Philippines

Although the actual election isn’t for another six weeks, current polling suggests Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is all but a lock to succeed Rodrigo Duterte as the Philippines’ next president. Marcos, a former senator and son of the late longtime Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., has opened up a massive lead against his nearest challenger, current Vice President Leni Robredo. A survey released by the respected Pulse Asia in March found that Marcos led Robredo by a whopping 44 points, with 60 percent of respondents expressing a preference for him. That actually increased his polling lead by 11 points from a prior Pulse Asia poll. Given what a divisive figure he is among sections of the Philippine population, Marcos will also benefit from the rules governing the country’s one-round presidential election, in which a simple plurality, rather than a majority, suffices to win. The opposition, currently fragmented around six candidates, might stand a chance if it rallied around one clear rival to Marcos, but so far that hasn’t happened, and it seems unlikely. As a result, it’s not premature to consider what to expect from Marcos, commonly known by his nickname Bongbong, should he become president as expected. When it comes to form, he would almost surely run a more businesslike and orderly administration than the vulgar, unpredictable Duterte. But when it comes to substance, he would probably continue some of Duterte’s most disastrous foreign and domestic policies, while adding other problematic elements of his own. In his term-limited six years in office, Duterte has done massive damage to the Philippines’ democracy, which, though imperfect, had been one of the strongest in Southeast Asia. His extrajudicial drug war resulted in the killings of thousands of innocent people, and even targeted political opponents. He also undermined the independence of the country’s highest courts and cracked down on the free press, among other blows to democratic governance and freedoms. In 2016, the year Duterte won office, Freedom House gave the Philippines a score of 65 out of 100 in its annual global survey of political and civil freedoms, with 100 being the highest possible score. By contrast, in the organization’s 2021 survey, the Philippines scored only 56. Marcos’ family past alone would have troubling implications for Philippine democracy. He and other members of the Marcos family have continued to celebrate the legacy of his father, a longtime, brutal dictator who was immensely corrupt. Far from denouncing his father’s record, the younger Marcos has tried to rehabilitate his image, claiming that Marcos Sr. could have transformed the Philippines into a wealthy, well-run state in the model of Singapore, had it not been for the obstruction of the democratic opposition. In addition to being a symbol of impunity through his connection to and defense of the former autocrat, Marcos will likely continue some of Duterte’s authoritarian policies. He has already suggested he will continue the extrajudicial drug war and, like Duterte, most likely prevent any investigations of it by outside actors like the International Criminal Court. Moreover, his likely vice president will be Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio. Though the two positions are elected separately in the Philippines, Marcos has endorsed Duterte-Carpio, and she has a massive lead in the vice presidential race. As mayor of Davao, the same southern city where her father began his political career, Duterte-Carpio seems to have displayed little more commitment to democracy than Marcos, ruling at times by fiat and issuing orders that seem to contradict democratic norms. On foreign policy, Marcos may also represent continuity with Duterte, particularly when it comes to courting China, even though that approach has met with little success. The United States, Manila’s treaty ally, is still enormously popular with the Philippine people, and anti-China sentiment is rising. Yet, Marcos may go even farther than Duterte in tilting toward Beijing. He has openly promised to do so, while also pledging to abandon the Philippines’ victory in a 2016 international tribunal ruling that rejected China’s expansive maritime claims to the South China Sea. But there is little guarantee Beijing will offer much in return. Duterte hoped that by toning down Manila’s opposition to Beijing’s growing control of the South China Sea, he would win massive Chinese infrastructure contracts. But he actually reaped only modest investment, even as Beijing’s seizure and militarization of contested reefs angered Filipinos. Not every policy Marcos is likely to pursue will be a disaster. With a more professional, well-run administration, he would probably respond more effectively to the pandemic and its economic impact than Duterte, who badly botched the pandemic response. As a result, the Philippine economy took a hit last year, exacerbating the horrendous inequality and lack of robust social welfare programs that already characterizes the country. Given his somewhat more conventional political background compared to Duterte, Marcos will likely appoint respected economic technocrats and public health experts to manage the post-pandemic recovery, while redoubling the focus on upgrading the country’s woeful infrastructure and channeling money to smaller and medium-sized enterprises. The next government will have to control COVID-19 and improve vaccination rates, bolster consumer spending and infrastructure investment, and put the services industry back on track. It’s a tall order, but if accomplished, the economy could rebound strongly this year. Perhaps worst of all when it comes to Philippine democracy, Marcos’ rise to presidential front-runner status is in part the result of an informal alliance with three other powerful and dynastic Philippine families. In addition to endorsing Duterte-Carpio for vice president, Marcos has allied with the powerful family of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who likely would serve in the House, as well as with the family of former President Joseph Estrada, whose sons are running for Senate. (Both Estrada and Macapagal-Arroyo were jailed for crimes of corruption committed during their terms as president.) This four-way alliance, unprecedented even by the Philippines’ long history of powerful families working together to advance their political interests, once again underscores that power in the country is concentrated in just a few hands. To be sure, Philippine elections are often wild and chaotic affairs. Huge leads have vanished before in the final days of campaigns, and surprise candidates have won. And among segments of the population, hatred for the Marcoses runs deep. Large street protests erupted in Manila in late February to celebrate the anniversary of the overthrow of Marcos Sr.—and send a message to Marcos Jr. Yet with his enormous lead, his alliance with politically powerful dynastic families and the feeling in the Philippines that the race is all but over, Marcos is very likely to prevail. And that would be bad news for Philippines’ democracy.

