COMMENTARY:

THE RESULTS of the recent constitutional referendum in the Philippines provide further evidence of President Corazon Aquino's enormous personal popularity. The margin of victory--a three-to-one vote in favor of the new constitution proposed by Aquino--surprised many foreign observers and restored international confidence in the staying power of her government. Indeed, placed alongside the quick defeat of yet another coup attempt, the February 2nd vote seems to confirm the unassailable nature of the current regime.

Yet many of the most pressing issues in the Philippines remain unresolved.

The economy continues to crawl along at a snail-like pace and for the majority of the population living standards are at pre-1975 levels. Ten years of economic development in the rest of the Pacific Basin have almost completely bypassed the Philippines. And there is no end in sight to the Communist insurgency problem. The ceasefire with the "rebels" came to an end last Sunday, leaving the hard-liners on both sides with the political spoils.

Furthermore, land reform--which is at the heart of Aquino's strategy to deal with growing disaffection in the countryside--has not gotten off of the drawing board. Finally, the issue of the presence of American military bases remains as divisive and distracting as ever.

The critical question is whether the Aquino government is equipped and willing to deal with these problems. There is little reason for confidence that it is.

Again, the economy is in a terrible state. The country has endured four years of "negative growth"--declining prices for major export crops, especially sugar. It suffers under a per capita debt burden of $1500, but per capita earnings are only about half that. Aquino's extraordinarily muddled set of policies and priorities in response to these problems conspire to make a bad situation even worse.

Perhaps the only good thing that can be said about the end of the ceasefire is that it will at least get restless troops out of their barracks. However there is no reason to believe that a reversion to attempts at a military solution--which failed for 10 years under Marcos--will have any greater success this time around.

Any genuine land reform package is likely to threaten many powerful interests and, unless handled with a subtlety uncharacteristic of the present regime, will be watered down beyond recognition by the time the peasant farmers might reap any benefits. Meanwhile, the only consensus concerning the American military bases is that the U.S. doesn't pay enough for what it gets.

PEOPLE IN THE Philippines still talk about the days of the "February Revolution" as being among the most special of their lives. The prevailing myth is that the people won their battle for democracy and for their right to have a say in their government.

Reality, however, is much harsher. The political landscape of the Philippines remains largely unchanged. Many of Marcos' cronies are still in place and the government has studiously avoided any kind of a purge. Nothing has happened to affect the deep-seated structural problems which lie under what is one of the most unequal societies in the world.

While Mrs. Aquino remains an important symbol of the spiritual purity and moral tenor of the new regime, she seems unable to clean out the stables. Political opportunists continue to jockey for position and to exploit every conflict within her government.

Even if former Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile has been humbled, an alliance of Marcos loyalists, disaffected army officers and Communist sympathizers conspire to substitute empty slogans for any sort of reasoned debate about the country's future.

It is still an open question whether Mrs. Aquino and her supporters will be able to orchestrate the transition from the crony capitalism and unbridled greed of the Marcos years to a fairer distribution of economic and political power. If the First Lady fails to do so, then the verdict will be that she could neither paper over the cracks nor rewrite the script for Philippine society.

If Mrs. Aquino succeeds, then the February revolution in '86 will be consummated against all the odds.

Jeremy Oppenheim is a research assistant at the Harvard Institute for International Development. He served as a consultant to the Aquino government on industrial policy.