Arroyo is barred from running for a second six-year term as president. But the nation is transfixed by the possibility that she could amend the Constitution and stay in power as prime minister in a parliamentary system, a concern she sought to ease last month during her state of the nation address.
Despite constant attacks on her, Arroyo is a ferocious politician, and she has already used her majority backing in Congress to turn aside attempts at impeachment.
With so much energy expended on political theater, not much progress has been made in improving the lives of ordinary Filipinos in a nation where 30 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
“Things get harder and harder every year,” said Ernesto Policarpio, 74, a farmer in Santa Maria, 30km northeast of Manila, who sells snacks and supplies from a stall by his rice field for extra income.
He paused to sell a single cigarette to a young man who lit it with a lighter hanging from a string.
“But here in the province you don’t feel the hard times as much as in the city,” he said. “Here, if you have nothing to eat, you can always go to the neighbor and ask for food.”
Policarpio said he had worked abroad for a while, as many Filipinos have, earning US$2,000 a month as a security guard in Los Angeles until the economy stumbled and he headed home.
Eight million Filipinos work overseas, or 25 percent of the country’s work force, its leading export. They send home about US$17 billion a year, accounting for 13 percent of GDP in 2007, according to the World Bank.
Before the financial crisis, the Philippine economy was growing by an average of more than 5 percent a year, World Bank figures show. But even that was not fast enough to outpace some of the world’s worst corruption or a birthrate that will bring the population to an estimated 101 million by 2015.
Many families here depend on remittances from abroad, and an overseas job can be one of the highest ambitions for the upwardly mobile.
“I’m optimistic,” said Danica Canonigo, 16, a high school student in Santa Maria. “I’m looking forward to another future in another country.”
This umbilical connection to the outside world may come in part from the history of the Philippines, which was a US colony for half a century until 1946, after spending 400 years as a colony of Spain.
“We are not yet a nation,” said Jose, the novelist. “This is the whole problem. We have all the trappings of a modern state, but we are not yet a nation.”
The Philippines remains a collection of fiefdoms, oligarchies and political dynasties that include the children of Marcos and Aquino. She was herself elected as the widow of a prominent politician, Benigno Aquino Jr.
“I’m for Noynoy,” said Win Rico, 25, who serves coffee at a Starbucks outlet in Santa Maria, referring to Senator Benigno Aquino III.
Aquino’s name has become a hot item in next year’s presidential election maneuvers since his mother’s funeral.
“I think Noynoy is a person who will put our country first,” Rico said, “the same as his father and his mother.”
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