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Twenty years on, many Filipinos have concluded that democracy is stupid, romantic and impractical in their country. Democracy hasn't delivered the goods, and there's much discussion over why. Two years after People Power, Senator Leticia Shahani, Fidel Ramos's sister, published an official report on the flaws in the national character of the Philippines. It made for discouraging reading: Filipinos are passive, unreflective, undisciplined, and prone to loyalty toward personalities rather than institutions or ideals. Shahani's view was that those flaws had to be corrected for a democratic nation to thrive. The national character hasn't changed, of course, and Filipinos are back to saying that people "get the leaders they deserve"—a common refrain in the days of Marcos. Filipinos deserved the dictator, and they deserve the current mess.
There are other ways of viewing the problem. Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew chastises the Philippines for its disorder, but he doesn't seem to view it as an issue of national character. To Lee, unfettered democracy is the flaw, and that's why Singapore doesn't allow some of the freedoms Filipinos take for granted. Yet it's all too easy to overlook the good that was ushered in after the Marcos dictatorship ended. Death squads no longer roam cities shooting human-rights lawyers. Since 1986, a communist insurgency has been in deep retreat, and thousands of Muslim separatists in the country's south have been co-opted into the democratic system. The writ of habeas corpus is restored. The Philippine press, spineless until 20 years ago, is now unrestrained, gleefully irresponsible, but the liveliest media in Asia.
However, the writers of the 1987 post-People Power constitution appear to have made a blunder. They settled for a U.S.-style presidential system but restricted the Philippine President to a single five-year term. This was supposed to prevent a future leader from clinging to power as Marcos did. There were several unintended consequences. A good president, such as Ramos, who pacified the restive military and liberalized the overly protected economy, couldn't be re-elected, and the electorate lost out on one of the satisfactions of democracy: throwing a bum out of office—except by People Power.
Ramos thinks the solution is to change the constitution, to replace the presidential system with a parliament. In fact, he's demanding it as payback for his support to Arroyo last July. Officially, Arroyo has agreed, but she's dragging her heels so as not to cut short her own presidential term, which ends in 2010. Their logic: in a parliamentary system, the government can be pulled down legally at any time without resorting to People Power; and if the country doesn't have an administration with a fixed term, politicians eager for their time at the trough will have no reason to whip up crowds on EDSA. People Power was the country's contribution to history, a true gift to the world. For the Philippines, it was everything, and yet not enough.