the United States, this will tell us whether Duterte’s magic, charm will remain because
