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Filipino culture has a strong reference to religion given its history of religious - both native and foreign - influences. Since 1565, the state-church relationship (mainly with the Catholic Church) bears the deep marks left by this past. The legal framework of this relationship has evolved from union to neutral separation. Religions in the Philippines often convey opposite values and rules of conduct. Since 1987, the Catholic Church has progressively abandoned the political area and shifted its action to social grounds. Muslims, a minority in the southern Philippines, have developed an Islamic counterculture that challenges national stability in the name of a religious ideals gone astray.

The Philippine paradox : Restore a democratic or an oligarchie system ?
Democracy in the Philippines used to be, and still is, personalized. The "people's power" of the February 1986 revolution forced Ferdinand Marcos out, but was unable to build a structure. Elections have served to choose among politicians, but they have also opened the way for big provincial families to re-emerge in an elitist, patronage democracy. Rigidly controlled by the traditional elite, the Congress has not made much haste toward adopting the sweeping reforms laid down in the 1987 Constitution. The problems President Ramos has to solve have not changed : economic inequality ; land disputes (which still arise because land reform has not worked) ; an industry still mainly in the hands of monopolies ; political corruption ; and an elite more concerned with its personal interests than the public good. Two things are lacking in the Philippines : continuity in policy and the sense of a national interest. The head of state should disregard the existing system, dismantle monopolies and take account of economic globalization ; but he should not lose from view the political and social reforms indispensable for putting an end to armed uprisings.