The Society of Honor by Joe America

Comments

1. JoeAm says:

   May 29, 2026 at 8:34 am

   Fascinating brief. A nation run by committee, the restraints on Executive so severe, in fear of dictatorship, that government operations were weak. And I’d imagine corrupt, as Aguinaldo was known to have pillaged gold and cattle from the people as a revolutionary leader. There were intellectuals in those days. Today they are buried under nonsense from inane dynastic clowns (Marcoleta). The separation of church and state was profound. As was the recognition of democratic freedoms. Thanks Karl. Wholly enlightening.

   Reply
   • Karl Garcia says:

     May 29, 2026 at 8:51 am

     My pleasure and thanks

     Reply
2. kasambahay says:

   May 29, 2026 at 9:09 am

   this is what AI said about our malolos constitution:

   AI Overview

   The 1899 Malolos Constitution was not directly borrowed from the Spanish colonial government, but its primary author, Felipe Calderón, heavily based its framework on the constitutions of various Latin American and European nations, drawing specific structural and civil liberties inspiration from the Spanish Constitution of 1812 (the Cádiz Constitution). 

   While the revolutionary leaders sought to break free from Spanish colonial rule, the educated elite (ilustrados) drafting the constitution were deeply familiar with European legal traditions. The Malolos Constitution incorporated principles, structures, and ideas from multiple sources: 

   • Spanish Influence (Cádiz Constitution): The 1812 Spanish Constitution served as a major inspiration for the provisions on civil and political rights, as well as the concepts of popular sovereignty and legislative supremacy. 
   • Latin American Models: Calderón adapted much of his draft from the constitutions of Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Brazil—countries that had already successfully adapted Spanish and French constitutional traditions for newly independent republics. 
   • European Models: The fundamental design of a democratic republic with three separate branches of government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) was highly influenced by the French Constitution and the Belgian Constitution. 

   The finalized document resulted in Asia’s first democratic republican constitution, reflecting a blend of global democratic philosophies rather than a continuation of Spanish colonial law.

   Reply
3. kasambahay says:

   May 29, 2026 at 9:28 am

   here are critiques of the malolos constitution and why it failed to take root:

   AI Overview

   The Malolos Constitution was highly praised for establishing the first democratic republic in Asia, but it fundamentally lost favor and practical viability due to its extreme legislative dominance, exclusion of the masses, and inability to manage the urgent crisis of the Philippine-American War. [1]

   Why It Lost Favor and Its Main Critiques

   • Legislative Supremacy: The constitution vested immense power in the legislature (the Assembly) at the expense of the executive branch. Its chief architect, Felipe Calderón, intentionally sought to cripple executive power to prevent President Emilio Aguinaldo from becoming a dictator. [1]
   • Impracticality During Wartime: Apolinario Mabini, Aguinaldo’s chief adviser, strongly criticized the document for this. He argued that a nation fighting an existential war against the United States could not afford slow, bureaucratic legislative debates; it required a strong, unified executive to make swift military decisions. [1]
   • Elitist Representation: The drafters were primarily wealthy, educated elites (ilustrados) (such as lawyers, doctors, and landowners). As a result, the constitution catered to their interests rather than addressing the socio-economic needs of the peasant and working classes, creating a disconnect from the broader populace.
   • Over-reliance on Foreign Models: Critics noted that the constitution was largely a patchwork of European and Latin American constitutions (such as those of France, Belgium, and Mexico) rather than a document organically tailored to the unique historical, cultural, and immediate realities of the Philippines. [1, 2]
   • Contested Sovereignty: The constitution was ultimately overtaken by history. Because it was never fully enforced due to the outbreak of the Philippine-American War and the subsequent American colonization, it failed to gain widespread legitimacy among the general public.

   Reply
   • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

     May 30, 2026 at 12:48 pm

     I also asked Claude this: “were the delegates representing the Visayas for the Malolos Constitution really from there or just stand-ins” (because I remember reading that Aguinaldo just appointed some people from Luzon because most Visayans did NOT send representatives) and got this answer:

     ————————-

     This is a great question and the answer is essentially: **most of the Visayas delegates were not genuinely elected from their provinces — they were appointed stand-ins.**

     Here’s what was happening:

     **The situation on the ground.** When the Malolos Congress convened in September 1898, much of the Visayas was still under Spanish control or in a state of military flux. The Aguinaldo revolutionary government simply did not have the reach to conduct elections there the way it could in central Luzon.

     **Two-track system.** The assembly consisted of elected delegates chosen by balloting in provincial assemblies, and appointed delegates chosen by the president to represent regions under unstable military and civilian conditions. The Visayas fell overwhelmingly into the second category.

     Looking at the Wikipedia breakdown of delegates by province, virtually every major Visayan province — Antique, Bohol, Capiz, Cebu, and Iloilo were all listed as “Appointed,” not elected.

     **Loyalty over locality.** The heavy reliance on appointments prioritized loyalty to Aguinaldo over broad electoral input, which meant these “Visayan” representatives weren’t necessarily chosen by or even from the communities they nominally represented.

     **The big picture problem.** Regional imbalances further underscored the assembly’s lack of representativeness, with delegates drawn largely from central Luzon and excluding significant voices from the Visayas and Mindanao. And many parts of the Visayas and Mindanao did not elect representatives, and as a result their representatives were appointed later on.

