Inside the Philippines’ Critical Presidential Election

Zipping through Metro Manila’s notorious traffic, taxi driver Jaime Francisco listened to the radio, which gave blow-by-blow updates on the campaign activities of presidential candidates running in the heated race to replace Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte when he steps down in June this year.

Francisco, 48, who has been a taxi driver for eight years, turned to me to ask if I was going to Vice President Leni Robredo’s much-anticipated rally in a business district in Pasig City. I said yes, which prompted a new question from him.

“Why aren’t you in pink if you’re going to the rally?” he asked, referring to Robredo’s political color.

I told him I was going as a reporter to cover the event and that I could not be partisan. It was then my turn to ask him some questions.

“BBM is the best candidate,” he told me when I asked him if he already had a presidential pick, referring to the nickname of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr., the son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos who ruled the Philippines in the 1980s. “Robredo cannot be an effective president.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“She’s a woman and women are too moody and she’s a puppet of the yellows. She will be corrupt just like them,” he said, referring to the signature color of the Liberal Party of the Philippines, which ran the campaign of late President Benigno Aquino III in 2010.

More than three decades after dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his family escaped the Malacañang Palace, the official residence of the Philippine president, his son Bongbong seems to be on a sure path to retake the most powerful office in the Philippines.

The elder Marcos was elected president in 1965 and ruled the country for more than two decades under a kleptocracy. During the dark days of martial law, which lasted from 1972 until Marcos’ 1986 ouster, human rights groups say more than 3,000 people were killed, 35,000 were tortured, and others disappeared for their resistance to Marcos’ iron-fist rule.

The Marcos family also lined their pockets. An unexplained fortune that experts estimated to be between $5 and $10 billion was stashed in several offshore accounts in Switzerland during Marcos’ rule.

With the help of the U.S. government, the Marcos family fled to Hawaii in 1986 with their paintings, jewelry, and cash. The patriarch eventually died on September 28, 1989 and the former First Lady Imelda Marcos and her children were allowed to return to the Philippines in 1991.

The harrowing stories of human rights victims during the martial law period and the billions of dollars stolen from millions of poor Filipinos should be enough to reject any attempt by the Marcoses to regain power. Yet today, Marcos Jr. is close to taking over the Malacañang Palace, his family’s home for decades, in what activists say is the final step in the family’s grand scheme to resume power in the Philippines.

“I’m still voting for BBM because his father is still the greatest president we had,” Francisco told me when I told him these facts. “Not even Duterte can match Marcos.”

If the elections were held today, Marcos Jr. would easily win the presidency. Polls consistently show Marcos Jr. far ahead of his closest challenger, with a late February poll showing Marcos Jr. with 60 percent to Robredo’s 15 percent. That’s a clear mandate if that were to translate into actual votes.

But Marcos Jr.’s political opponents and democracy-loving Filipinos won’t just hand the presidency over on a silver platter.

The upcoming national elections in the Philippines – in which more than 18,000 positions from president, vice president, and senators down to city councilor positions are up for grabs – are set for May 9. There is still over a month until the hotly contested elections, and a lot of things can happen in that time.

The Presidential Candidates

Marcos Jr.’s closest competition is Vice President Leni Robredo, the leader of the opposition, who defeated him in the tight vice presidential race in 2016. Robredo beat Marcos Jr. back then only by a slim margin. Afterward Marcos Jr. claimed that Robredo had cheated in the election.

Marcos Jr. went to the Supreme Court, acting as a Presidential Electoral Tribunal, to formalize his protest. But after years of arguments and a recount, the Court unanimously dismissed Marcos Jr.’s claim. Indeed, Robredo’s margin of victory grew by 15,000 after the recount.

An economist by training and a human rights lawyer, Robredo, 56, has served as vice president under Duterte since 2016. The president and the vice president are elected separately in the Philippines, which often causes clashes in policies and ideologies. As leader of the opposition, Robredo is one of Duterte’s fiercest critics. She has spoken out against the relentless extrajudicial killings that are a feature of his signature war on drugs, criticized his policies on the South China Sea, and opposed him on many other issues.

While her competitors expressed interest in the presidency early on, Robredo was late to declare her intent to run. Robredo’s run was partly prompted by Marcos Jr.’s entry into the race and after her effort to achieve unity with other presidential hopefuls failed. While Marcos Jr. and Robredo are definitively the top contenders for the presidency, the field of candidates includes several other notable figures.

