Aquino - Mummy's boy or his own man?

So when the democracy icon’s son Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, was elected to take over from disgraced predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in June 2010, I was probably not alone in thinking it would simply be more of the same. Perhaps even worse.

From a distance, however, a man who had already spent 12 years in Congress without causing as much as a ripple seemed to be shaping up as a surprise package, someone from the notoriously selfish elite who cared and was getting things done.

The economy finally seemed to be on track, humming along at a region-high 6.6 per cent. Just as surprising was the way Aquino squared off against Catholic Church conservatives over the Reproductive Health Act, which he signed into law last December.

That and the passage of the Sin Tax Reform Act, raising duties on alcohol and cigarettes, were unquestionably major political achievements. More so than the low-hanging fruit represented by the corruption cases against Arroyo and Chief Justice Renato Corona.

The latest Pulse Asia survey results still give Aquino a startling 72 per cent approval rating, just behind Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is favoured to succeed him at the end of his mandated six-year term in 2016.

But is it all for real? People whose judgement I trust are putting much of it down to luck and to a clever public relations campaign in a country known for its weakness for populist policies and an obsession with celebrities.

Essentially, they say, the 53-year-old unmarried leader and his incorruptible image is the creation of his television-star sister, Kris, whose “rich kid” antics when I lived there often made me reach for the sick pills.

Despite the kudos her brother gets on the economic front, poverty levels have stayed stubbornly the same – and may even have increased – and unemployment remains higher than ever. In other words, the “trickle-down” effect has been zero.

Elsewhere, nothing has changed. A tight circle of dynastic families, some having held power since the Spanish colonial era, continue to dominate the political and business landscape, leaving little opportunity for the new and enterprising.

Forbes Asia estimated that the collective wealth of the 40 richest Filipino families grew from US$34 billion (Bt1 trillion) to nearly $48 billion in 2010-2011. This is equivalent to 76.5 per cent of the country’s overall increase in gross domestic product in the same period.

The same families were all there again when the Philippines went to the polls for the mid-term legislative elections on May 13. These elections, in which Aquino’s Liberal Party exceeded expectations, are regarded as an early indicator of who will follow him into Malacanang Palace.

“Filipinos believe in the ‘clean’ image of Aquino so they don’t see the real picture in which the same people are running the country,” says one Filipina friend. “Same names, only different affiliations, even old enemies in the same parties.”

A similar coming together occurred after the fall of President Ferdinand Marcos. The elite looks after its own, though Aquino has drawn the line at the Marcoses, given the role they are perceived to have played in the assassination of his father in 1983.

He has vowed to block the ambitions of Marcos’s 83-year-old widow, Imelda, to put her senatorial son, Ferdinand Jr, 55, in power. He has also fast-tracked a long-dormant bill compensating thousands of human rights victims of the Marcos regime. Aquino does have some solid people around him, especially on the finance side. And to his credit, he does listen to his top advisers, even if the people who know him well tend to see him as “shallow and immature”, with the attention span of a gnat.

Both Houses of Congress approved the so-called RH Bill on December 17 after a 14-year campaign to obtain state funding for birth control in the face of opposition from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines.

If the church diverted some of the money it repatriates to the Vatican each year to help fund a nationwide social safety net, it might have a leg to stand on. But it doesn’t. Instead, it stands happily by as the population bomb continues to gather strength.

With poorer families having little or no access to contraception, the Philippines has the highest fertility rate in East Asia – an average of 3.1 births per woman of fertile age – and a population growth rate probably higher than the official 2.2 per cent.

That’s one of the main reasons why the nation’s per capita income growth rate of $3,700 lags well behind neighbouring countries like Malaysia ($16,900), Thailand ($8,600) and even Indonesia ($4,300) with 2 1/2 times the population.

The economy has essentially been saved by strong overseas foreign worker remittances, which last year topped $21 billion, and a booming business procurement outsourcing (BPO) industry.

The enterprising overseas worker may well be a hero in his homeland. But few Filipinos look at the other side of the coin, mulling over the social cost involved for one-parent families and why jobs can’t be found for the cream of the national workforce.

The $16-billion BPO industry evolved on its own as well, with foreign private companies reaping the benefits of moving supply management services offshore to the Philippines and other less developed countries.

Admittedly, Aquino hasn’t made any major mistakes. One retired American diplomat admired his handling of the recent Sabah incident, but like a lot of things in the Philippines, it is always important to look beyond the fluff.

A five-hour power blackout – the forgiving Filipinos call them brownouts – across Luzon on May 8, seemed like a telling reminder from his mother’s presidency that reality is never far from the surface.