Marcos-Duterte dynastic feud against public interest

Composite photo of Vice-President Sara Duterte and President Ferdinant Marcos Jr. AFP

#opinion

The political rivalry between Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and Vice-President Sara Duterte took a dramatic turn on May 11 when the latter was impeached a second time in two years.

Marcos partisans controlling the lower house of the Philippine Congress had ensured an overwhelming impeachment vote.

That same day, Duterte allies in the Senate engineered a coup to elect one of their own as Senate president, with Senator Ronald dela Rosa unexpectedly emerging from months in hiding to break a tie in the vote.

As former president Rodrigo Duterte’s then police chief, dela Rosa faces an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for his role in alleged extrajudicial killings during the administration’s drug war.

He went back into hiding following an overnight stand-off in the legislative chamber, where there were gunshots as law enforcement officers tried to serve the arrest warrant.

But the die is cast. A Duterte-controlled Senate has since morphed into a court that is likely to acquit the vice-president, who survived last year when the country’s highest court nullified her first impeachment.

The political high drama in Manila has little to do with any real or perceived failings of the vice-president and everything to do with her running feud with Marcos.

Philippine presidents are constitutionally barred from re-election and Sara is the frontrunner to succeed him in 2028.

Only an impeachment conviction can derail an expected second Duterte presidency, which explains the high political stakes Marcos faces to stop his vice-president in her tracks.

Unsurprisingly, hardly any substantive political or economic reforms needed to right the Philippines’ perpetually listless ship is taking place amid the political turmoil.

Any remaining bad blood between the Marcos and Duterte families is likely to have irrevocably solidified when the president engineered (though he denies it) a police ambush at Manila Airport to arrest the elder Duterte and fly him off to the Hague to stand trial.

In the face of a massive public works scandal over incomplete or non-existent flood-control projects implicating numerous political names, including those tied to Marcos, the president obviously has a vested interest in preventing heavy political payback should the vice-president succeed him.

The chattering class in Manila is deluding itself in trying to portray the current impeachment drama as an exercise in high-level accountability.

It is almost anything but that, given how the same few political dynasties habitually throw public-funded largesse to firm up political support once elected.

The political “restoration” when Corazon Aquino replaced the elder Marcos came, more or less, full circle 40 years later with the 2022 election of Marcos Jr, propelled by a strong tailwind from the Duterte family.

The stubborn popularity of the Duterte name today speaks to an electorate inured to the elusive promise of liberal political discourse that Manila’s educated class equally stubbornly clings to.

Something must give in this long-running political stalemate, but ordinary Filipinos may need to be patient for a lot longer.

The writer views developments in Malaysia, the region and the world from his vantage point in Kuching. First published by New Straits Times.

-Khmer Times-