The popularity of former actor Isko Moreno catapulted him to the mayorship of the Philippine capital of Manila in 2019, a local position that could well elevate him into national politics. Moreno ran for senator in 2016, but he was unsuccessful. In September 2021, he threw his hat into the presidential ring.

World boxing icon Manny “PacMan” Pacquiao is also banking on the popularity that got him elected representative in 2010 and senator in 2016 to boost his campaign to replace Duterte. Pacquiao locked horns with Duterte on corruption issues during the pandemic when a multibillion scheme to defraud the government’s pandemic response was exposed. At some point, however, Pacquiao became the preferred presidential candidate of a faction of Duterte’s ruling party.

This election will be Senator Ping Lacson’s second attempt at the presidency after suffering a landslide defeat in 2004 at the hands of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who served as president from 2001 to 2010. Lacson, 73, rose up the ranks from a police officer to the chief of the Philippine National Police, where he solved high-profile crimes during the regime of former President Joseph Ejercito Estrada. Many see him as the most experienced candidate, having served some appointed positions and spending nearly two decades in the Senate. But critics say he lacks the executive experience.

Another presidential challenger is Leody de Guzman, 61, a labor rights activist who promises progressive policies and an overhaul of the government, including taxing the rich and a “labor-first policy.” Workers’ unions and rights activists across the country have backed his campaign.

Continuity or Change

President Rodrigo Duterte is still popular, according to his approval ratings, even after his botched pandemic response tanked the economy. At one point during the pandemic’s two-year run, the Philippines had the most number of active cases in Southeast Asia.

Sitting presidents in the Philippines, who are limited to a single six-year term, typically become what political observers call “lame ducks” as the election season heats up. But Duterte still enjoys a 72 percent approval rating, according to a poll released in December 2021.

Given his popularity, Duterte’s endorsement will arguably help his chosen successor’s campaign. But the president hasn’t made his choice publicly yet, despite recent signs that he was leaning closer to backing Marcos Jr. As such, it is not surprising that many of the presidential hopefuls are still competing for Duterte’s endorsement.

Some candidates are pitching themselves as a “continuity” candidate that can carry through Duterte’s policies, sustain his legacy, and could potentially protect him once he loses his presidential immunity in June.

Moreno has been hopeful about scoring Duterte’s endorsement, going as far as to openly talk about it.

“If they endorse me, thank you. Thank you in advance, but I will not preempt them until they say so. For the meantime, I am always hopeful,” Moreno said in a chance interview in December, referring to the Duterte camp.

Many presidential aspirants have also expressed a willingness to continue Duterte’s economic and infrastructure agenda, and even the war on drugs that gained international notoriety.

Duterte’s daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, has declared that it is her alliance with Marcos Jr. that can offer true continuity for Duterte’s policies, which she called “reforms.” She is running for vice present on the Marcos Jr. ticket.

It took the two parties months of negotiations before their alliance was formed. Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was rumored to have brokered the partnership between the Marcoses and the Dutertes. In the end, the alliance between Duterte, Marcos, and Arroyo was joined by the Estradas, another elite political family. They now call themselves the “UniTeam” and they are the force to beat in the May 2022 elections.

“The UniTeam is the face of continuity of the reforms started by the administration of President Duterte – Build, Build, Build and fighting illegal drugs,” Duterte-Carpio said.

Robredo, meanwhile, is the lone opposition candidate who promises to overhaul the government and its pandemic response.

“We need to have an opposition candidate,” Dr. Jean Encinas-Franco, professor of political science at the University of the Philippines said. “It brings home the point that the Duterte administration's policies did not work, especially pandemic response, the supposed achievements of the drug war program of the government. So these are very salient issues that must be conveyed to the public and that they should not be done again.”

For Encinas-Franco, Robredo is the only true-blue opposition candidate who can challenge the status quo.

A Crisis Presidency

The Philippines elects a president and vice president every six years. They both serve a single six-year term. It’s often said that six years is too short for a good president, but too long for a bad one.

Presidential elections are pivotal moments in Philippine society, says Jay Cornelio, professor of sociology and development studies at Ateneo de Manila University.

“Is it really going to be a continuation of the current regime? Or is it going to be a total change? Cornelio told The Diplomat.

Cornelio said that whoever will win must be ready to serve a crisis presidency.

“At the end of the day, people are suffering because of [Duterte’s] ill-equipped, ill-advised decisions,” Cornelio said.

Duterte’s pandemic response put the Philippines last in Bloomberg's COVID resilience ranking of 53 countries. The country was one of the last to bounce back in the region and one of the last to reopen to the world. Many businesses remain shuttered, while schools are still closed.

