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Ferdinand Marcos, the strongman who ruled the Philippines with an iron
grip for two decades, may have died over 30 years ago, but his ghost haunts
the Philippine presidential election that is slated to take place on May 9.
Marcos, whose regime was characterized by fraud, corruption, and political
repression, was ousted from power by a popular revolt in 1986 and later died
in exile in Hawaii. This year, however, his son, Ferdinand “Bongbong”
Marcos, Jr., a 64-year-old former senator, is the leading contender for the
Philippine presidency.
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The rise of the strongmen’s children reveals more than their parents’
enduring hold on the Philippine political imagination; it reflects the failure
of the country’s transition to democracy after Marcos’s fall. The nascent
democratic system that formed after 1986 had all the features of a real
democracy—a liberal constitution, competitive elections, a free press, and
vibrant civil society—but it concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a
few families and mired millions of others in misery. Once ensconced in
office, rent-seeking families blocked reform and reduced democratic politics
to a contest among clans. Corruption, rising inequality, and intractable
poverty fueled frustration with democratic gridlock. Today, political
dynasties dominate local government posts and make up two-thirds of the
Philippine Congress. Now they hope to capture the country’s two highest
offices. Although the elder Marcos is long dead, the struggle between
democracy and autocracy in the Philippines is far from over—and the
upcoming election could determine the country’s path for decades to come.
DICTATORIAL DÉJÀ VU
For many Filipinos, the May 9 election could be the most consequential race
since Marcos’s ouster, marking an important crossroads in the country’s
quest for democracy. His son’s main competitor is the current vice president,
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Philippine democracy has been under siege for the past several years, much
to the chagrin of those who fought to unseat Marcos and restore democracy
in the 1980s. Like their counterparts around the world, Philippine
democrats were once secure in the belief that history was on their side. After
all, they were the heirs to the People Power Revolution, the three-day
uprising during which citizens armed with prayers and flowers protested
against the Marcos regime and ultimately forced the dictator from power.
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But in 2016, when Duterte was elected president, the Philippines became
one of a growing number of hybrid regimes around the world in which
elected strongmen have clamped down on dissent, muzzled the press, and
channeled popular frustration with democracy into rage against the so-called
other—minorities, migrants, and, under Duterte, drug addicts and criminals.
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promised safety and stability for ordinary Filipinos. He steered the public’s
focus to crime and offered a swift solution—“Kill all the drug lords”—as a
panacea for the country’s troubles. His rhetoric was so persuasive and he
himself so popular that the liberal opposition was savaged in the 2019
midterm elections: for the first time in 80 years, not a single opposition
candidate was elected to the Senate. Having revived strongman rule, Duterte
is now passing the baton to his daughter and the son of a dictator he
admires.
These captured votes are simply politics as usual in the Philippines, where
regional and linguistic loyalties swing elections. But the outsized influence of
social media disinformation has set this year’s election apart. Over the years,
the Marcos and Duterte political machines have built industrial-scale social
media operations and deployed them to such great effect that the opposition
camp appears less concerned with on-the-ground campaigning than with
resolving a perceived asymmetry in the information war. “If Marcos wins,”
said Barry Gutierrez, a spokesperson for the Robredo campaign, “then it will
be a triumph of the disinformation politics pioneered by the Duterte
campaign in 2016 and taken to a new level by the hyperactive, well-funded
social media machinery of the Marcos camp.”
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Rodrigo Duterte’s shrewd use of social media has changed the calculus of
Philippine political campaigns, and his techniques are now being replicated
by the professionals running Marcos’ and Sara Duterte’s online campaigns.
During his tenure as president, Duterte has hired bloggers and social media
influencers to propagate his message and spew vitriol against his critics. He
also kneecapped Manila’s critical press, suing journalists, denying a franchise
to the largest independent TV network, and threatening to launch tax and
other investigations of critical media proprietors. This assault on the
traditional media landscape of the Philippines has helped the Marcos
dynasty to worm its way back into the country’s political life by peddling
alternative narratives glorifying the Marcos era that have taken hold among
younger, Internet-savvy generations.
HISTORICAL FICTIONS
With Marcos’s rise as the 2022 presidential frontrunner, his family is reaping
the benefits of their long game to reclaim power and status in the
Philippines. In 1986, they fled the country onboard U.S. Army helicopters,
toting diaper boxes crammed with cash and jewels that, along with money
stashed in foreign bank accounts, funded their lives abroad. When Marcos
died in exile in Honolulu in 1989, Filipinos had good reason to think that
the Marcos era was over.
But in 1991, the dictator’s widow, Imelda Marcos, was allowed back to the
Philippines, where she faced 60 criminal and civil charges, including graft
and tax evasion. These charges did not quash her political aspirations: in
1992, she tested the political waters by running for president. She won only
ten percent of the vote—with the memory of the dictatorship still fresh, the
Marcoses remained political pariahs.
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But not for long. Philippine political elites eventually succumbed to the
Marcoses’ money and clout, paving the way for the family’s political
rehabilitation. Weak institutions failed to hold the Marcoses to account.
While the cases against them languished in the country’s compromised
courts, members of the family sought public office, using each election to
rebuild their local and national base. In 1995, Imelda won a congressional
seat in Leyte, her home province. Starting in 1998, both Marcos and his
sister Imee were elected multiple times as governors and congressional
representatives of their father’s native province of Ilocos Norte. In 2010,
Marcos was elected to the Senate, and in 2016, he came close to being vice
president.
All the while, the Marcos family was erasing and rewriting history, reaching
out especially to younger voters who had no memory of the dictatorship, and
whose textbooks—mostly unchanged since the 1980s—still extolled the
elder Marcos and his vision of a New Society, which he declared would end
poverty and inequality in the Philippines. An alternative narrative—that of
the Marcos era as an age of progress and prosperity—took on new life, going
viral on platforms such as YouTube that are popular among young people
who could access them for free on their phones. These videos glamorized the
Marcos family and elided any mention of the corruption or human rights
abuses that were rampant throughout the dictator’s rule.
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the voters preparing to head to the polls well know, the elites who have
thrived in this broken system cannot be entrusted to repair it.
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