194 Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy More particularly, we see these debilitating practices in the use of huge government resources controlled by the executive to buy LGU officials off during electoral contests, the diversion of the IRA by local executives for their private ends, the sheer wastage of congressional “pork barrel” funds deployed for non-productive projects, and the unbridled corruption at all levels of government. Some General Evaluations on the Philippine Transition from Authoritarian Rule More than twenty five years after the transition from authoritarian rule under the Marcos dictatorship, what evaluations can we offer about this process. Consistent with the overall conceptual framework and empirical findings of this book, we clarify why the formal end of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986 did not really result in a transition to democratic rule.6 As we further explain below, the so-called transition process has failed to satisfy even the procedural requirements much less the substantive conditions for the initial installation of a democratic order. The dynamics of the actual process of transition from authoritarian rule in the country had strategic outcomes on the process of democratization or the lack of it. Activated by a unique confluence of events, the tumultuous actions that climaxed in the ouster of the dictatorship in 1986 do not fit nicely into any of the established models of democratic transition: structural, modernization, or elite-bargaining. Experienced neither as a reform nor revolutionary process in the country, the end of the dictatorship was not also a consciously designed “pacta” between the dictator and the opposition elites. It occurred as the surprise endgame to a failed coup attempt against the dictator but it was also the product of several events coming together at various conjunctures: the growing popular resistance movement especially after the assassination of Sen. Aquino in 1983; the inter-elite antagonisms fuelled by the deepening economic crisis starting in 1981; the split in the military and its politicization as an institution; the serious ailment of Marcos that provoked elite realignments; the calibrated pressures from the United States; and the emergence of a popularly accepted new leader of the legal opposition, Mrs. Aquino. One particular feature of this transition process includes an element of imposition coming from the combined effects of the rebel military's involvement in the process and the pressures and support of the United States but initially counterbalanced by the massive popular mobilization against the dictatorship.