Filipinos go to the polls this Monday (9) to choose who will lead the Southeast Asian country for the next six years in an election with well-known names and a well-defined scenario.
With more than 30 percentage points ahead of the second place in the polls, the outspoken favorite to become president is Ferdinand Marcos Jr., better known in the country as Bongbong, a former senator and son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the Philippines with of iron between 1965 and 1986.
He has 56% of the voting intentions. Then, with 23%, appears the current vice president, Leni Robredo.
In the vice presidential race — in the Philippines, president and vice president are chosen in separate votes — the most likely election, 37 points ahead of second in the polls, is another well-known surname. Sara Duterte, daughter of the current president, Rodrigo Duterte, appears in the most recent polls with 55% of voting intentions, against 18% for second place, Senator Tito Sotto.
Even if this is an election of continuity, as both Bongbong and Sara Duterte have said, the likely victory of the favorite will mean, for political scientist Cleve Arguelles, the end of the Philippine Fifth Republic, the post-dictatorship democratic period of Ferdinand Marcos senior.
The break is due to the fact that the country’s 1987 Constitution was drafted in response to the trauma of the dictatorship, says the academic at the Australian National University. “With the son elected president, the Marcos family will be formally rehabilitated, and the legacy of the dictatorship will be forgiven in public memory.”
The turning point in Ferdinand Marcos senior’s regime is the Martial Law of 1972, a kind of Philippine AI-5, which, under the pretext of preventing a communist uprising, arrested opponents, committed human rights abuses against 11,000 people and was responsible for the death of 2,326 people, in addition to 1,922 documented cases of torture, according to a government agency created to investigate crimes during the period.
“A Marcos Jr. presidency will indicate that Filipinos demand a new social order different from the liberal democracy promised by the People’s Power Revolution of 1986”, says Arguelles, referring to the movement that, with millions of people in the streets, overthrew the dictator. With the fall of Marcos, the father, the son, Bongbong, who at the time was governor of the province of Ilocos Norte, went into exile with his family in the United States and only returned to the Philippines three years later, in 1989, after the death of the dictator. .
How he went from exiled heir to favorite candidate for president is key to understanding Philippine politics in recent years, with orchestrated social media campaigns to shape public opinion, an expedient best known in President Duterte’s hands as he lashed out at opponents.
Jean Encinas-Franco, a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines, says Bongbong is leading the way after years of family investment to build a new narrative about her father’s dictatorship. “These disinformation campaigns are anchored in a false authoritarian nostalgia, according to which the Marcos years were of glory for the Philippines, despite the vast documentation and books written about rampant corruption, dismal economic performance and poverty,” he says.
Arguelles, who researches populism in Southeast Asia, says that pro-Marcos groups started promoting campaigns on the most used networks in the country six years ago, in which they say the family was persecuted by the political elite. In addition to Facebook and YouTube, the offensive also targets young people on TikTok.
An example is the image of the dictator’s wife, Imelda Marcos. At the time of the revolution, the collection of nearly 3,000 pairs of shoes was considered a symbol of the family’s greed and corruption. Today, the excesses are portrayed as proof of the family’s good taste — and are displayed in a museum in the capital, Manila.
Bongbong is not the only heir on the brink of winning a post at the helm of the country. The probable deputy, Sara, bears the surname of the current Philippine leader, who reaches the end of the term with 67.2% approval.
This is the highest figure for a late-term president in the history of the Philippines, which does not reflect the investigations into crimes against humanity that Rodrigo Duterte is facing at the International Criminal Court, especially given the war on drugs policy in which he would have sponsored death squads that execute traffickers and users of illicit substances.
Analysts are betting that, with the new Marcos and Duterte in power, Philippine politics will consolidate in the populist camp — and the fear is that it will resume its authoritarian path. In any case, the new president takes over a country shaken by the Covid pandemic, which has made poverty increase and reach 23% of the population.
The new leader will also inherit tensions in what the government calls the West Philippine Sea, known around the world as the South China Sea, one of Asia’s biggest hotspots — China claims control of the region, something that nations in the Southeast Asia and Western powers contest.