“The next president is going to manage all the mismanagement, you know, the consequences of this breach of this current president's mismanagement,” he said. “It’s really one crisis after the other, they were on top of another. There’s [the] COVID crisis, and then the economic catastrophe.”

A Damaged Economy

The next Philippine president will have to deal with the catastrophic implications of the economic recession ushered in by the pandemic. Of the presidential candidates, Robredo, an economist by training, is the most favored by some 160 Filipino economists and economic managers from previous governments.

A Bloomberg survey of 28 investors and analysts placed Robredo at the top, scoring 106, while Marcos Jr. was at the near bottom at 46.

“If [Marcos Jr.] is elected, it would only reinforce our view that the economy will continue to underperform over the coming years,” Alex Holmes, Asia economist at Capital Economics Ltd., was quoted as saying.

One of the many casualties of the coronavirus pandemic in the Philippines is its economy. The Philippine economy shrunk by 9.5 percent at the end of 2020.

Economists blame the worst slump since World War II on the Duterte government’s pandemic mismanagement. Duterte employed militaristic lockdowns to curb the spread of the coronavirus, rather than boosting the country’s ailing healthcare system, which was languishing even before the pandemic hit.

“We are actually struggling to recover our trajectory prior to the pandemic and clearly the country is hurting because of our pandemic mismanagement. We could have done it better,” Dr. Ronald Mendoza, economist and dean of Ateneo School of Government, told The Diplomat.

Critics blamed Duterte for not immediately closing the country’s borders to China, fearing diplomatic repercussions. As a result, once the Philippines did lock down, it had one of the longest-running lockdowns in the world. The lockdown saw the closure of many business establishments, schools, and public transportation, leaving millions of Filipinos jobless and hungry. According to one survey, an estimated 7.6 million Filipinos experienced hunger in September 2020, the highest rate since 2012.

“Lockdown is not a strategy for controlling the pandemic. The most successful countries that manage to control the pandemic, protect [their] population, and at the same time keep the economy running are the ones that lock down the least, the ones that would keep their economy running while managing the risk of the spread of coronavirus,” Mendoza said.

“That's the main lesson of the last two years. I am not sure we have learned that lesson as a country,” he added.

But as the Philippines received more vaccines, more and more places have reopened. Duterte’s economic managers said the economy will grow between 7 percent and 9 percent in 2022, up from the 5.6 percent growth reported in 2021.

“I do not share the optimism of our economic managers because it's just simple math. We fell so low. Therefore any opening up would have an impressive growth effect because of the low base,” Mendoza said.

“We hope it will be but there are many reasons to be cautious or at least be cautiously optimistic,” he added.

Mendoza said there is also less confidence in the Duterte government’s capacity to handle another variant or surge without building the capacity of the country’s poor healthcare system or providing support to healthcare workers, many of whom choose to leave the country for better pay abroad.

“If we get out of this right now or [avoid] another surge, it is more out of luck than anything else,” Mendoza said.

The South China Sea

The Philippines’ maritime dispute with China in the West Philippine Sea, the local name for the part of the South China Sea the country claims, remains a crucial unresolved issue that Filipinos will deal with even after Duterte steps down.

The presidential hopefuls have each expressed a willingness to work with China to resolve the dispute, with some even expressing openness to a joint oil exploration venture with Beijing.

“Marcos Jr. is the only candidate who has signaled almost perfect continuity with the incumbent populist pro-China president in Malacañang,” Richard Heydarian, a South China Sea observer and professor of political science, said.

“So it’s really under Bongbong Marcos where we can expect continuation and I would even expect institutionalization of a very China-friendly foreign policy, which essentially means lukewarm relations with Americans and no significant uptick in the Philippines’ assertiveness as far as its claims in the South China Sea is concerned,” he added.

In his six years in office from 2010 to 2016, late President Benigno Aquino III challenged Beijing’s sweeping nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea. Aquino took China to court, winning a landmark case in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in July 2016, which China snubbed.

The award, which invalidated China's vast claim to the resource-rich South China Sea, landed a month into Duterte’s presidency. Instead of using the legal victory as leverage in confronting China, Duterte swept aside the issue in favor of Official Development Assistance from China that he hoped would fund his ambitious infrastructure projects, many of which ultimately did not materialize.

“Generally, what we’re going to see is a strategic acquiescence approach under Bongbong Marcos presidency,” Heydarian said.