     So your instinct is well-founded. The Visayas “representation” at Malolos was largely a symbolic gesture by the Aguinaldo government to claim national legitimacy, not genuine democratic representation of Visayan communities. The Congress was, in practice, a Tagalog-Luzon body drafting a constitution for a country it didn’t yet fully control.

     ——————-

     I also asked “how about the different Republics in places like Negros and Bohol” because I recall they existed (actually the Malacanang website only recognized that reality in the time of PNoy, when Manolo Quezon was in charge of it) and got this answer:

     ——————–

     This is really the more interesting side of the story. The Visayas didn’t just passively accept being “represented” at Malolos — many islands organized their own genuine governments, and some actively resisted being absorbed into the Aguinaldo republic.

     Here’s a breakdown of each:

     —

     **Negros — the most organized**

     After the Negros Revolution succeeded on November 5, 1898 (Cinco de Noviembre), the revolutionaries quickly organized and drafted a constitution creating the Negros Republic. The regional government recognized the suzerainty of the Malolos government but pushed for regional autonomy.

     On November 27, 1898, the unicameral Congress of Deputies met in Bacolod and declared the establishment of the Republican Canton of Negros, with Aniceto Lacson as President. This was modeled on the Swiss cantonal system — a deliberate choice to preserve local self-governance even while nominally acknowledging Malolos. When Aguinaldo appointed Juan Araneta as Politico-Military Governor, Araneta politely declined to follow Aguinaldo’s directives, explaining that the Provincial Government and the Republic of Negros had already chosen him and his loyalty was to the Cantonal Government first.

     —

     **Bohol — the last holdout**

     Bohol had a remarkable revolutionary tradition going back to the 18th-century Dagohoy Rebellion. In 1898 it joined the broader Visayan federation, but then went its own way. On June 11, 1899, the town presidents gathered in Tagbilaran and created and approved a constitution making Bohol an independent republic. Bernabe Reyes was elected President. The officials of the Bohol Republic functioned well until the arrival of the Americans on March 17, 1900.

     —

     **Panay and the Federal State of the Visayas — the most defiant**

     The Federal State of the Visayas was formed on December 2, 1898 in Iloilo City, encompassing Panay, Romblon, and integrating the Negros Republic alongside cantonal governments in Bohol and Cebu. It embodied early federalist aspirations among Visayan elites who prioritized decentralized governance over centralized control from Luzon.

     Crucially, the Ilonggos didn’t hide their skepticism of Aguinaldo. Cebu and most of the Visayas were not represented in the Malolos Congress, and the Ilonggos regarded Aguinaldo as a dictator. A Tagalog military expedition sent by Malolos to Panay to assert its presence was met with hostility — the Luzon force led by Generals Ananias Diokno and Leandro Fullon was regarded by the Visayan revolutionaries as an “invasion” force.

     Aguinaldo eventually issued a decree abolishing the Federal State on April 27, 1899, though it took until late 1899 to fully enforce it.

     —

     **The big picture**

     What this reveals is that there was a real tension at the founding of the Philippine Republic: Aguinaldo’s government in Malolos was essentially a Tagalog-Luzon project asserting authority over islands that had liberated themselves independently, had their own constitutions, their own governments, and their own visions — often federal rather than unitary. The Malolos “representatives” for these places were fictions because the Visayas wasn’t actually under Malolos control when the congress met. The local republics were the real political reality on the ground.

     ———–

     Ok, final question I asked Claude was: “it seems the Katipunan/Republic only managed to extend real outside influence to Bikol (at that time essentially cut off from the Luzon mainland and reachable mainly by boat) and Samar” and got this answer (well, I had heard of Lukban before but forgot the details):

     ————

     Your observation is sharp and well-supported. The pattern really does stand out: Bicol and Samar were not self-organized revolutionary polities like Negros or Panay — they were brought under Malolos authority through the specific work of one man dispatched from the outside.

     **Bicol — late, passive, and imposed from without**

     The nationalistic spirit of the revolution came later to the Bicol region, far later than the eight provinces placed under martial law, roughly due to its geographic location being a peninsula surrounded by natural barriers. While some in Luzon were joyous of their newly acquired independence, Bicolanos still had their arms wide open for the Spanish government. The Spanish actively used propaganda there to prevent revolutionary sympathy from spreading.

     What changed things was a single military mission from Malolos. Vicente Lukban was dispatched and brought the Bicol provinces under the authority of the Revolutionary Government. This wasn’t an organic uprising — it was an extension of Aguinaldo’s military reach into a region that hadn’t risen on its own.

     **Samar — also Lukban, also externally installed**

     The same man then pivoted east. Shortly after Aguinaldo proclaimed Philippine independence in 1898, Lukbán was sent to the Bicol region to direct military operations against the Spaniards. His successes in Bicol ushered him into a new and challenging assignment as Leyte and Samar’s politico-military chief. On December 31, 1898, Lukban arrived in Catbalogan and put Samar under his jurisdiction.

     Tellingly, the “representative” for Samar at the Malolos Congress was Servillano Aquino — born in Angeles, Pampanga, a Kapampangan from central Luzon, not a Waray.

