Noynoy’s predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, left office as the most unpopular president since the fall of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986. Arroyo came to power through popular anger inspired by the corruption of her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, but departed under a cloud of corruption allegations against herself and her husband, over close ties with notorious warlords, widespread human rights abuses, and more. The greatest political damage came after evidence that President Arroyo had been personally involved in efforts to pad her vote margin in the 2004 election. Arroyo’s skill at entrenching her power amid controversy, left the country’s already politicised bureaucracy, military, and judiciary even more deeply politicized.

At the end of Arroyo’s nine years in the presidential palace — longer than any other chief executive in Philippine history aside from Marcos — the country was desperate for clean leadership.

As Hutchcroft explains, when former President Corazon C. ‘Cory’ Aquino succumbed to cancer in August 2009, the country was overcome by a wave of nostalgia for the ‘yellow revolution’ that she had led against the Marcos regime after the 1983 assassination of her husband, Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino, Jr. The memory of this struggle propelled her only son, Noynoy, to become the Liberal Party’s 2010 presidential candidate and, despite his lacklustre record across 12 years in the House and Senate, Noynoy, emerged in the 10 May elections with the largest plurality of any post-Marcos president, proclaiming that ‘today marks the end of a regime indifferent to the appeals of the people’ slogans for clean and good government.

Noynoy is putting major focus on projecting a new style of leadership. ‘The first step is to have leaders who are ethical, honest, and true public servants’, he said in his inauguration speech. He pledged not only to ‘set the example’ himself but also to hold similarly high standards for those who join the government. In making the latter pledge, Noynoy may have been responding to those who emphasize the negative example of his mother’s presidency. While Cory herself was perceived to be a president of great personal integrity, she surrounded herself with a host of sometimes dodgy relatives and advisors. Noynoy needs to do better.

This is not the first time, Hutchcroft notes, that an incoming President has attacked the corruption of his or her predecessor and promised a new and cleaner style of leadership. There is no doubt that the Philippines needs to aspire to the highest quality of leaders. Presidential leadership can bring change–as seen under the administration of President Fidel Ramos between 1992 and 1998 which saw the implementation of widespread economic reforms and a boost to the country’s economic fortunes.

But what will matter to Philippine society and its prosperity in the long haul is not the rhetoric and aspiration for leadership that is good and clean but whether leadership is turned to change and the fundamental reform of its broken institutions. So far, the new President appears long on the rhetoric of good leadership, but very short on the agenda for institutional reform. It is on this that Noynoy’s Presidency will be judged. Hopefully there is the agenda for institutional reform in the making.