It takes a nation to raise a dictator's son

Current History

Duterte appeals to those in Philippine society yearning for the reimposition of ‘discipline’ in the spirit of the former dictator Marcos.

Duterte’s rise in the polls has to do with frustration and anger with the limits of the reformist agenda of the Aquino administration, but more generally with the “yellow” good governance pledged regimes stretching back to Fidel Ramos and Corazon Aquino.

World Insight, 2023

CaveDweller99 Shutterstock.com Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. won the May 2022 presidential election landslide in the Philippines. He is the son of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who imposed martial law in 1972 and was exiled by the People Power Revolution in 1986. The Marcos family had been sued for ill-gotten wealth, unpaid taxes, and human rights violations. Nevertheless, Marcos Jr. got 58.8 percent of the votes, the highest and the first majority share after the democratization, gaining more than double Leni Robredo's votes. In the vice presidential election, Marcos Jr.'s running mate Sara Duterte garnered 61.5 percent of the votes, although her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, had been accused of thousands of extrajudicial killings in his "war on drugs." Most of the coverage attributes Marcos Jr.'s win to "dictatorship nostalgia" by voters disillusioned with postdemocratization politics and manipulation by fake news that spread across social media. But these factors are not enough to fully grasp the worldview of the Marcoses' supporters. Why did Filipinos, who once stood up to attain democracy, elect a dictator's son for president? Why did so many Filipinos seek hope in the past dictatorship era despite the streak of high economic growth since the mid-2000s? This article will explore changes in the Philippine society that lie behind this election result.

Asia Pacific Report, 2022

Sadly, the Philippines has sold its soul. Thirty six years ago a People Power revolution ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos after two decades of harsh authoritarian rule. Yesterday, in spite of a rousing and inspiring Pink Power would-be revolution, the dictator’s only son and namesake “Bongbong” Marcos Jr seems headed to be elected 17th president of the Philippines. And protests have broken out after the provisional tallies that give Marcos a “lead of millions” with more than 97 percent of the vote counted. Official results could still take some days. Along with Bongbong, his running mate Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, daughter of strongman Rodrigo Duterte, president for the past six years and who has been accused of human rights violations over the killings of thousands of alleged suspects in a so-called “war on drugs”, is decisively in the lead as vice-president.

In June of 2016, a new president was elected in the Philippine's marking what many believe to be a radical shift in political directions. Bringing a combination of condemnation, praise, and frequent debate at both the national and international levels of politics, this change in leadership is anything but insignificant. Through an aggressive and often lethal approach to governance with an emphasis on law and order, the consequences have already been significant. Notable consequences include large increases in lethal violence, decreases in general criminal activity, and major shifts in international alliances. In this paper, the author provides a context for this shift and explanations for both the negative and the positive reactions.

Pacific Journalism Review : Te Koakoa

I was a martial law baby. My generation grew up watching the unending spectacle of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Remember this was the 20th Century, long before YouTube and Netflix. I would have preferred to watch Zombie Apocalypse but that wasn’t an option. There were only five TV channels and three newspapers, all owned by Marcos cronies. We didn’t call it 'fake news' then but it was vintage 1970s propaganda—obvious and crude. I was in first grade when Marcos was first elected president. I studied across the street from Malacañang, in a school for girls run by the Sisters of the Holy Ghost. I remember that in the 1960s, the streets around the presidential mansion were busy, filled with traffic and commerce. On Thursdays, hundreds flocked to the church nearby to pray to St. Jude, patron of hopeless causes. I was barely in my teens when martial law was declared. Suddenly the streets were silenced. The palace gates were shuttered. Barbed wire barricades kept people away. T...

Pacific Review, 2009

Over the past decade, and especially over the past few years, political corruption, fraud and violence in the Philippines have reached such alarming levels that many Filipinos have grown despondent, even cynical, about their country's political system. Exploring the suitability of the concepts of ‘predatory state’ and ‘patrimonial oligarchic state’ to the Philippines, I find that the regime rather than the state is the more appropriate unit of analysis. I argue that the predatory regime, controlled by a rapacious elite, that held sway during the years of the dictator Marcos, has made a comeback in the Philippines. Under the governments of President Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, traditional clientelism has given way to pervasive corruption, a systematic plunder of government resources and the rapid corrosion of public institutions into tools for predation. Instead of just being a throwback to the ‘old corruption’ of the Marcos era, however, the current predatory regime represents a ‘new corruption’ adapted to the ways of economic and political liberalization. While not as authoritarian as Marcos' regime, it has growing authoritarian tendencies: centralization of power in the executive; heightened repression; rigged elections; a much weakened rule of law; numerous political appointees in the bureaucracy; and increased influence of the military. A shift to naked authoritarianism, however, cannot be ruled out. As forces for democratic reform are much too weak, the predatory regime may be around for some time or it could give way, at best, to a more traditional clientelist electoral regime. Prospects for democratic consolidation in the Philippines in the near future appear bleak.

Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia, 2022

In this essay, I argue that the political developments leading to and until the conclusion of the 2022 Philippine elections show that a section of the country’s elite families are shifting away from the usual anarchic competition to a path of unity to insulate themselves and the institution of familial rule from threats of reform and other similar challenges in the future. This process can be described as the formation of a metaphorical Philippine Leviathan state, similar to how previously fractured communal, economic, and political elites in Malaysia and Singapore have come together to build strong authoritarian states to permanently protect themselves from the destabilizing threats of communism and liberal democratization (Slater 2010). I develop four points to illustrate my argument. First, the popularity of former president and populist par excellence Rodrigo Roa Duterte has driven a demand for a continuity government among the 2022 election voters. This has benefited the Marcos-Duterte candidacies. Second, the tandem has also taken advantage of the Marcos family’s well-oiled myth- making machinery. Although beneficial, none of these could have won them the elections if not for the careful brokering of arranged marriages among some of the country’s most dominant political families. This is my third point. Finally, I explain why the political conditions in post-authoritarian Philippines have motivated the country’s elites to band together rather than compete, a longstanding practice in elections, to fortify defenses against challenges to their individual and collective rule.

The Philippine presidency is the first and most durable in Asia. As a political institution, it has been rendered enough constitutional power to have a formal semblance of a " strong presidency " but apparently not enough to totally control strategic interests in Philippine society. Applying the concept of " political time, " this article will discuss the rise of the 16th president Rodrigo Duterte within the cycle of presidential regimes in the Philippines. Furthermore, it will analyze the nature of presidential power in the Philippines by identifying the strategic moments that lie between structural regimes and agential choices. Lastly, it will delineate the emergence of regime narratives as " governing scripts " that bind together a coalition of interests within a particular institutional context.