     **The contrast is stark**

     In Negros, Panay, and Bohol, you had genuine local revolutionary movements that built their own governments before Malolos even tried to assert authority — and which actively pushed back against being absorbed. In Bicol and Samar, there was no comparable organic movement, so what Malolos did was literally send an agent (Lukban) to create a Malolos-aligned authority from scratch. It was less “incorporation” and more “colonization by the revolutionaries.” Which perhaps explains why Samar later became one of the most ferociously fought theaters of the Philippine-American War — Lukban had forged a real loyalty to the Republic there, even if it was a top-down one.

     Reply
     • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

       May 30, 2026 at 1:42 pm

       I asked more questions, finally about similar appointive patterns in the Third Republic similar to those in Malolos:

       ———————–

       This is a really clean story with a specific legal pivot point.

       **The formal basis: “Special Provinces”**

       Under the American-era system, the chief officials in the regular provinces were elected by popular vote, except in the special provinces of Cotabato, Lanao, Sulu, Mountain Province, and Bukidnon, where the provincial governor was appointed by the Governor-General with the advice and consent of the Philippine Senate. This was a deliberate colonial policy — the same logic as the non-Christian tribes policy — treating these areas as not yet ready for full democratic self-governance.

       This system persisted right through independence. Then, just months after the Third Republic was inaugurated:

       **Republic Act No. 59 — October 17, 1946**

       The first Congress of the Third Republic declared the offices of governor and member of the provincial board in Mountain Province and the Provinces of Bukidnon, Cotabato, Lanao, and Sulu to be elective. But with a crucial catch: the Act would take effect in each province only when the President of the Philippines ascertained and declared by proclamation that the people of the province were ready to elect their officials, and those elections would then be held at the same time as the next regular provincial elections. So the President retained discretion over *when* the transition happened, province by province.

       **What this looked like in practice:**

       **Cotabato** had a string of appointed governors running right through the late 1940s. Datu Ugalingan Piang served 1945–1946, then Datu Udtog Matalam 1946–1949, and then Datu Duma Sinsuat 1949–1954 — the transition to elections in Cotabato appears to have happened around 1951–1954.

       **Lanao** had its first postwar elected congressman (Manalao Mindalano) in 1946, but the province itself wasn’t split into Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur until 1959. The first governor of Lanao del Sur was Abdul Ghafur Madki Alonto, serving 1959–1967, meaning the first elected governors of the divided provinces only took office in 1959.

       **Bukidnon** similarly shows no governor at all in its records until Marcus Reciña, 1953–1959 — with the inaugurating holder being Manuel Fortich.

       **Mountain Province** — its first governor was Alfredo Galaygay Lamen Sr., appointed by President Marcos in April 1967 when Mountain Province was formally carved out — so it was actually the last to get a governor at all, having been administered as a sub-province until then.

       **The pattern in a nutshell:** five provinces — Cotabato, Lanao, Sulu, Bukidnon, and Mountain Province — had appointed rather than elected governors from 1946 independence until the President judged them “ready,” a process that played out between roughly 1951 and 1959 for most of them. The appointment power gave Manila enormous leverage over who ran these provinces, and the people appointed were almost invariably either local datu families (in Muslim Mindanao) or — as with Vicente Duterte in Davao, though that was a different vacancy mechanism — outsiders sent in by Manila’s political networks.

       ———–

       then I asked what was different in Davao:

       ————-

       This is the key distinction: Davao was **not** on the special provinces list. It wasn’t Cotabato, Lanao, Sulu, Bukidnon, or Mountain Province. Davao had been treated as a regular province with elected governors since it became a civil province in 1914, so it was outside that whole appointed-governor framework under RA 59.

       What happened with Vicente Duterte was therefore a different, more ordinary mechanism: he was appointed governor of Davao from 1958–1959 to fill the vacancy when Alejandro Almendras left for the Senate, and then stood for election and won in 1959. That’s just the normal mid-term vacancy appointment that happens in any province when a sitting governor resigns or dies — not the special colonial-era structure that applied to Cotabato and the others.

       The more interesting parallel you’re pointing at is actually in what happened when Davao was *divided* in 1967. When Davao del Norte was created, its first governor Verulo Boiser was appointed by the President and served two years as appointed governor before transitioning to two elected terms. And when Davao Oriental was carved out at the same time, Marcos appointed Paciano Bangoy as its first governor.

       So the pattern recurs at province-creation: every time a new province is split off — whether in 1967 or whenever — the first governor is always a presidential appointee, serving until the next regular election cycle catches up. That’s structurally very similar to what Malolos did: assert central authority over a new territorial unit by installing your own man first, then regularize it with elections later. The difference from the special provinces is that it’s a one-time transition rather than a sustained colonial-era denial of electoral rights.

       finally I asked “so Cory Aquino by appointing OIC mayors like Jejomar Binay or OIC vice-mayors like Rodrigo Duterte was only following an established pattern” and got this:

       —————–

       Exactly right — and it’s a remarkably durable thread running through Philippine political history. Every change of regime or creation of new territorial units defaults to the same instrument: the presidential appointment to hold things in place until elections can legitimize the arrangement.

