ABSTRACT
The particular circumstances of Marcos’s downfall sent shivers down spines in neighbouring countries. The aghast Indonesians did not know how to start cataloguing the sins. Virtually every element of social chaos vilified by President Suharto’s ‘New Order’ government in Jakarta materialised on Manila’s streets. The mutinous Philippine military and mass demonstrations were also deeply disturbing to Manila’s Asean neighbours. They watched communist-influenced labour rallies with horror. The experience of the Philippines since February 1986 has calmed fears that Southeast Asia’s era of stability was threatened by an upsurge of popular discontent. Families dominate business life in the Philippines, as elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Normally a family becomes pre-eminent in a particular province; the Cojuangco influence in Tarlac, a pivotal central Luzon province, is no different. Tarlac provides the base from which different Cojuangco family factions have extended their influence over the last of a century.