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Duterte, or his successor, will likely continue the Philippines' democratic regression.

Philippine Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin Jr. was peeved at Beijing. It was early May, and hundreds of Chinese vessels had been regularly intruding into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, where the Chinese government has made expansive maritime territorial claims. After lodging numerous complaints through formal diplomatic channels to no avail, Locsin took to Twitter and unleashed an expletive-filled tirade. “China, my friend, how politely can I put it?” he wrote. “Let me see… O…GET THE [F**K] OUT.” (Locsin didn’t bother with the asterisks.) It was not only Philippine officials and diplomats who were angry at Beijing’s willingness to raise tensions in disputed waters. In a poll conducted by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore earlier this year, before the latest Chinese incursions into Philippine waters, roughly 87 percent of Filipino respondents said that they considered China’s encroachments into other countries’ exclusive economic zones and continental shelves to be the “top concern” in the South China Sea. The same proportion, 87 percent, said that if forced to align with either the United States or China, they would choose the U.S.—the highest share of any country in Southeast Asia. But even as Filipinos of all stripes vent their anger at Beijing, they should be equally furious with their own leader. His policy toward China has failed to either protect the Philippines’ national security or to boost its economy. Since taking office in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has courted Beijing, playing down its construction of military facilities on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea and the aggressive behavior of China’s maritime militia vessels. He has also ignored, for the most part, a 2016 international tribunal ruling that unequivocally rejected China’s stated claims to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. At the same time, Duterte has consistently undermined his country’s alliance with the U.S. He has stalled on renewing the Visiting Forces Agreement, or VFA—which allows U.S. troops to maintain a presence in the Philippines—after initially trying to kill it. Duterte also vetoed the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, a deal that would make it easier to move U.S. troops and weapons into bases near the South China Sea. To be sure, the Philippines and the U.S. still enjoy strong strategic ties, and security officials who value the alliance provide a counterweight to some of Duterte’s impulses. It was likely the country’s military and national security establishment that pushed Duterte to buy a new supersonic cruise missile that would provide a deterrent capability against China, to backtrack from trying to jettison the VFA and to make other quiet efforts to restore warmer ties with the U.S. Yet Duterte remains intent on currying favor with Beijing. After Locsin’s outburst, Duterte declared in a briefing that “China remains our benefactor.” The following day, Locsin took to Twitter again, this time to apologize to his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, “for hurting his feelings.” But the reality is that Duterte’s mostly hands-off approach to the South China Sea has failed to change China’s behavior. In fact, when it comes to territorial issues, Beijing has treated the groveling Duterte the same way it has treated leaders of countries like Vietnam, which have taken a more hard-line approach toward disputed maritime claims. The incident that prompted Locsin’s Twitter tirade was just one of many occasions when China has sent hundreds of boats into the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone during Duterte’s presidency, intimidating Philippine naval vessels and making it easier for Chinese forces to seize contested islands and fortify them. Last year, as COVID-19 ravaged the Philippines, including its top military commanders, Beijing declared administrative control of the disputed Spratly Islands. It also continued building up military facilities on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea and sent ships to encircle and menace Thitu, the most strategically vital of the disputed archipelagos that the Philippines still controls. China has also increasingly used aggressive fleets to turf Philippine fishers off rich fishing grounds. Duterte seemingly hoped that, by shifting toward Beijing, aid and investment would flow into the Philippines, bringing jobs, growth and much-needed infrastructure projects. Yet his approach has brought few economic benefits during his single six-year term, which ends next year. In splashy announcements in 2016, Beijing pledged tens of billions of dollars in new investments in the Philippines. But construction has only begun on two proposed Chinese infrastructure projects—a bridge and an irrigation system—and they remain far from completion. China’s vaunted plans for energy, rail and other infrastructure projects have not even broken ground. As the analyst Richard Heydarian has noted, much of the investment that China has actually delivered on in the Philippines under Duterte has gone to online casinos and modest projects like small bridges. For the most part, these projects have utilized Chinese workers rather than local labor, even as the Philippines is suffering its worst economic downturn since 1947. The lack of follow-through on investments China promised to the Philippines in 2016 contrasts sharply with other Southeast Asian states. In Indonesia, China is financing a multibillion-dollar high-speed railway project connecting the capital, Jakarta, with Bandung city, as well as another high-speed rail line in Thailand. Both projects were contracted on relatively favorable financing terms. China’s development aid to the Philippines also remains small by comparison with other major donors. A recent report on aid inflows prepared by the Philippine government’s economic planning body showed that Japan remained by far the country’s biggest donor. During the first half of 2020, Japan provided nearly 40 percent of the Philippines’ official development assistance—about 17 times more than what China provided. Aid from the Asian Development Bank and South Korea also surpassed Beijing’s. More recently, China has stepped up to provide Manila with some COVID-19 vaccines, though the effectiveness of the Chinese shots remains somewhat uncertain. Duterte’s approval ratings remain very high, but the Philippine public has noticed how little he has gotten from his dealings with Beijing. A wide range of opinion polls show heightened levels of anti-China sentiment among Filipinos. Perhaps aware of that trend in public opinion, several candidates for next year’s presidential election, including the boxer-turned-politician Manny Pacquiao, have been talking tough on China. If elected, he could reorient the country’s foreign policy back in a direction skeptical of Beijing, closer to the United States, and in favor of building a multilateral coalition to defend freedom of navigation and territorial rights in the South China Sea. The front-runner for the 2022 presidential election, though, remains Duterte’s daughter, Sara, mayor of the southern city of Davao, though she has not confirmed her intention to run. Sara Duterte’s views on China are not as openly favorable as her father’s. But if she does run and succeed him in office, inheriting his political machine as the bulwark of her support, she would be hard-pressed to reverse her father’s China policy, no matter how disastrous it has been for the country. And no matter who wins the presidency next year, Beijing will have spent Duterte’s term in office strengthening its hold on disputed maritime features that are critical to Philippine national security, in addition to providing livelihoods to the country’s fishers. The damage from Duterte’s disastrous China policy has already been done.

