Philippines Reward Duterte, Punish Marcos
Opposition and independent candidates scored big gains in the Philippine midterm elections held on Monday; domestic politics, cost of living, controversy over national budget were key issues.
Alternative candidates score big gains in polls
Politics, rising costs of living weigh on election results in Philippines: Analysts
Opposition and independent candidates are scoring big gains in the Philippine midterm elections held on Monday, with analysts noting that domestic politics, rising costs of living and controversies over the national budget have weighed on the results.
An estimated 70 million registered voters cast their ballots for candidates that competed for around 18,000 national and local positions — including the posts of 12 senators, 254 district representatives, 63 party-list representatives and some governors, as well as thousands of provincial board members and councillors.
While pre-election surveys showed that administration candidates would dominate the polls, the partial, unofficial election results revealed a different story. Analysts said the arrest and subsequent detention at the International Criminal Court of former president Rodrigo Duterte, the rising cost of living and controversies over the national budget have weighed on the President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.-backed candidates.
Dennis Coronacion, chairman of the political science department at the Manila-based University of Santo Tomas, said the election results showed the Filipino voters "are not very fond of" the current administration.
Young voters
Coronacion also noted that over 60 percent of the Philippine voting population was aged 44 and below — the millennials and the Generation Z. These young and idealistic voters, he said, are fed up with traditional politicians who have been winning elections in the past few years.
"They chose alternative candidates. They have higher standards," Coronacion said, adding that the youth voted on the basis of the candidates' competence and qualifications.
The senatorial elections reaffirmed the declining public support for the current president, while Duterte remains popular. Allies of Leni Robredo, former vice-president, also succeeded in their electoral bid.
Bong Go, who ran for reelection under Duterte's PDP Laban party, is the senatorial race's topnotcher, garnering over 26 million votes.
Bam Aquino, Robredo's former campaign manager, was placed second with over 20 million votes. Another Robredo ally was also poised to win as senator.
Five of the administration-backed senatorial bets are expected to win. However, it was Sara Duterte who endorsed the candidacy of one of these five candidates.
Lucio Blanco Pitlo III, a research fellow at the Asia-Pacific Pathways to Progress Foundation, said the opposition gained as voters viewed Duterte's arrest as "politically engineered" by the administration.
Duterte, even while detained at The Hague, Netherlands, has drawn a commanding lead in the mayoralty race in Davao City, southern Philippines. Robredo won by a landslide as mayor of Naga City, in the province of Camarines Sur.
Coronacion said Duterte's "magic" is still there and his political machinery is still functioning.
For Anna Rosario Malindog-Uy, vice-president for external affairs at the Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute, there are indications that the current administration "may be facing the situation of a 'lame-duck' presidency", going by the plummeting public support.
Malindog-Uy cited independent pollster Pulse Asia's survey that showed that out of the 2,400 Filipinos polled in late March, only 25 percent said they approved of Marcos' performance.
This was 17 points lower than his 42 percent approval score in February. In contrast, the approval rate of Sara Duterte, vice-president and eldest daughter of Rodrigo Duterte, rose from 52 percent to 59 percent during the same period.
Such a significant change in support rate "reflects the weakening of the political foundation" of the current administration, she said.
Contact the writer at prime@chinadailyapac.com
https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/611661#Alternative-candidates-score-big-gains-in-polls--2025-05-14
Marcos' hold on senate grows shaky while Duterte wins mayor race from jail
Power, survival and revenge: What’s at stake in the Philippines election?
Dominated by a fiery feud between two political dynasties, the Philippine mid-term elections have thrown up unexpected results that may shake President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr's hold on the senate.
According to the latest count of 80% of the votes, Marcos allies appear to have captured fewer senate seats than expected.
Meanwhile his rival, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte who is detained in The Hague over his drug war that killed thousands, has been elected mayor of his family's stronghold.
The fate of his daughter Vice President Sara Duterte, who is facing an impeachment trial, remains in the balance.
The mid-terms held on Monday saw 18,000 seats contested, from local officials to governors and senators. It served as a proxy war between Marcos Jr and Sara Duterte, who were one-time allies.
The senate race, where 12 seats were up for grabs, was closely watched as it affects Sara Duterte's trial, which she has called "political persecution".
The popular vice-president, who is widely expected to run for president in 2028, is facing the prospect of a ban from politics, should a jury made up of senators vote to impeach her.
