The Philippines will hold its national elections on May 9, 2022, with an estimated 67 million Filipinos eligible to vote for the country’s next president and vice president. This will end Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency, as Philippine presidents are constitutionally barred from serving more than a single six-year term. Under President Duterte, the Philippines has witnessed the intensification of authoritarian practices and has exposed the fragility of many Philippine democratic institutions. The Philippines will have a new president this summer, but should we be worried about the Philippine election frontrunner?
Nearly 50 years after the late president Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in the Philippines, his son, Ferdinand “Bong-Bong” Marcos Jr., is in the lead to become the country’s next president. Given the real possibility that Marcos Jr. will become the next president of the Philippines, and that he is running on the notion of a “golden age” of economic growth under his father’s regime, it seems an appropriate time to reflect on that legacy.
What is most remembered is that Marcos senior ruled the Philippines for 20 years, 1965-1986, imposing nationwide martial law in 1972. This began almost 10 years of military rule in the country. Data from Amnesty International shows that while Marcos was in power, around 70,000 “enemies of the state” were detained, some 34,000 of them tortured, and more than 3,000 killed. Independent media outlets were also shut down. The Marcos family is also accused of stealing up to $10 billion from the state, a claim they have repeatedly denied even though authorities already have recovered around $3.3 billion in unexplained wealth.
Looking into the economic data from this time, while there was growth, the benefits went to the ruling family and those close to the Marcoses and was followed by an economic crisis in 1983. But, in a young country like the Philippines, most voters have no personal memory of this and buy into the myth of the golden age of prosperity.
Martial law exacerbated cronyism and oligarchy by concentrating power with the Marcoses. A striking feature of the Marcos economy was how the enrichment of cronies contrasted with worsening economic conditions for the rest of the population. The country’s total external debt grew from $8.2 billion in 1977 to $24.4 billion in 1982. Public debt, when well governed, can improve the standard of living in a country and boost economic growth. However, this debt was not utilized to benefit the majority and was followed by a full-blown crisis in 1983, gaining the Philippines the reputation of the “sick man of Asia.” Philippine GDP per capita declined after 1982, not reaching 1982 levels again until 21 years later. By the end of the Marcos regime in 1985, nearly 45 percent of Filipinos were impoverished. Today, that legacy continues as nearly a quarter of the country’s population lives below the poverty line and the Philippines has one of the highest rates of income inequality in Asia.
Marcos ended martial law in 1981, but it was not until 1986 that democracy was restored. This is when Marcos and his family were forced into exile, overthrown by the popular uprising against his corrupt and brutal regime that became known as the People Power Revolution. The U.S. government facilitated the Marcoses escape to Hawaii, where he would remain until his death in 1989. In 1991, the Marcos family returned to the Philippines and began their pursuit to rewrite the history of the family’s time in power.
The Marcoses and their supporters have successfully exploited social media to spread fake news, allowing Marcos Jr. to stage a political comeback. The Philippines’s weak democratic institutions, amplified by social media, has enabled Marcos Jr. in the potential restoration of his family’s dynasty. To learn more about how social media is influencing election discourse and why the “strongman” model continues to work in the Philippines, stay tuned for CIPE’s upcoming podcasts, to be released on May 3 and 5, as a part of its “Philippine National Elections 2022 – What’s at Stake for Democracy?” series.
Published Date: April 20, 2022