Myanmar’s coup is a disaster for Myanmar, but it also is a signifier of the continuing regression of democracy region-wide in Southeast Asia. The region, which once had made significant progress toward democratization, has backslid badly in recent years, with regression in former bright spots including Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as well as Cambodia and now Myanmar. This backsliding affects not only domestic politics in Southeast Asian states but also has an effect on other countries in the region—a kind of diffusion effect in reverse, in contrast to the diffusion effect that can occur during waves of democratization. For example, the Philippines used to be one of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states that often vocally stood up for democratic rights in other countries, a fairly unique stance in ASEAN. Now led by Rodrigo Duterte, however, who is undermining the Philippines’ own democratic norms and institutions, Manila is much quieter on the Myanmar coup. Duterte himself has grabbed more power during the pandemic, with a new antiterrorism law giving the government extraordinary powers, amidst the ongoing extrajudicial drug “war” as well. The Philippine government, like many other regional governments, has called the coup simply Myanmar’s internal affair. Thailand, for all its challenges, in the past did sometimes have groups of politicians and civil society activists who were highly engaged in Myanmar politics and advocated for reform there. During the long period of junta rule in the 1990s and 2000s, many Myanmar activists sought safe haven in Thailand as well. Now, Thailand is cracking down on civil society, students, activists, opposition politicians, and the Thai government, dominated by military men, is not going to push for any change in Myanmar. If anything, the Myanmar generals may try to steal a march from the Thai generals who have used a wide range of judicial and election chicanery to cement their power, as Bertil Lintner argued a recent Asia Times article. The Myanmar generals may eventually, as he notes, allow an election, but with a system that, like the Thai electoral system, uses machinations to reduce the power of the most powerful parties—the National League for Democracy (NLD) in this case—and to promote the military’s favored parties and its allies. In some ways, such a system might seem fairer than Myanmar’s current first-past-the-post system, which allowed the NLD to take more seats in parliament than its actual share of the vote, and hurt the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and several ethnic parties. But the Myanmar military would not really be changing the electoral system to promote more fairness—rather it would be to try to permanently defang the NLD. Meanwhile, other countries that had led on Myanmar in the past, like Indonesia and Malaysia, have been relatively quiet, consumed by their own domestic politics, and by COVID-19; they also have suffered their own democratic regression. In the past, the Indonesian government had seen itself as playing a central role in helping the Myanmar military supposedly move toward civilian government, and give up its role as directly involved in politics. But Indonesia itself has seen a return to greater military involvement in politics and domestic policymaking under the Jokowi government, and Jokowi has been muted in response to the coup as well. And, powerful actors in Southeast Asia, like Japan, also have said little; Japanese companies have invested heavily in Myanmar in recent years, pushed in part by the Japanese government. Japan sees itself in intense competition for strategic influence with China in Myanmar, and is unlikely to prod the Myanmar military much. So, the regional democratic regression emboldens the Myanmar military, and, alas, also makes it easier for them to keep power. This post is adapted from my recent Twitter thread on the same topic.

