Guest Commentary by Banura Nandathilake
The Philippines is in its Fifth Republic. The First was established when the US acquired it from the Spanish. The Second by the Japanese, the Third by the Americans after WW2, which lasted until Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s martial rule. The Fourth was created when he lifted martial law, and survived until the revolution which toppled the Marcos Government, thereby starting the Fifth republic. On June 30th 2022, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. became the seventeenth president.
Despite being the son of the former brutal kleptocratic President Ferdinand Marcos Sr, he succeeded Rodrigo Duterte in a landslide election victory. With doubt, scepticism and demands for accountability surrounding him, Marcos Jr. is largely expected to continue the policy course pursued by the Duterte administration. However, the capability for his incoming government to curb rising domestic inflation, while steering the Philippines through a great power conflict happening a stone's throw away from its shores, thereby restoring the Marcos name remains to be seen.
Like Father, Like Son?
Ferdinand Marcos Sr. may be considered as one of the most controversial statesmen of the 20th century, with trademarks of unparalleled corruption, extravagance and state sponsored violence. During the 20 years he spent as the President of the Philippines, his first term was about socio-economic growth. It was a facade however, as the budding kleptocrat had financed domestic infrastructure and public projects through unsustainable debt. Such practices culminated in extreme poverty, inflation and gross inequality during his second and third terms. In 1986, the “people power” revolution resulted in him, his family and his wife Imelda having to flee into exile in Hawaii, with their amassed fortune. While Mrs Marcos left behind her infamous shoe collection, her husband brought with him jewellery, gold bricks and freshly printed Philippine currency, collectively worth around $15 Million. During his time in office, they had plundered more than $10 billion from the Philippine state, most ever recorded in the world. They in fact held an official Guinness world record for largest-ever theft from a government, until Guinness took the record down before his son’s 2022 election. During his time in power, thousands of innocents, including Muslims, alleged communists, dissidents, suspected opposition actors and media figures were tortured, jailed without due process or murdered by the regime’s cronies.
Ferdinand Marcos is the second child and only son of the former president, aged 64 as of 2022. He began his journey in politics at 23, as the Vice Governor of Ilocos Norte (1980–1983) during the years of his father’s reign, until his family’s political exile to Honolulu. Imelda Marcos and family were allowed to return to the Philippines after the death of Marcos Sr. in 1989. While procedurally it was to face charges for misallocation of state resources and corruption, stagnant politics allowed the Marcos’ re-entry into politics. Ferdinand Jr. returned back to the historical Marcos stronghold of Ilocos Norte as its Governor in 1998 for 3 consecutive terms. In 2007, Marcos ran unopposed for the congressional seat, and was appointed deputy minority leader of the House of Representatives of Philippines. In 2010, Marcos Jr. made a second attempt for the Senate in 2010, and entered office on June 30, 2010. Despite multiple scams wherein Marcos Jr. had diverted state funds totalling upwards of ₱305 million to his own account, he contested in the 2016 vice presidential campaign, albeit unsuccessfully. In the 2022 Presidential election however, Marcos Jr. along with his running mate and Vice-President Sara Duterte won 59% of all votes casted. Duterte is the daughter of Rodrigo Duterte - the outgoing president, who campaigned with Marcos Jr. following a split with her father, thereby resolidifying the Marcos hold on office in a system dominated by dynasties.
For all but a minority of mostly older Filipinos, the prospect of another Ferdinand Marcos in the presidential palace is horrifying. For them, Bongbong’s presidency can only result in a return to kleptocracy, as they intone: those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. The following questions thus arise: Did the Philippines forget history? Was history rewritten by tools of the future? Or was it desperation, a new ruler following the inability of the previous to rule?
The Rise of Marcos Jr.
Marcos Jr’s rise to political power, from exile with his father to an apparent rightful throne of political apex, maybe analysed as the result of four main factors: drawn out multiyear effort to whitewash the Marcos name, skillful alliance building and political manoeuvring, the penchant of Philippine voters for political dynasties, and the inability of those already in power to govern.
History Forgotten or Rewritten?
Marcos Jr's popularity was kept afloat in his voter base through an aggressive social media campaign, aptly using the tools of the future to rewrite the narrative of history. YouTube and social media were jammed with constructed campaigns pushing a revisionist view of history as the Marcos era being one of crime-free prosperity, not of human rights abuses, extravagant corruption and near-economic collapse. Such a campaign proved appealing to voters who were not only too young to experience the Sr’s dictatorship but had experienced years of relative economic growth and prosperity. If analysed statistically, of the 110 million citizens of the Philippines, the share of population in extreme poverty has decreased by almost 20% since the death of Marcos Sr. in 1989 and the poverty gap has reduced by almost a billion However, the old-age dependency ratio has increased by almost 3% while the age dependency ratio has decreased by about 20%. The median age in the Philippines is 26 years (Ourworldindata.org). Fact checking of the Marcos campaign found that it was 92% disinformation in favour of the Marcos, and 96% opposing his main rival (Tsek.ph). As such, it could be understood that there exists a wide generation gap, and most of the population thereby voters are likely to be younger than older. Furthermore, due to the gap in ages, there exists a gap in memories of the tormented and children of the tormented, which is being exploited to restore the Marcos name.