       The specific mechanism Cory used was even more sweeping than the earlier precedents. When she came to power through EDSA in 1986 she issued a series of executive orders essentially abolishing all local elective offices and replacing incumbents with OICs — Officers in Charge — appointed by the President or her secretaries of local government. This wasn’t just filling vacancies; it was a wholesale replacement of Marcos-era local officials across every province, city, and municipality.

       The lineage you’re tracing is quite clear:

       – **American colonial era**: appointed governors for special provinces deemed not ready for elections
       – **Province creation (1967, Davao division)**: first governor always presidential appointee
       – **Mid-term vacancies** (Duterte Sr. 1958): presidential appointment to fill a seat
       – **Liberation period (1945–46)**: acting governors appointed while elections were organized post-war
       – **EDSA transition (1986)**: OIC appointments wholesale across all local government as a political cleansing mechanism

       What makes Cory’s use slightly different in character is that the earlier precedents were at least ostensibly about administrative necessity — filling vacancies, creating new units, transitioning from colonial to elected governance. The 1986 OIC appointments were overtly political: removing Marcos loyalists and installing opposition figures. Binay in Makati and Duterte as OIC vice-mayor of Davao were rewarded for their roles in the anti-Marcos movement.

       But the constitutional and legal basis was essentially the same assumption that had always underlain Philippine governance: that the President retains ultimate authority over local executives and can exercise it directly when political circumstances require. Malolos, the American special provinces, post-war reconstruction, new province creation, and EDSA — all rest on the same premise that electoral legitimacy at the local level is conditional and revocable from the center.

       ——————

       Reply
4. Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

   May 29, 2026 at 12:06 pm

   thanks for this summary Karl. I did ask Claude for a summary of who actually participated in voting during various Philippine elections as a practical test of what democracy really meant back then and got this:

   ———————————–cut with scissors—————————————

   The earliest formal election in the Philippine Islands under Spanish colonial rule took place on January 1, 1895, implemented through the Maura Law of 1893. It was an extremely limited affair — each municipality’s “electorate” consisted of roughly a dozen men: a handful of *cabezas de barangay*, a few former *gobernadorcillos*, and some prominent taxpayers. Only local positions were at stake, such as the *capitan municipal* and town councilors. Many of the Philippines’ roughly 800 municipalities never held elections at all, defaulting instead to gubernatorial appointments. By any modern standard it was barely an election, functioning more as a formal ratification by a tiny hereditary and propertied local elite.

   Two years later, on March 22, 1897, the Tejeros Convention in Cavite produced what historians consider the first presidential election in Philippine history — though the word “election” again deserves scrutiny. The electorate consisted of roughly 250 members of the Katipunan’s two rival factions, the Magdiwang and Magdalo, and no one outside that revolutionary brotherhood had any say. The positions filled were executive in nature: President, Vice President, Captain-General, and several cabinet-level Directors. Emilio Aguinaldo won the presidency over Andres Bonifacio, who rejected the results as fraudulent and declared the convention void. The episode is as notable for the bitter dispute it produced as for the election itself.

   The elections for the Malolos Congress, held between June and September 1898 following the declaration of independence from Spain, represented the first attempt at a national legislature. However, these were indirect elections — assemblies of select citizens in each town chose delegates rather than the general public voting directly. Large portions of the Visayas and Mindanao sent appointed rather than elected representatives. The congress that emerged then chose Aguinaldo as president of the First Philippine Republic on January 1, 1899, entirely by legislative vote. So while the First Republic had elections of a sort, ordinary Filipinos had no direct voice in who governed them.

   The 1907 Philippine Assembly elections, held on July 30, 1907 under American colonial administration, were the first genuinely nationwide direct elections in Philippine history. Under Act No. 1582, eligible voters had to be male, at least 23 years old, literate, and meet property or tax requirements — a franchise that produced around 105,000 registered voters out of a population of several million. The 80 seats of the Philippine Assembly (the lower house only) were up for election; the upper house, the Philippine Commission, remained entirely appointed by the United States. The pro-independence Nacionalista Party won a plurality, making the election something of a de facto independence referendum.

   The Jones Law of 1916 changed the Philippine Legislature into the Philippines’ first fully elected body. Where the 1902 Philippine Organic Act had provided for an elected lower house but an appointed upper house, the Jones Law provided for both houses to be elected, renaming the Philippine Assembly as the House of Representatives. The first elections to the Philippine Senate were held on **October 3, 1916**, immediately after the Jones Law’s passage. The Senate replaced the appointed Philippine Commission as the upper house, creating for the first time a fully elected national legislature. Each of the 12 senatorial districts elected two senators, with the first-place finisher serving a six-year term and the runner-up serving three years. Two seats from the 12th district, however, remained appointed by the American Governor-General. The Jones Law also lowered the voting age to 21 and expanded eligibility beyond the strict property threshold of 1907, though the electorate remained entirely male. The Nacionalista Party dominated, winning 20 of the 22 contested seats.

   The 1935 Philippine general election was the first general election of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, and the first direct election of both a President and Vice President — positions that had simply not existed in any popularly elected form before. Under the 1935 Constitution, the right to vote was initially limited to male citizens aged 21 or older who were literate and had met residency requirements. Manuel Quezon won the presidency and the National Assembly’s 98 seats were also filled. This was the first time a Filipino head of state was chosen by direct popular vote — a genuinely historic break from every prior system, in which the executive had been either a revolutionary figure chosen by colleagues or an American-appointed Governor-General.