Yesterday (U.S. time), editor Maria Ressa, one of the most prominent journalists in the Philippines, and indeed in the world—she was selected as one of Time’s people of the year in 2018 and featured on its cover—was found guilty by a Philippine court on charges of cyber libel. The charges related to a story about the former chief justice of the Philippines’ top court. Reynaldo Santos Jr., who wrote the story, also was found guilty of cyber libel. Though the two were released on bail, they face up to six years in jail on the charges. The charges are extremely controversial. The story Santos Jr. wrote actually was published before the Philippines even had a cyber-libel law, and Santos Jr. and editor Ressa were charged after Rappler, their publication, updated the article online to fix a typo after the law came in effect. The cyber-libel law is also easily used to try to silence independent journalists. And Ressa faces a load of other charges too, which seem designed to silence her and Rappler. The Guardian notes: Ressa also faces another libel prosecution, two criminal cases alleging illegal foreign ownership in her companies, and investigations into her old tax returns. The various allegations made against Ressa could lead to about 100 years in prison. After a career at CNN, Ressa, a dual citizen of the Philippines and the United States, now runs Rappler, one of the toughest, most groundbreaking, and independent reporting outlets in the Philippines, a country with a tradition of a vibrant press—and also of brutal crackdowns on journalists. Reporters Without Borders regularly ranks the Philippines as one of the most dangerous places in Asia to work as a journalist, and in 2009 the country witnessed what the Committee to Project Journalists has called the worst single massacre of journalists in history, when 34 journalists (and 58 people total) were slain in Maguindanao province. Journalists throughout the country are regularly threatened by local politicians and businesspeople, and often attacked. Even given this history, since Rodrigo Duterte’s election as president in 2016, the situation for the press has worsened. Under Duterte, the Philippine government has worked to suffocate the free press more than under any Philippine president since dictator Ferdinand Marcos. For years Duterte has been targeting Rappler, which has aggressively reported on the massive number of extrajudicial killings and other abuses in Duterte’s drug “war.” And for years he has singled out journalists for verbal abuse, and suggested that journalists could be assassinated.  But overall, this effort against the press seems to have been ramped up in recent months, as the coronavirus pandemic has allowed Duterte—like many other illiberal leaders—to amass greater powers and crack down on all sorts of opposition. The legislature, controlled by Duterte allies, has passed an anti-terror law so broad it could be used to potentially detain a vast array of people without charges, including journalists. Last month, the Duterte administration effectively shut down ABS-CBN, one of the most important broadcast networks in the country, and one that also had reported independently about the president. Now, a guilty verdict against Maria Ressa, probably the most famous journalist in the Philippines and someone with a high-profile international legal team and extensive networks of allies around the world, must surely suggest to lower-profile journalists, and anyone in civil society in the Philippines, that no one in the country is safe. Ressa’s case also illustrates the rapidly deteriorating climate for press freedom across Southeast Asia, where governments are backsliding from democracy, and cracking down on reporters in numerous ways—trends that have increased since the outbreak of COVID-19. In Myanmar, the National League for Democracy-led government has aggressively tried to curtail independent journalism, while autocratic governments like Vietnam have aggressively pursued writers and bloggers, and Cambodia’s government has destroyed most of the country’s independent press. Overall, in the past two years, Reporters Without Borders has reported declines in press freedom in many Asian states, including the Philippines, Myanmar, and Singapore. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, as The Economist reports, Indonesia and Malaysia, two of the freer countries in Southeast Asia, have been arresting people for supposedly spreading false stories about COVID-19, and the Malaysian government is investigating a reporter for the South China Morning Post for reporting on COVID-19.    Now, an emboldened Duterte, empowered by the COVID-19 emergency, is likely to take further steps to crush press freedom in the Philippines.

