14-05-2008 09:43:32

Return to Democracy 1986 - 1998

Return to Democracy 1986 - 1998

President Corazon Aquino inherited a country that was bankrupt and impoverished after twenty years of dictatorship and a few months of rampant economic loss, many of its instituted corrupted. Among those who followed her, and opposed her, many had doubts about her competency as president, having only been a housewife before, and having to completely rebuild the whole nation from basically nothing at all.

She started by immediately restoring basic civil rights and liberties of free speech, press and assembly, and freeing hundreds of political prisoners, dismissing hundreds of corrupted city mayors, who often were still loyal to Marcos, replacing them with her own. She also did the same for the military, retiring most of the general staff.

In February 1987, she introduced a new constitution, ratified by referendum. This new constitution limited the presidential office to 6 years, and replaced the National Assembly. She also entered negotiations with the communist National Philippine Army NPA and the muslim MNLF, achieving a greatly easing of the threat of insurgencies.

She didn't, though, address the underlying economic and social problems that divided the Philippine society, which led to six coup attempts against her between 1987 and 1989, led by the same people who had put her in power, being upset with the slowness of social reforms and the compromises made with the NPA and MNLF.

After six years, in 1992, Aquino started new rounds of elections, in a fair, open, and peaceful way, resulting in a lawful and orderly transfer of presidency to her Secretary of Defense, Fidel Ramos, who was one of the people who supported her during the EDSA revolution, being one of the leaders.

President Aquino did her best trying to restore the constitutional stability of the Philippines, and President Ramos worked to restore the economic stability of the Philippines. He set out to improve the nation's long-neglected energy, communications and transportation infrastructure, and introduced economic and financial reforms to make the Philippines a competing industrial economy.

At the end of his office, in 1998, he considered attempting to change the constitution, enabling him to have a second office as presidency, but, true to his character of integrity, decided against it, and withdrew from office, enabling Joseph Estrada to become the next president after the elections voting him the most popular.