New Thrilla in Manila: What’s at Stake in the 2022 Philippines Presidential Election?
“Forget the law on human rights. If I make it to the presidential palace…You drug pushers…you better go out. Because I’d kill you. I’ll dump all of you into Manila Bay, and fatten all the fish.” - Rodrigo Duterte
President Rodrigo Duterte made this declaration at his final campaign rally in 2016. Unlike most politicians who lie during elections, Duterte seems to have stuck to his word – his administration has forgotten the law on human rights, according to activists raising the case of drug war victims.
On Sunday 9 May, the Philippines is scheduled to hold a high-stakes presidential election that has put a spotlight on the nation’s troubled democracy and confronted its controversial history head-on like few elections before it. Despite the focus on the past, scrutinising the Martial Law era of Ferdinand Marcos, it is hard to ignore the fallout of the shadowy war on drugs that has garnered criticism across the world. How these factors, combined with opposition leaders fighting for a place at the political table will affect the polls is yet to be seen. Additionally, the rise of misinformation in a time of economic hardship, COVID-19 troubles and natural disasters will undoubtedly have a huge influence. Ultimately, only one thing is certain: it is going to be very hard to predict the outcome.
Duterte & Marcos
“The one indisputable reality of dictatorship is that dissent, insult and malevolent language do not go unpunished, if it is allowed at all.” – Ferdinand Marcos
Few could have predicted this: the children of the Philippines’ two most controversial leaders have joined forces to continue their fathers’ troubled legacies. Filipino politics has tended to be dominated by powerful dynasties, so it was no wonder Duterte wanted a successor to rescue his reputation, severely damaged by his lacklustre response to the COVID-19 pandemic that has seen him criticised by even his most loyal supporters.
So who better than his daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, currently serving as Mayor of Davao City, a position her father famously held for over twenty years after coming to power in the wake of the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted President Marcos? In October 2021, however, instead of launching a presidential campaign, she confirmed her bid for mayoral re-election. It appeared that the 76-year-old president wasn’t ready to give up power just yet. Duterte loyalist, Senator Bong Go announced his bid for the presidency with the elder Duterte, in a Putin-esque move, running as vice president. The public backlash was significant enough to force Bong Go to withdraw his candidacy. On 9 November, Duterte-Carpio withdrew her bid for mayoral re-election and soon after entered the vice presidential race allied with an unlikely partner.
While they may campaign together, Filipino presidents and vice presidents are elected separately. Consequently, they can be from opposite ends of the political spectrum and still be compelled to work together. Moreover, in practical (rather than formal) terms, elected leaders seem able to choose political parties rather than the other way round. Notably, this interesting political system derived from the constitution drafted following the overthrow of the infamous Marcoses.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr, known as Bongbong, has stormed ahead of his competitors dominating the presidential polls. He was bolstered in November 2021 when Duterte-Caprio left the party she had founded three years earlier and was sworn in as a member of Lakas-CMD after she attended the party chairman’s daughter’s wedding. Shortly after, she was endorsed by Bongbong’s Federal Party as his running mate.
Despite insinuating Marcos Jr is a weak cocaine user, Duterte seems to have acknowledged that his daughter’s campaign with him was the closest he would get to a dynastic legacy, which highlights what this alliance represents.
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos are remembered by people in different ways. On the one hand, some see the era as a time of stability and prosperity, marked by strong leadership, a view their son has been keen to uphold. On the other, many recall the crackdown on civil liberties, lack of respect for human rights and the regime’s tight control of the media. Globally, the Marcoses are remembered for the estimated $5-10 billion the kleptocrats stole, funds that left a black hole in public finances with no realistic hope of ever being recovered.
Defiant and confident after a disqualification case against him was dismissed, Marcos Jr, a convicted tax evader, seems determined to continue his father’s work. Duterte-Caprio, too, appears very protective of her father’s legacy. Despite what the polls suggest, nothing is certain with two of the most high-profile candidates in this race representing a very specific version of Filipino politics.
The Boxer & “Radical Love”
“Love is not measured by forbearance alone but by a readiness to do battle. Whoever loves must do battle for the beloved.” – Leni Robredo
From alliances to rivalries. Vice President Leni Robredo, the opposition front runner, spent most of the last five years at loggerheads with her boss, Duterte, especially over his brutal drug war tactics. Robredo and Marcos Jr last went head-to-head in the 2016 vice presidential election. After filing a protest at the Electoral Tribunal, Marcos Jr was humiliated when he demanded a recount that showed that Robredo had not only beaten him the first time, but actually by a further 15,000 votes.
Now the two are set to face each other again, this time competing for the top prize. Robredo and her Liberal Party have made “radical love” the motif of their campaign – a symbolic antithesis to the president’s (and indeed Marcos’) more aggressive style of leadership. Despite being Duterte’s deputy, she has made their differences abundantly clear. Long heralded by anti-Duterte movements, Robredo notably revealed during a televised speech that the government had no plan to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic - before she announced ten of her own ideas, much to the president’s chagrin.