In recent months, Southeast Asian leaders—and leaders from many other parts of the world—have utilized the COVID-19 pandemic to expand executive powers, crack down on civil society and undermine opposition politicians, and reduce the space for freedom of the press and freedom of assembly. The efforts to use the pandemic to reduce political space started early on, as the virus spread through Southeast Asia. In April, Cambodia’s regime passed a new emergency law that gave Prime Minister Hun Sen massive powers, while at the same time Hun Sen’s government has been aggressively arresting activists and journalists for criticizing the government’s pandemic response, even in the mildest ways. In Thailand, the government of Prayuth Chan-ocha, while taking effective measures to stem the spread of COVID-19 (after some initial foot-dragging), also is ramping up campaigns to arrest social media users critical of the government, particularly by using the COVID-19 emergency as a pretext for these arrests, according to a report by Amnesty International. In Malaysia, the government has delayed parliament from sitting again for months, preventing the opposition coalition from taking action against the government, which came into office despite an election. (Malaysia’s prime minister is now under quarantine for fourteen days because another Malaysian official contracted COVID-19.) The Malaysian government also has arrested journalists who have investigated and criticized Malaysia’s sometimes-stumbling response to COVID-19. Other Southeast Asian states like Myanmar and even democratic Indonesia also have cracked down on dissent. Now, however Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who already had abused the pandemic to amass even more power, has taken the COVID-19-related crackdown on rights and freedoms one major step farther. The Philippine legislature, which is heavily controlled by Duterte allies, has now passed a far-reaching Anti-Terror bill. The bill will give the authorities massive powers to arrest people without any warrant, to conduct widespread surveillance of the population, and to label many different people as “terrorists;” the bill offers an incredibly broad definition of who might be a “terrorist.” As Alec Regino noted in the Washington Post: In particular, it allows the warrantless arrest and detainment of those the government-appointed Anti-Terror Council deems “suspicious.” Suspicious activities could range from attempting to damage government property to simply criticizing the administration online. It also allows for the secret surveillance and wiretapping of “suspected” criminals … The bill’s loose definition of terrorism allows the government to essentially tag any and all dissenters as terrorists without any judicial oversight. While many Filipinos, and outside observers, have become inured to the Duterte administration’s increasing undermining of rights and freedoms, as Philippine democracy crumbles and massive extrajudicial killings continue, the Anti-Terror bill could well be the biggest blow to Philippine democracy since the end of the Marcos dictatorship. (Duterte allies and supporters of the bill claim that it will not target peaceful protestors and that the bill has adequate safeguards; at the same time, Duterte has spoken positively of the Marcos regime, and sought to further rehabilitate the Marcos family.) It could easily lead to the government simply detaining any critics without charge, putting Duterte in a position not quite equal to that of Marcos—but not that far away either.

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Last week, after hinting at it for some time, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte officially announced he would terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) with the United States. Under the agreement, in place for two decades, the Pentagon can keep rotations of troops in the Philippines. As Richard Heydarian has noted, the deal also provides a legal basis for U.S.-Philippine joint exercises. Although Duterte often makes bold statements and then recants, he appears determined to go through with this move. But while Duterte proclaims that shifting away from Washington, and toward Beijing, will improve the Philippines’ strategic position, tearing up the VFA carries bigger risks for Manila than for Washington. For more on the implications of potentially ending the VFA, see my new World Politics Review article.

It has become, at this point, almost a trope to conclude that global democracy is increasingly imperiled, but there is considerable evidence backing this theory. In response to the global threats to democracy, some foreign policy analysts and government officials have begun to suggest that the United States and other democracies are entering a Cold War–style competition against autocracy, in its many modern forms. While autocracy—illiberal populism of both the right and the left, military dictatorship, major autocratic powers like China—is clearly on the rise globally and in Asia, a Cold War–style, grand ideological campaign against authoritarianism in general is unlikely to halt democracy’s global regression. For more on democracy’s slide in Asia, and how states should respond, see my new feature in the Diplomat.

Although in his first three years in office President Rodrigo Duterte has proven divisive internationally, this week’s midterm elections show that he retains enormous power over Philippine politics. In fact, after his allies’ sweeping victories in both houses of congress, he probably now has more control than any Philippine leader since dictator Ferdinand Marcos. What will Duterte do with the victory? Given the events of past three years, it is easy to imagine him using magnified powers to move the country farther from an illiberal democracy and closer to an outright autocracy, while also taking steps to entrench his influence well beyond the end of his term in 2022. On foreign policy, however, Duterte’s big win will have less impact. For more on the implications of the Philippine midterms, see my new World Politics Review article.