ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a series of major political battles that took place between regional authoritarian elites, local democratic movements and central state authority during the period from the end of World War Two and beginning of Philippine independence in 1945, to the establishment of centralized authoritarian rule in 1972. The extremely high levels of fraud, violence and vote buying which marked the 1969 elections revealed several important vulnerabilities in the country’s postwar clientelist electoral regime. The defeat of the Huks in the early 1950s brought to an end the first and most important organized challenge to regional elite authoritarian holds on the political process from below in the country’s contemporary history, enabling the clientelist electoral regime to flourish. Weakened by internal divisions and growing democratization pressures from below, the postwar clientelist electoral regime was in a serious crisis, one that would be resolved from within the ranks of the political elite itself by the imposition of martial law.