   Women, however, remained entirely excluded from the 1935 election. The 1935 Constitution provided that the National Assembly could extend suffrage to women if more than 300,000 women voted affirmatively in a plebiscite. On April 30, 1937, that plebiscite was held, and 447,725 women voted in favour against only 44,000 against. Women gained full suffrage from that point on — meaning that every single election covered in this summary, from 1895 through 1935, had excluded half the population entirely by law.

   Taken together, the six electoral events trace a slow and heavily gatekept expansion of political participation across roughly four decades. The 1895 elections confined the vote to a dozen local notables per town. Tejeros handed it to a room of 250 revolutionaries. The Malolos process extended to hundreds of towns but remained indirect and incomplete. The 1907 Assembly election produced a real popular vote but one accessible to barely 100,000 men. The 1916 Senate elections widened the franchise modestly and finally created a fully elected legislature. The 1935 Commonwealth election introduced direct presidential elections for the first time but still barred women entirely.

   The consistent thread running through all six is that access to the ballot was determined at every stage by some combination of property, social standing, organizational membership, literacy, colonial policy, and gender. Each step was genuinely significant, and each was also genuinely incomplete. It was only from 1937 onwards — when women gained the vote — that anything approaching a broad popular franchise existed in the Philippines, and even then literacy and residency requirements continued to shape and limit who could actually participate.

   ————————————————–

   I also followed up by asking how many % of Filipinos were literate during certain milestone years and got this:

   The figures come from Philippine census data and demographic analysis. The key numbers across the three years you asked about are:

   **1937 (women’s suffrage year):** The closest census data point is 1939, which recorded a total literacy rate of roughly **49%** of the population aged 10 and over. The logistic curve model derived from Philippine census data gives a literacy rate of 48.79% in 1939 — so in 1937, when women first gained the vote, something close to half the population could read and write. Notably, female literacy in the Philippines in 1939 was around 41%, meaning women’s literacy lagged men’s by several percentage points, which made the literacy requirement even more exclusionary for the newly enfranchised half of the population.

   **1946 (independence year):** The same model estimates literacy at around 57.80% in 1946 — a meaningful increase, driven by the expansion of public schooling under the American colonial and Commonwealth administrations, though also somewhat disrupted by the devastation of World War II. Female literacy had also risen: the 1948 census showed female literacy in the Philippines at 56%, suggesting near-parity with men by that point.

   **1973 (when the literacy requirement was waived):** The census-based data shows a literacy rate of approximately 82.6% for the population 15 years and over in 1970, and by 1973 the modelled estimate reaches around **84–85%**. The overall literacy rate in 1970 was 82.6 percent, confirming this range. So when Marcos’s 1973 Constitution finally dropped the literacy requirement, roughly 15–17% of adult Filipinos still could not read or write — meaning the old requirement had continued to disenfranchise a meaningful minority up to that point.

   To put this in perspective: in 1937 the literacy requirement excluded roughly half the adult population from voting; by 1946 it still excluded over 40%; and by the time it was abolished in 1973 it excluded perhaps one in six. The requirement was always most harmful at the start — and women in particular, having just won the formal right to vote in 1937, faced a literacy barrier that many of them could not clear.

   of course if one looks at how much information people had even until the early 1970s when transistor radios were owned by most of the population, but many places in the provinces were still not electrified so all they had were battery operated radios and no TVs, one can see why the idea of Philippine democracy was very different from on the ground reality.

   Reply
   • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

     May 29, 2026 at 12:22 pm

     I went even further and asked Claude for all significant metrics and got this:

     ———————————————————-

     

     Here is a narrative walkthrough of what the chart shows:

     **Radio (blue):** In 1946, barely 3–5% of households had a radio set. A survey around 1951 found only about 4.8% of households owned a radio, and many of those were inoperable for lack of batteries — rural people listened communally at the local store. The transistor revolution of the late 1950s and 1960s changed this rapidly, making sets cheap and portable. The transistor radio’s impact was felt most at the barrio level, reaching village folk who had been traditionally isolated from the outside world. By the 1990s radio was ubiquitous: it reached 85–90% of the population with over 25 million sets, and 10.2 million of the estimated 12 million households had one. Radio remains the floor of mass information access in the Philippines.

     **Electrification (amber):** In 1970, only 22.5% of the total population had electric service, and more than 86% of rural families had none. The 1970s and 1980s marked a turning point when the National Electrification Administration connected thousands of barangays and rural households to the grid. The World Bank’s earliest consistent data point (around 1993) places access at 65.4% nationally, with rural access at only 49%. The household electrification rate passed 90% in 2016. By 2023 it stood at 98%.

     **Internet (green):** World Bank/ITU data shows internet penetration was essentially zero through the early 1990s, reaching just 2% by 2000 and a still-modest 5–6% by 2005. Growth accelerated sharply after 2009, driven largely by mobile phones rather than fixed broadband. By around 2013 it had reached 36%, rising from just 2% in 2000. The pandemic years then drove a dramatic jump: from 43% in 2019 to 54% in 2020, 67% in 2021, 75% in 2022, and 84% in 2023. By 2024, internet penetration was estimated at around 89%, with the majority of Filipinos accessing the web through their mobile phones.