In January 2022, the candidates went on GMA Network to announce their plans to handle the nation’s most pressing issues – with the notable absence of Marcos Jr. (who alleged network bias leading to the trending #marcosduwag, or #marcoscoward), Robredo’s words dominated. The separation of her office from Duterte’s has led many to praise her hands-on pandemic response involving supplying PPE and other essentials, weakening her boss’ position, especially as he is caught up in a corruption scandal about potentially misappropriated COVID-19 funds.
But it’s not just the opposition that has used that scandal - it has also compounded a series of problems dividing Duterte’s own party.
“I’m a fighter and will always be a fighter, inside and outside the ring,” proclaimed boxing icon-turned-senator Manny Pacquiao when announcing his presidential bid, nominated by his faction of the ruling PDP-Laban party. While the large party has a myriad of different views, the main split between pro-Duterte and pro-Pacquiao factions seems, like many products around the world, to have been made in China.
The South China Sea dispute is an old conflict that fluctuates between hot and cold confrontation. Though it involves most of the regional players, in the Philippines Pacquiao has, since being elected to the Senate in 2016, heavily criticised Duterte for allegedly down-playing the seriousness of China’s incursions in exchange for promises of infrastructure funding from Beijing. These Chinese promises appear to have been mostly unrewarded. Furthermore, several corruption scandals have led Pacquiao to call for cleaner government, ironically taking a similar stance to Robredo in his opposition to dynastic, elitist politics.
Most significantly, Pacquiao was openly opposed to Duterte & Bong Go’s joint bid, especially as (according to him) he was not consulted despite being “acting party president”. Despite Duterte publicly calling for unity, members of his faction have already tried to subvert Pacquiao’s campaign, for instance by attempting to have him disqualified. Ironically, Pacquiao seems to have based his campaign off Duterte’s from 2016 – framing himself as a political outsider (also from Mindanao) with an unwavering moral compass. Although he lags behind most of the other candidates in the polls, the boxer’s self-belief remains strong - as he put it: “Nothing is impossible if it’s ordained by God.”
How his and Robredo’s campaigns will complicate things, along with that of the Mayor of Manila as well as a mix of both well-known and lesser-known figures, is hard to envisage. But Pacquiao does make a somewhat valid point: in this election, nothing is impossible.
Typhoons, Drugs & Lies
Like all elections worldwide in recent years, misinformation has been a persistent thorn in voters’ sides. Most people agree that elections should be held with voters being able to understand what the candidates stand for and how their records stand. But falsehoods on all sides, whether about the Marcos era or the present activities of the main contenders, have hindered fairness.
Marcos Jr’s campaign praised Twitter for deleting accounts guilty of misinformation, including many that were actually supportive of him – his chief of staff thanked the social media giant for “keeping a close watch against platform manipulation, spam and other attempts to undermine the public conversation.”
While some argue social media platforms need to do much more, it is at least promising that almost all main candidates can agree on the dangers of fake news in elections and the need to eradicate it.
By its shadowy nature, the war on drugs has not been mentioned a lot so far during campaigning. “If [drug suspects] pull out a gun, kill them. If they don’t, kill them still,” Duterte said in 2016, one of many comments that seem to encourage the police to kill with impunity. The war on drugs has been criticised for allowing the police and unofficial actors to commit state-sanctioned violent, and often extrajudicial, killings. The government justifies their action as an effective anti-drug trafficking strategy, but even they struggled when the police admitted that there was no evidence that the 17-year-old boy they shot and killed in 2017 had any drug involvement.
Despite thousands dead and condemnation from the head of the Philippines Catholic Church, the bloody conflict remains in the periphery of the election for some and very much at the forefront for others.
“The fields and boats of our farmers and fisherfolk have been decimated,” described Arlene Bagao, governor of the Dinagat islands, recovering from the devastating super Typhoon Rai (known as Odette locally) that struck in December 2021. “[We] have lost our homes,” she continued, “Walls and roofs were torn and blown off.” Leaving hundreds dead and displaced, and causing unthinkable damage, Rai has exacerbated the suffering already compounded by the outbreak of the Omicron variant. Politics aside, many voters will rightly have the pandemic and natural disaster responses at the front of their minds when casting their ballot. The economic damage has reverberated nationwide and no matter who the new president is, they will face an uphill struggle to improve the situation.
The Philippines is one of the most vibrant and fastest developing countries in the world with huge potential for growth and positive change, not just within the country, but also in the wider Asia-Pacific region. Though this election has and will continue to prove divisive, the act of democracy, in a time when it is increasingly under threat, should nevertheless be commended.
Robredo explained her campaign theme by saying that it is “easier to argue but it is more radical to love.” But that’s a politicised statement.
A variation that many people, no matter their political views and regardless of who they vote for in May, can agree on is: yes, it is easier to argue but it is far more beneficial to compromise and work together.
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