The following Philippine president will be successful the tough-talking populist Rodrigo Duterte, whose struggle on medicine left 1000’s useless, and a rustic with an financial system and well being machine ravaged by means of the coronavirus pandemic. Presidents serve just a unmarried time period and are elected one after the other from the vice chairman.
Marcos and his working mate, Sara Duterte-Carpio, Davao Town mayor and daughter of the incumbent president, experience an important lead over their fighters, in keeping with the most recent polls. Different applicants for the highest place are Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo, boxing celebrity Manny Pacquiao, former actor and Manila Mayor Francisco Domagoso, and previous senator and police leader Panfilo Lacson.
A Marcos presidency will not be as brutal as his father’s dictatorship and even Duterte’s time period, however it’s anticipated to finish the whitewashing of the circle of relatives popularity and offer protection to it from duty. Between $5-to-10 billion was once estimated stolen from public coffers right through the circle of relatives’s two-decade rule, and just a fraction has been recovered. The circle of relatives fled to Hawaii, the place they lived in exile, after the 1986 Other folks Energy revolution. They returned to the Philippines within the Nineteen Nineties.
The circle of relatives continues to stand a number of controversies, together with a graft conviction for Marcos’s mom, former first woman Imelda, and the property owing billions in tax liabilities. Thus far, no family members have served prison time.
“If there in point of fact was once ill-gotten wealth, it might had been retrieved a very long time in the past,” mentioned Jesse James Pangilinan, 24, a Manila resident who solid a vote for Marcos and Duterte on Monday morning. He mentioned he believed the worries concerning the Marcos property’s unpaid taxes however brushed aside them as a result of “they’re now not being compelled to pay it.”
Dante Mapili, 30, and Jonariza Estera, 37, additionally voted for Marcos, announcing they believed in his message of solidarity and have been inspired by means of how he had now not campaigned negatively. In addition they don’t consider the circle of relatives stole from govt price range. “From what I do know, he was once already wealthy,” mentioned Estera.
“I heard Marcos’s father was once paid in gold if he gained a case,” Mapili added, echoing a well-liked, Web-fueled concept to provide an explanation for the circle of relatives’s wealth. A few of its adherents consider the Marcoses will distribute their very own fortune in the event that they go back to energy.
If he wins, Marcos could also be anticipated to defend the outgoing Duterte from imaginable prosecution on the World Felony Courtroom for crimes towards humanity right through his drug struggle, which left 1000’s useless in extrajudicial killings.
His primary challenger is unbiased candidate Robredo, a vocal critic of Marcos and the elder Duterte — even if she was once his vice chairman. She has been the top goal of disinformation operations and lags in the back of Marcos by means of 33 issues.
Her supporters consider it generally is a a lot nearer struggle, because the groundswell of volunteers for her — which incorporates celebrities, church staff, farmers and scholars — culminated in a star-studded ultimate rally on Saturday that drew a crowd of greater than 1,000,000.
A public-interest legal professional and previous congresswoman, she narrowly defeated Marcos for the vice presidency in 2016. He spent the following 5 years contesting the verdict till the Best Courtroom, performing as election tribunal, unanimously brushed aside his problem closing yr.
In a sleekly edited video launched closing week, Marcos stood on a podium and known as on his supporters to be vigilant. “Allow us to offer protection to our resolution and now not permit it to be stolen from us once more,” he mentioned.
Marcos is already crafting a story simply in case Robredo pulls off an disenchanted, mentioned Julio Teehankee, a political scientist on the De L. a. Salle College. However as a result of Marcos is the “de facto management candidate … the opposition isn’t in any place to cheat within the election,” he added.
The officers at the Fee on Elections are all Duterte appointees, and the frame prior to now brushed aside disqualification circumstances towards Marcos in terms of a prior conviction for being not able to document source of revenue tax returns.
This has raised fear about whether or not the Philippines will be capable to have a blank election, on best of the swirling mass of disinformation within the public sphere fueled by means of on-line armies of Marcos and Duterte supporters. Electoral violence and vote-buying also are commonplace occurrences in a rustic lengthy characterised by means of patronage politics ruled by means of a couple of households.
The Marcos-Duterte tandem is a political marriage of 2 of essentially the most robust dynasties within the nation. Professionals care for that the program, by which households and personalities dominate politics, is carefully connected to corruption and poverty, as govt spending and coverage are related to non-public favors and now not public tasks.
But when Philippine historical past is any indicator, Teehankee warned, some other corruption scandal may well be “deadly to [Marcos’s] go back to energy.” After the 1986 revolution, a 2nd Other folks Energy rebellion in 2001 unseated then-President Joseph Estrada following corruption scandals hounding his time period.
If Robredo’s grass-roots marketing campaign is continued after elections, it might grow to be a significant pressure within the opposition.
“If it’s a Robredo presidency, this can be a motion that may be a spouse,” mentioned Barry Gutierrez, her spokesman. If now not, it might mark the beginnings of a brand new opposition indifferent from conventional events. “It’s an opposition I’m excited to look.”