Other candidates, like Robredo, Pacquiao, Lacson, and Moreno, have expressed varying degrees of assertiveness when it comes to the South China Sea issue. But it’s an open question of how strongly they would actually challenge China once in office and how amenable they are to cooperation with the Asian superpower.

Further Democratic Erosion

On November 4, 1991, Imelda Marcos and her children returned to the Philippines after President Corazon Aquino, who had replaced her husband, lifted the ban on the Marcoses. Imelda should have faced tax charges, but instead was welcomed like the celebrity that she was before her family was forced to flee the growing anger of Filipinos during the EDSA “People Power” Revolution six years earlier. People who greeted her held up signs that read “Imelda, We Love You!” and “The Hidden Wealth of Marcos is Found Only in the Heart of His People.” One of the conditions set by Aquino was that Imelda would take the late dictator’s corpse to their hometown in Ilocos Norte, in the northern part of the Philippines.

Soon after, in 1992, Imelda Marcos launched her own presidential campaign. It was the Marcos’ family’s first attempt at regaining power after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos’ dictatorship. She lost in the six-way race, ranking fifth in the elections that saw Fidel Ramos, a martial law era figure, become president.

Marcos’ body eventually arrived in Manila in 1993, but was denied a state burial typically reserved for a president. Imelda Marcos later won a seat in Congress representing the province of Leyte, where she held significant power and influence. She attempted to run for president again in 1998, but withdrew two weeks before election day.

Imelda’s children, Imee and Ferdinand Jr., have also found success in their campaigns for local elective offices. Marcos Jr. was elected senator in 2010, while Aquino’s son, Benigno Aquino III, was elected president. Marcos Jr. would eventually run for vice president and lose to Leni Robredo in a bitter race that ended up in a four-year legal drama.

When democracy was restored in the Philippines in 1986 following Marcos’ ouster, it was unthinkable for the family to one day regain power. But the failures of subsequent governments paved the way for the powerful family to sneak back into the political arena.

Duterte overwhelmingly won election in 2016 to the surprise of many. The Marcos family found an ally in the man, who was once unknown to many Filipinos before he was elected. Imee Marocs allegedly funded Duterte’s presidential campaign and for this Duterte, who praised Marcos as a “hero,” said he was indebted to them. Imee has denied giving campaign funds to Duterte.

In Duterte’s first year in office, Marcos was buried at the National Heroes’ Cemetery despite protests from victims of human rights atrocities during his dictatorship. Protesters went to the Supreme Court, but even before the Court could decide, the Marcos family had the dictator buried, with Duterte’s blessing. The event underscored the strong alliance between the Duterte and Marcos families.

The burial of Marcos was also the final step in the family’s long game to rebrand their image and Duterte has helped them in that aspect. Now, Marcos’ son and Duterte’s daughter are running alongside each other for the presidency and the vice presidency, respectively. Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte-Carpio have led in early polls. If the elections were held today, they’d likely win with an overwhelming mandate.

Cleve Arguelles, a professorial lecturer of political science at De La Salle University, said the failures of governments since the 1986 revolution have contributed to the second rise of the Marcoses.

“The promise of shared prosperity and security was not fulfilled, especially to many poor Filipinos. While we have gained our democratic rights by the end of the Marcos dictatorship, the economic hardships that many Filipinos faced continued,” Arguelles told The Diplomat.

“It's not hard to imagine why Filipinos are willing to experiment, and risk the future of the country again, with the Marcos family,” he added.

The growing concern now is that the country will further descend deeper into authoritarianism if the Macros-Duterte tandem gets elected in May 2022.

Dr. Maria Ela Atienza, a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines, said a Marcos Jr. presidential victory means going back to the dark ages.

“What's the implication of having Marcos as the frontrunner and the person to beat in the elections? It says something about the direction of the country,” Atienza told The Diplomat. “If he wins, it's like we are all throwing away our decision in 1986 to re-democratize, and no matter how imperfect, try to strengthen our democratic, and also our processes.”

The Duterte regime has already exacted a sharp illiberal turn in the Philippines, a stark contrast from the Aquino administration that preceded him.

“There's been a lot of democratic erosion in the last few years and [a Marcos victory] will further solidify that trajectory. It also means that we have not really learned our lessons from the past,” Atienza, who conducted an extensive study of the 1987 Philippine Constitution, said.

Under Duterte, the Philippines has seen new human rights violations, chilling impunity, a degradation of the rule of law, and a crackdown on dissent as shown by Duterte’s policy of jailing critics and shutting down media organizations.