     **Literacy (purple, dashed):** The dashed line reflects that literacy data comes from census years rather than annually. As covered in the earlier discussion, it stood around 58% at independence in 1946, and was 82.6% in 1970, rising to 88% by 1988. By 1990 it was officially reported at 93.5%. World Bank data then shows it plateauing in the high 90s: 98% by 2015 and 2020.

     The most striking pattern is the sequencing: literacy and radio came first and enabled a baseline of informed citizenship; electrification followed more gradually and unlocked television and later computing; and internet access arrived last but has now leapfrogged all the others in its pace of change, going from near zero to near-universal in roughly 25 years — almost entirely on mobile.

     Reply
     • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

       May 29, 2026 at 12:33 pm

       I asked a further question: how much % of Filipinos today had badly informed (either illiterate or without significant access to information) parents or grandparents, and to also consider how 2 million mostly middle class Filipinos left the Philippines from 1965-1985 to migrate to the USA – and got this:

       ——————————————–

       This is a question that deserves a careful, layered answer rather than a single percentage — because it actually contains several distinct questions bundled together, and the assumptions matter enormously.

       **First, setting aside the emigration question entirely:** who were the parents and grandparents of today’s Filipinos?

       The median age in the Philippines today is around 26–27 years, and about 46% of the population is under 25. This means the typical Filipino alive today was born between roughly 1990 and 2010. Their parents were therefore born around 1960–1980, and their grandparents around 1930–1960.

       Now apply the literacy data from earlier in this conversation. The parents’ generation — born 1960–1980 — grew up when national literacy was somewhere between 74% (1960) and 89% (1980). That means roughly **11–26% of their parents were illiterate**, depending on birth year and whether they were urban or rural. The grandparents’ generation — born 1930–1960 — came of age when literacy was between roughly 50% and 74%, meaning **a quarter to a half** of them were illiterate. And “illiterate” here understates the informational deprivation: even many technically literate rural Filipinos in the 1950s–60s had access to essentially nothing beyond a transistor radio, with electrification not reaching most rural households until the 1980s.

       So a reasonable rough estimate is that **somewhere between 40% and 60% of Filipinos alive today had at least one grandparent who was either illiterate or functionally cut off from mainstream information** — no electricity, no radio ownership, no newspapers, deep in a barangay — especially in Mindanao and rural Visayas where both literacy and electrification lagged the national average by 10–20 percentage points.

       **Now the emigration question — and this is where your framing requires pushing back a little:**

       Many post-1965 immigrants from the Philippines were highly skilled professionals. The Philippines experienced a significant brain drain in the 1960s when a large population of its professional workers emigrated to the United States. Filipinos who left were more likely to hold green cards through family immigration channels and had higher education and naturalization rates than the foreign-born population overall.

       This is the critical asymmetry: the people who left for the US between 1965 and 1985 were disproportionately the **already educated, already literate, already middle-class** — nurses, doctors, engineers, teachers. They were, by definition, drawn from the more informed stratum of Philippine society. Their departure did not materially change the literacy or information-access profile of those who remained — if anything, it slightly worsened it, by selectively removing the educated. The people left behind were, on average, more rural, less literate, and less connected to information networks.

       So the emigration to the US is not a significant factor in calculating the percentage of today’s Filipinos who had uninformed parents or grandparents. It actually sharpens the estimate upward rather than downward: the brain drain removed a portion of the informed class, leaving the remaining parental pool somewhat less educated than the overall statistics suggest.

       **A rough synthesis:**

       Putting it all together honestly, rather than with false precision:

       – Roughly **50–65%** of Filipinos alive today had at least one parent who grew up in conditions of limited information access — meaning either illiterate, or literate but without electricity or radio in the household, or both. This applies especially to anyone over 35 today whose parents were rural.
       – Roughly **70–80%** had at least one grandparent who was either illiterate or lived in conditions of near-total informational isolation by modern standards.

       These are not small numbers. They mean that the current Philippines — now near-universal in literacy, 98% electrified, with ~89% internet penetration — is largely a **first- or second-generation informed society**. The informational transformation depicted in the chart is not ancient history. For most living Filipinos it is within living family memory.

       ——————–

       this explains a LOT of the difference between discourse in the Third Republic and NOW I think.. the grandparents of many who are trolling in comment sections now were practically invisible in the Third Republic, maybe even their parents were barely visible in the Fourth Republic (Marcos Martial Law)

       that is the reality check we should always bear in mind..

       Reply
       • kasambahay says:

         May 30, 2026 at 5:02 am

         sa probinsya, despite many people being no read no write, info flows thick and fast. people talk to one another, news got passed on, sifted, confirmed, assimilated and biases debunked. people also asked lot of questions, some question maybe be stupid, rude, skeptical and downright absurd to be aired! answers may vary but fact remains. people maybe illiterate but they are rarely idiots! they are also very observative, good in reading body language and judging people. put one and one together and they got their point of view. and it does not stop there, learning is continous loop: what is truth today, maybe half truth tomorrow. what is learned today, maybe have to be unlearned tomorrow. the illiterates maybe because they have little to lose, are rarely shy and rarely put off by those exhibiting airs and too lofty to be approached. nagpaparinig, e!