Many people had expected Marcos Jr's picks to win most of the 12 seats. But according to the latest count of 80% of the votes, only six from his camp appear to have won seats, and one of them has also been endorsed by the Dutertes.
In the top five ranking - a barometer of public popularity - only one Marcos-backed candidate, broadcaster Erwin Tulfo, made it.
Meanwhile, at the very top of the list is a Duterte loyalist - long-time aide Christopher "Bong" Go - while at number three is another Duterte ally, former police chief Ronald "Bato" dela Rosa.
The Duterte camp appears to have won at least four seats. They include Marcos Jr's older sister Imee, who recently bolted from her brother's alliance to side with the Dutertes.
What complicates things is that it is still unclear how Marcos' allies in the senate will move on Sara Duterte's impeachment. Their loyalty can shift, as senators also balance their own interests and ambitions with their political allegiances.
Return of Aquino Family
Meanwhile, two people who are not affiliated with either camp appear to have also won senate seats.
They are Paolo Benigno "Bam" Aquino, and an Aquino ally, Francis Pangilinan.
Bam Aquino, the cousin of a former president, has in fact clinched second place in the rankings, in what he called a "very, very surprising" result.
It marks the first time in years that voters had chosen outside the Marcos and Duterte dynasties.
The Aquino family was the Marcoses' main political nemesis in the 1980s and early 1990s before the rise of the Dutertes.
It was the assassination of opposition leader Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr in 1983 that galvanised protests against Ferdinand Marcos Sr - the current president's father - culminating in the Marcos family's ouster and exile in 1986.
Monday's result signals their comeback after being wiped out of national politics in recent years.
Results so far also show the Dutertes have managed to retain their power base in the south of the country, just two months after the 80-year-old populist leader Rodrigo Duterte was arrested at Manila Airport and flown to the Netherlands on the same day to face the International Criminal Court.
It was his arrest - approved by Marcos Jr - which pushed the rivalry between his daughter and the current president to boiling point, a few weeks after the president's allies in the House of Representatives voted to impeach Vice-President Duterte.
Rodrigo Duterte was always expected to win as mayor, given the family has held the post since the mid-1980s.
Duterte himself led Davao, a sprawling southern metropolis, for two decades before he was elected president in 2016. There, he showcased his drug war that he credited for the city's success, and won him the support of millions far beyond its borders.
His youngest son, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor, was elected vice-mayor, meaning he can discharge his father's duties in his absence. Another Duterte son, Paolo, was re-elected as congressman. His grandchildren won local posts.
Duterte's name remained on the ballot as he has not been convicted of any crime. He beat the scion of a smaller rival political family.
Maintaining a political base in Davao city in the south is crucial for the Dutertes - it is where they get the most voter support.
The election was not just a battle between the two families, however.
Monday's vote saw long queues under temperatures of 33C (91F) and sporadic reports of violence and vote machines malfunctioning.
Like past elections, song-and-dance, showbusiness-style campaigns played out on stage and on social media, underscoring the country's personality and celebrity politics that sometimes overshadow more pressing issues such as corruption, high cost of living and creaking infrastructure.
Additional reporting by Kelly Ng
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk24jxk646o
The Dutertes Aren’t Going Away Without a Fight: What to Take Away From the Philippines’ Election
Instead, however, the election, in which tens of millions of Filipinos braved extreme heat to vote Monday for some 18,000 national and local offices across the archipelago, marked a resurgence for the Dutertes, according to preliminary results.
Rodrigo himself and his youngest son Sebastian were elected mayor and vice mayor of Davao City, where Rodrigo previously served as mayor for more than 22 years before becoming President in 2016 and where the family has long held power. Given that Rodrigo remains in detention in The Hague, Sebastian is expected to discharge the duties of the office.
In the Senate, where Sara’s fate will be decided, key Duterte allies resoundingly won re-election, including Christopher Go, Rodrigo’s former aide, who was the most-voted-for senator, and Ronald dela Rosa, the former national police chief at the height of Rodrigo’s deadly drug war, who ranked third in the overall vote tally. The two, who also face potential arrest by the ICC, staunchly defended the drug war during their first terms in the Senate. Another Duterte-allied lawmaker from the lower legislative chamber, Rep. Rodante Marcoleta, snagged a Senate seat. Marcoleta previously said that he would defend Sara against impeachment.