“If that’s the decision of the people, that's the choice of the people after all. We say ‘we get the government we deserve.’ If we did not learn from our mistakes before, then perhaps we have to be reminded of our wrong ways by experiencing it again,” Atienza added.

Challenging the Marcos-Duterte Dynasties

Thousands of pink-clad supporters, who call themselves “kakampink,” referring to the political color of Vice President Leni Robredo’s campaign, gathered one recent Sunday at a business district in Metro Manila.

The heat of the day was unbearable, but Robredo’s supporters – mostly young people – came in throngs, carrying banners with witty slogans and their “ambag” or contribution to the program such as free food, snacks, water bottles, hand sanitizers, fans, and even their pets.

Robredo and her running mate, Senator Francis Pangilinan, a seasoned legislator and a close ally of former President Benigno Aquino III, have been touring the country since February, even before the start of the official campaign period.

A group of volunteers and supporters called the Robredo People’s Council and their local chapters organize the events. They raise funds, recruit volunteers, and invite celebrities and artists to entertain prospective voters.

In the past few weeks, the tandem’s youth-driven campaign events have attracted tens of thousands of supporters, to the surprise of many. The other presidential camps, including Marcos and Duterte’s, seem at times to find themselves trying to catch up to the momentum of Robredo’s campaign.

The recent rally in Metro Manila drew a crowd of more than 160,000 people according to police estimates, the biggest rally for any political camp to date.

Away from the crowd during the event, Leda Badong was handing out free doughnuts and rice porridge, or “lugaw” in Filipino. The word lugaw became a derogatory term among some to dismiss Robredo after she served the dish in her campaign events, suggesting that like the rice porridge, she is of little substance. Robredo and her supporters came to embrace the attack and started serving lugaw across the nation.

“I grew up under a Robredo government,” Badong, who is from Naga City where Robredo’s husband, Jesse, was mayor. “I saw [good governance] in my own eyes so when I became able, I donated to [the vice president’s programs] because I saw in my own eyes how the Office of the Vice President raised the bar when we deal with government offices.”

Badong said she was inspired to become a partner of Robredo’s office by donating food to the frontline medical workers during the pandemic.

“Leni should be in Malacañang,” she added.

Robredo, a human rights lawyer and development worker, was catapulted into politics when her husband died in a tragic plane crash in 2012. Jesse Robredo was Aquino’s interior secretary at the time of his death.

Months after Jesse’s death, Leni Robredo decided to run for a seat in Congress, aiming to defeat a political dynasty in her home province. Robredo bested Nelly Favis-Villafuerte, wife of former Congressman Luis Villafuerte and scion of a local political dynasty. She was immediately put into the national spotlight.

Robredo then ran for vice president in 2016, convinced that she was the only person who could beat Marcos. And she did.

This election, Marcos and Robredo are facing off again. Supporters of Robredo believe that she’s the only one who can stop another Marcos presidency as they hope for a repeat of her come-from-behind victory in 2016. Many political observers believe that the fight is only between the two, though the gap is wide.

Despite Robredo’s power to inspire people to move and organize, big rallies do not automatically translate to votes. Recent presidential surveys put Robredo behind Marcos, but with Marcos is way out front with an unprecedented 60 percent in a late February poll and Robredo in second with 15 percent. Nevertheless, some political observers are optimistic that there will be change closer to election day, greater momentum that could push her ahead.

“It's not impossible at this stage because Duterte started making inroads around March and then in April, he became a viable presidential candidate,” Professor Maria Ela Atienza told The Diplomat, recalling Duterte’s 2016 come-from-behind victory.

“In the same way that Leni became a viable vice presidential candidate around April and then they never stopped. They carried on that momentum. So that's something very important, to continue that momentum,” she said.

Atienza emphasized the importance of doing the groundwork and reaching the masses, who she says still prefer Marcos over Robredo.

“If the Robredo campaign succeeds, the volunteers will do much of the work,” Atienza said.

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Some 60 million Filipinos are expected to vote on May 9 while the Philippines is still weathering the coronavirus pandemic and the threat of new variants loom.

Many Filipinos are hoping for change and believe that their chosen presidential candidates will carry them through in the next six years. As Filipinos go hungry in the pandemic, it’s hard to be optimistic for a bright future.

“Whether BBM (Bongbong Marcos) wins or loses, he still won’t know me,” Jaime Francisco told me before we reached our destination. “If he wins, I’m still a taxi driver.”