         AI Overview

         In the 1960s and 1980s, functionally and basically illiterate Filipinos primarily relied on oral traditions, interpersonal networks, and audio-visual mass media (specifically radio and television) to get their daily news and information. [1, 2]

         Because they could not read newspapers, they accessed information through specific channels:

         Television: By the late 1970s and 1980s, television became highly accessible. Even if viewers could not read on-screen text or closed captions, visual storytelling and spoken news via ABS-CBN, GMA, and PTV (among others) brought global and local affairs directly into homes and barangay viewing centers.

         Radio Broadcasts: Battery-operated and transistor radios were a primary source of information in both urban and rural areas. The 1960s and 1980s saw a massive boom in local radio networks, with stations like DZRH broadcasting news, public affairs, and highly dramatized radio plays in regional languages and Tagalog, making information accessible to non-readers. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

         Word of Mouth & Community Leaders: News traveled fast through interpersonal communication. Illiterate individuals relied heavily on respected members of the community—such as the punong barangay (village chief), local politicians, teachers, or sari-sari store owners—who would read the broadsheets (e.g., Manila Times in the 60s) and disseminate the information verbally to the rest of the neighborhood.

         Town Criers and Public Gatherings: For government directives, elections, or local announcements, municipalities utilized local town criers (informal announcers) or held community assemblies in plazas where information was spoken aloud.

         Visual and Folk Media: Organizations utilized comic books (komiks) with heavy illustrations to spread social or religious messages, while folk media like stage plays, local balagtasan (debates), and town festivals served as active vessels for cultural and political messaging. [1]

         Reply
         • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

           May 30, 2026 at 12:34 pm

           oral traditions

           this reminds me of something I read that some Spanish prayle were annoyed that “the natives do not listen to us, but to old people they call maroronong”.

           actually I have seen this pattern even among OFWs and the family of our labandera from Cagayan (just Manang to all of us) which included my yaya (her niece who called her Auntie) another niece who was a public school teacher but went to Hong Kong to be a domestic helper, married an Englishman there and moved to UK..

           Manang/Auntie made sure her nieces who came to Manila knew how to handle the big bad city. I never learned their Ilokano except for a few words, but I knew from the way she talked and how they listened that she had authority. The one who went to HK did the same for her niece – we met both in HK on our way to Germany in 1982. When I passed by HK in 1995, her niece had taken over, speaking Cantonese perfectly and guiding her relatives. I have seen the same among other OFWs.

           audio-visual mass media

           the strength of Youtube channels among Filipino masa nowadays is the same thing in the modern era – even if most of those who view them know how to read.

           In showbiz Ogie Diaz has enormous influence whether one likes him or not. Filipina nurses who make vlogs about the experience of coming to Germany – what to expect from landlords and government including house rules and taxes, how work looks like, how people are privately – can have a lot of followers.

           good in reading body language and judging people.

           often way better than the educated – my experience. Sometimes we who are educated are fooled by what looks like logic but isn’t.

           Reply
           • kasambahay says:

             June 1, 2026 at 4:46 am

             in the province, rich and poor interact a lot. those that have tv (black and white in those days) open their sala for those who have no tv, they sat on the floor, watch and laugh together at comedies and crying at sad drama. people visit one another a lot too, talking about anything and everything, sometimes listening to transistor radio together. people also barrow bigas, salt, sugar, cooking oil etc. and often people share what they have cooked with their neighbors, bico and calamay, puto as well as pancit. there is neighborliness. and if you walk on the road, trucks laden with sugar cane on the way to milling often stop and ask if you want a lift, but only along the milling route.

             and people are rarely isolated and even if they have no phone at home, they get in contact with their relatives overseas by making long distance call at the local post office. they just have to pay upfront to access the operator who then dial the overseas number and if it is call collect, the reciever overseas pays the phone bill.

             we also have manabtan, who is often an elderly lady who leads the prayer during mourning period of 30 days after funeral. manabtan comes once a week and say the rosary with the bereaved family, but the prayer is done in spanish from start to finish. young ones got educated under the american system can only say their prayer in english and cannot participate. they just have to be there, kept quite and observe.

             there are also designated letter writers in each villages, who for a small fee of maybe a basket of mangoes, a chicken, eggs, or piglet, etc, write letters for those who cannot read and write, thump print is affixed to signify authenticity. as children get educated, they became the letter writer of their parents.

             Reply
             • Irineo B. R. Salazar says:

               June 1, 2026 at 1:06 pm

               those that have tv (black and white in those days) open their sala for those who have no tv,

               the house of our Visayan gardener at UP Diliman just a few meters downhill in UP Balara was the first to progress from plywood/yero to hollow blocks, then build unofficial “annexes” for relatives coming from the provinces, in a time where there was still space for chickens there, and sometimes we heard the occassional pig slaughtered.