While some opponents had hoped that an electoral defeat for the Dutertes, following the other blows they’d already faced in the run-up to the vote, might once and for all push the family out of relevance, the Dutertes have instead appeared to reassert their unprecedented influence, experts say. “You’re talking about a President who was more popular when he stepped out of office than when he assumed office,” says Aries Arugay, who chairs the department of political science at the University of the Philippines. Rodrigo’s drug war, like similar ones in Colombia, Mexico, and Thailand, may have earned international criticism, but it also similarly won a significant amount of domestic support, says Arugay, “because of their visuality and their ability to sow fear, which is often a proxy for effectiveness.”
Emily Soriano’s family did not believe it at first when they heard of Rodrigo Duterte’s shocking arrest on March 11. Like many other families in the Philippines, hers had held off on their sighs of relief until Duterte was flown to the Netherlands later that evening to face charges related to his brutal anti-drug campaign that human rights groups say killed more than 30,000 people.
Soriano’s son, who was 15, was among seven people killed in Caloocan, Metro Manila, in December 2016, as part of that campaign. “Since 2017 up until today, we’ve long called for an end to the killings, and for Duterte and the policemen to be held to account,” Soriano tells TIME tearily. “That call hasn’t gone to waste,” she added.
Indeed, Rodrigo’s arrest was no certainty. For years, he and his allies had fought the ICC to avoid accountability. But as the Dutertes’ rivalry with the powerful Marcoses, who have their own despotic family history, intensified—Rodrigo and Marcos Jr. have traded criticisms over foreign and domesticpolicy as well as accusations of drug use, and Sara has stepped up her interest in succeeding Marcos Jr. in the 2028 presidential election—the government led by the Marcoses and their allies proved less willing to protect the controversial Duterte family that it had once entered into a delicate alliance with to win the presidency in 2022.
But while Soriano waits for Rodrigo’s ultimate fate to be decided before the ICC, she admits that back home the specter of a Duterte return to power looms. While some observers previously suggested that Rodrigo’s arrest could mark the beginning of the end for the dynasty, the midterm election results appear to show otherwise.
“This is not the end,” Sara Duterte-Carpio said in a statement after the election. “It’s a renewed beginning.” The Vice President framed her family’s and their allies’ showing in the polls as the start of an opposition movement against the Marcos-led government. “We will continue to hold the government accountable, advocate for the issues that matter, and work tirelessly to serve as a strong and constructive opposition,” she said.
For Marcos, the final years of his presidency will now likely be marked by further division and challenges. Once extremely popular, he has seen his approval ratings plummet partly due to his Administration’s performance on addressing domestic issues, such as rising costs of living and concerns about corruption, but also in large part because of the rival dynastic feud. The Dutertes and their allies have claimed that Sara’s impeachment and Rodrigo’s arrest were politically motivated and used both to consolidate support, especially in the southern part of the Philippines, a historic Duterte stronghold.
Sara’s public ratings went up after her father’s arrest, while senatorial candidates allied with the Dutertes like Go and Dela Rosa also saw boosts in opinion polls. The Dutertes’ supporters “were not that noisy prior to the arrest,” says Arugay.
Richard Heydarian, a Manila-based political analyst who lectures at the University of the Philippines, says the boost could also be in part attributed to disinformation campaigns. Reuters reported in April that a network of social media accounts sprang up in the wake of Rodrigo’s arrest, coordinating praise of the Dutertes and attacks on the ICC and Marcoses. Israel-based Cyabra, the tech firm that discovered the network, told Reuters the disinformation campaigns “shaped the conversation” in the lead-up to the elections.
Still, neither the Dutertes nor the Marcoses have an easy path ahead. While the next electoral competition will be for the presidency in 2028, the most immediate battleground will be in the Senate, which will reconvene in June. And despite key electoral victories for the Dutertes—including Marcos Jr.’s own sister Imee, who broke with her family to back the Dutertes and also appears on track to win a Senate seat—Marcos allies appear to have retained six of the 12 seats up for election in the 24-member chamber.
Public opinion polls consistently show that Sara is most Filipinos’ preferred candidate to succeed Marcos come 2028, but an impeachment conviction, which requires a two-thirds majority vote, would bar her from public office for good under local law.
For people like Soriano, however, the elections are about more than political stratagem and determining which family holds the most nominal power. It’s about how they will wield it. In office, Duterte’s lieutenants, she fears, “are likely to continue what Duterte left behind.”