But the recent events were not all social-media magic. A survey conducted in 1986, three months after the revolution, found that 41% thought he had been “true to the duties of a patriotic president”, which increased to 56% in 1995. In 1986, 44% agreed that he was a “severe, brutal or oppressive president”, while 60 % disagreed in 1995. Such a phenomenon could be aptly summed up by the quote, “Not many of us would care to hold a grudge against someone long dead, not even someone like Ferdinand Marcos'' (Social Weather Stations, 1986, 95).
Since Marcos Sr. died in exile in 1989 and the family returned to the Philippines, the Marcos family have manoeuvred around provincial and national offices from their base in Ilocos Norte, in the north of the country. They have since portrayed the dictatorship as a "golden period" of political stability, economic prosperity and lawfulness, which resonated with many Filipinos mired in poverty, violence and years of corruption. As Marcos Jr. said, “My father built more and better roads, produced more rice than all administrations before his”. While his critics have accused his social media campaign of misinformation attempting to tone down or whitewash the atrocities under his father's rule, Marcos Jr. further propelled his election campaign by having Sara Duterte as his running mate.
Apart from political games, Marcos Jr. represents a political dynasty, and such a move allowed him to expand his voter base island wide by merging two political dynasties and their strongholds: Marcos of the northern Philippines and the Dutertes of the southern Mindanao island. Furthermore, the new Marcos cabinet relies on technocrats, such as the former Central Bank Governor Diokno, the Transport Minister is the former head of the national airlines, and the Defence Chief is the former Army General, following on the established norm of his predecessor.
New Ruler due to the inability of the Old?
Marcos Jr succeeds Rodrigo Duterte, who as most other elected presidents in the Philippines, started off strong with a popularity boost, but then nosedived. Duterte, unlike Marcos, rose to power as an outsider, as a defender of the ordinary, but lacked apt political governance, resulting in economic stagnation and an air of judicial impunity. His “war on drugs'', which saw at least 30,000 people dead as a result of extra-judicial killings, has attracted international condemnation. His alliance with China has bought little investment and has not curtailed Chinese incursions in the shared South China Sea. His administration of the Pandemic resulted in the economy shrinking by 6% and less than half of Filipinos are fully vaccinated. Such events raise the question however: does the Philippines not elect its Presidents for their proven ability to govern, but instead for the inability of those still in power to do so? A pick between the lesser evil, not between the better of the two? If so, it would not be unlike most other democratic, developing states in Asia.
An Opaque Domestic Policy
Marcos Jr. comes to office at a time of a post pandemic stagnant economy. The Philippine peso is one of Asia’s poorest performing this year, and global recession and inflation is on the horizon. While Marcos has promised to promote self-sufficiency in food due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his campaign speech was shrewd, devoid of policy details or platform wherein it promised to leave the middle class largely alone as he fulfils the common expectations of Presidents. While he did promise a “comprehensive infrastructure plan” however, in which “no part of the Philippines will be neglected”, he left out any hope for accountability for the sins of his father, or the theft. Nevertheless, he is expected to largely continue the policies of his predecessor, along with his aforementioned technocrats.
Marcos' presidency may not be a means of transforming Filipino society, or addressing structural issues. It is instead the end in itself, a culmination of attempts to whitewash history, and re-solidify the Marcos name to its apparent throne. A significant portion of the population however, almost 40%, may not accept the result. Attempts to disqualify Mr Marcos are underway. Concerns of patronage politics incentivising monopolistic or oligopolistic practices have mounted, adding to the climate of impunity that rules the country.
Diverting from Sr. in Foreign Policy?
A Marcos-headed Philippines remains on the tightrope between the US, its traditional and treaty ally, and the regional hegemon China, whom it has a costly territorial dispute with. Adding on is its distance to Taiwan, wherein it could be on the front line in any conflict between the great powers.
While Marcos has indicated he wants better alliances with the US than Duterte did, who steered Philippines’ foreign policy toward China and Russia, signalling that Washington may have wooed Marcos Jr. just like Sr. This may not mean Philippine-US ties would trump Philippine-China ties however, as Marcos Jr., has long had a close relationship with Beijing. Marcos Jr. is said to be China’s preferred candidate, and has already declared China to be Philippines’ “strongest partner” despite the former’s growing encroachment of the latter’s territorial waters, thereby echoing sentiments of his predecessor. Marcos may still be susceptible to the same anti-Beijing swells of the public however, which limited Duterte’s options in the latter part of his presidency, but such may be conditional on how much more infrastructure funding he is able to draw. Of course, in the age of great power rivalry, the question remains of the cost.
While the Marcos name may have risen, analysts have deemed Mr Marcos’s administration to be likely marked by protests and instability. While that may result in economic stagnation and political roadblocks, along with an opportunity for both the US and China, how long will the Marcos name stay afloat? It may be entirely feasible for Ms Duterte and Mrs Arroyo, a past president, to provide a balance of power in the government, while his technocrats do most of the policymaking. While his congressional record does not suggest he has many big ideas, at least not ones associated with a strongman, they do not suggest he's big on righting the wrongs of history either.