               Anyhow they were the first to have a TV and it seemed as if half of UP Balara congregated there to watch in the early 1970s.

               people also barrow bigas, salt, sugar, cooking oil etc.

               the Pinoys working for Embassies in Bonn who early 1990s lived in relatively cheap housing in the Bad Godesberg district – cheap because due for demolition – were often from poor families. One Waray family had lived near in a relocation site near Manila, the kuya was a former KB local official. KB, not yet SK – and super Makoy loyalist.

               the joke about that community was “naghihiraman ng itlog at asin”. That neighborhood was dense enough to make a Pinoy videotheque/food store viable.

               trucks laden with sugar cane on the way to milling often stop and ask if you want a lift

               our gardener’s sons liked to run after random trucks, hang on to the back and jump off before they accelerated. sometimes the boys from UP Balara would play outside just in shorts when it rained, enjoying getting wet.

               that community changed over the years when they somehow got microphones and speakers for their community gatherings. We heard the pasyon regularly sung during Lent in a way that sounded sintunado to us, clearly led by old women and younger women singing with them for nights on end. At some point there were community fiestas with loudspeakers blaring disco sound like Born to Be Alive – it was already that time in the late 1970s.

               manabtan, who is often an elderly lady who leads the prayer during mourning period of 30 days after funeral.

               I was not able to make it to my Bikolana grandmother’s funeral in 1995, but my brother and his to-be German wife were. There was an elderly lady who put a scapular around my grandma according to my brother – my sister in law found the lady weird, almost a “witch”. My brother told me the prayers of the women she led sounded like rap to him.

               probably these women – manabtan and pasyon singers – are what used to be babaylans before colonialism. Most certainly an understudied matter.

               as children get educated, they became the letter writer of their parents.

               the kids of first generation Filipino immigrants to Germany often were the ones who helped them with stuff pertaining to German authorities, whom their parents even as they were literate found intimidating – and they were even for me back in the 1980s even as they got more service-oriented in the 1990s.

               even the Filipina nurses working in hospitals often asked their German colleagues to help them with German forms. There was one nurse from Batangas we knew who returned favors from German colleagues by making lumpia for them. She also was known for the lumpia she sold at Filipino community gatherings.

               a lot of the “egg-borrowing” Pinoys from Bonn received and sent cassette voice tapes from and to their folks at home BTW. Today OFWs like FB live chat.

               Reply
               • kasambahay says:

                 June 2, 2026 at 4:59 am

                 that’s hilarious! rap? manabtans dont rap, they chant much like monks. their chant is rhytmic and repetitive and anyone can join in, if they know the piece.

                 Reply
5. CV says:

   May 29, 2026 at 11:41 pm

   Because my education growing up in the Philippines was designed with US history in mind. We all know how sacred the US Declaration of Independence is to Americans. I believe it is enshrined somewhere in Washington DC.

   A few years ago, I was surprised to discover that we had our own written Declaration of Independence (“Acta de la Proclamación de la Independencia del Pueblo Filipino“). What I understood as a kid being taught our history was that the declaration made by Aguinaldo on June 12, 1898 was verbal.

   The written Declaration was signed by 98 “Dons” who were Filipino delegates. An American who was retired from the US military also signed it, supposedly as a witness.

   Apolinario Mabini was not a signatory to it. He arrived too late. When he read it, he immediately brought it to the attention of Dictator Emilio Aguinaldo that it was a Declaration of Protectorate, not a Declaration of Independence. The author, Ambrosio Rianzares Bautista, had affirmed penned in the words (English translation) “under the benevolent protection of the United States of America.”

   Bautista also affirmed in the Acta Aguinaldo’s earlier declaration that he was Dictator of the new Republic.

   Mabini immediately took steps to correct those errors by clarifying the intention of the Revolution which was to not be a protectorate but to be an independent and sovereign nation. He also clarified the dictatorship with the term “Revolutionary government” to deal with what he anticipated would be a war with the United States. He felt that “protectorate” and “dictator” would not sit well with foreign nations like Germany, Spain, and England. Pretty amazing fellow this guy Mabini was.

   The connection to the Malolos Constitution is that it served as the final document to “bury” the 2 glaring mistakes of the Acta de la Proclamacíon.

   I find this to be a very fascinating part of our history.

   Reply
6. JoeAm says:

   May 31, 2026 at 7:01 am

   Off topic but notable in reference to the deepening Philippine/Japan partnership. Japan’s investment in shipbuilding facilities in Cebu will continue progress to make the Philippines a major ship building nation.

   https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/money/companies/989480/tsuneishi-cebu-shipbuilding-expansion-marcos-japan/story/

   Reply
   • Karl Garcia says:

     May 31, 2026 at 2:38 pm

     The protests for the pivot to not so pacifist Japan seemed to simmer down or maybe not.

     Reply
     • kasambahay says:

       June 1, 2026 at 4:54 am

       it appears that we have each other’s back, japan and philippines. and china does not like it, not one bit. and president bong marcos is summat concern that after his term is over, and if sara becomes new president, she will undo what bong marcos had done: fostering closer and stronger relationship with japan, both economically and militarily. it is likely that sara will realign philippines with china once more, just like what her father had done.

       https://politiko.com.ph/2026/05/31/its-a-different-time-bongbong-says-he-wants-to-be-different-from-marcos-sr/daily-feed/

       Reply