“Only in the Philippines could a state burial be considered for a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who has plundered the country for more than twenty years,” wrote Singapore’s founding father Lee Kwan Yew in 2000 in his memoir From third world to first. “Although only an insignificant portion of the loot was recovered, his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics.”
Today, more than twenty years after Lee publicly criticized the Philippines’ incomprehensibly merciful attitude towards the Marcos, the infamous political dynasty is one step away from conquering the Malacanang palace. The only son and namesake of the Filipino dictator, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, is the favorite to take the place of the outgoing populist president, Rodrigo Duterte.
A recent poll showed that in the presidential elections of May 9, 2022, the son of the former dictator could count on the support of almost half of Filipino voters. Its closest rival, Vice President Leonor “Leni” Robredo, registers the support of just a quarter of potential voters. After convincing Sara Duterte, daughter of the current president, to run with him as deputy, Marcos Jr. is now leading the polls a few months after election day. Since the Philippines has a single-round majority electoral system, with no ballot, Marcos Jr will only need to win more votes than all the other candidates to win the presidency.
Former first lady Imelda Marcos, famous for her extravagance and rhetorical gestures, is preparing to claim her place of honor in the presidential palace. While it is true that the Philippine elections are particularly unpredictable, the very rapid revival of the Marcos is in itself a merciless judgment on the profound failures of the country’s democratic institutions. Decades of judicial impunity, historical revisionism, corruption-infested politics and economic growth only for the elite have pushed a growing number of Filipinos into the arms of the Marcos.
A disastrous dictatorship
Bongbong launched his presidential candidacy by promoting a “unifying leadership” that he said could make the Philippines great again. While not openly siding in favor of a return to dictatorship, the former senator said that “if my father had been allowed to pursue his projects, in my opinion today we would be like Singapore”. A rather ironic statement, as Lee Kuan Yew, the political leader who made Singapore what it is today, once described Marcos Senior as a “vice-ridden old housekeeper who allowed his wife and acolytes to clean up the country thanks to an ingenious system of monopolies, putting heavy debts on the government ”.
And indeed, by any objective indicator, the Marcos dictatorship was disastrous for the Philippines.
In the early 1960s, before Marcos became president, the Philippines possessed one of the most dynamic economies in the world. That is why in 1965 Manila was chosen as the headquarters of the Asian development bank (ADB), a major financial institution. Also competing were Seoul, Tehran and Tokyo. However, everything began to change when Marcos took over the presidency of the Philippines, shortly after the ADB took office in Manila. In 1986, when after twenty-one years he left power overwhelmed by a wave of national protests, the Southeast Asian country was financially bankrupt and its institutions were in ruins.
The years of the dictatorship were marked by extreme brutality and endemic corruption. After the proclamation of martial law in 1972, thousands of Filipino activists, journalists and suspected Filipino dissidents were tortured. Some are gone forever. The independent media was shut down and the Philippine two-party system, modeled on the example of the United States, was abolished.
Despite a few years of rapid economic growth, the former Filipino strongman presided over a kleptocratic regime that crashed into insolvency in the early 1980s. Regime acolytes have become billionaires while the vast majority of the population has been pushed into poverty.
According to some estimates, the Philippines will continue to pay the debt inherited from the Marcos era until 2025. In his twenty years in power, Marcos has failed miserably in the feat of reproducing the economic miracles and global industries that have emerged in the neighboring countries of South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
With very few exceptions, however, in the three decades following the fall of the Marcos regime not even the democratically elected leaders of the Philippines have managed to keep their promises of freedom and well-being.
The facade of democracy
While restoring basic political freedoms, the 1987 Philippine constitution promulgated after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship largely protected the interests of political dynasties and major monopolies, deliberately avoiding radical reforms.
As a result, the Philippines is still largely controlled by a shockingly small elite. More than 70 percent of the elected positions in the country are controlled by political dynasties. At the Philippine Congress in recent years the proportion has exceeded 80 percent.
According to the World Bank, in the context of rapid economic growth in the early 2010s, the 40 richest families in business, which also control political parties and the main press, have forfeited three-quarters of the new wealth.
Government agencies have very little funds, are full of politically appointed staff, and are infested with corruption. The most notorious case is that of the Philippine judicial system, where many overworked judges and employees face intimidation and corruption.
It is therefore not surprising that the Marcos, despite having been convicted of various crimes, have never served any sentence. In 2018 the Philippine Supreme Court sentenced Imelda Marcos for corruption and despite this the former first lady is still at large.
His son Bongbong has been convicted of violating tax laws, yet in the past decades he has been allowed to run for and win numerous public positions. Systemic impunity has gone hand in hand with the historical revisionism emerging in the country’s educational institutions and the uninterrupted proliferation of pro-Marcos propaganda online.
The pitiful shortcomings of Filipino democracy explain why the majority of Filipinos have repeatedly declared in the polls their willingness to support a “strong leader” who does not have to worry about elections or the control exercised by the law.
In a 2020 poll conducted by the Pew research center nearly half (47 percent) of Filipinos surveyed said that “most elected officials don’t care” about the interests and opinions of ordinary voters. In a previous 2017 poll, the Pew found that only 15 percent of Filipinos strongly support a liberal democratic system and more than 80 percent have expressed their willingness to evaluate a potentially authoritarian leader. Incredibly, it is the new members of the expanding Filipino middle class, accustomed to traveling to neighboring countries like Singapore, the most enthusiastic advocates of authoritarian leadership in the Philippines.
A century ago, the Spanish writer George Santayana warned that “whoever does not remember the past is condemned to repeat it”. In the Philippines, this maxim has proved premonitory. Memories of the pain inflicted on the country by Marcos have been replaced by nostalgia for an imaginary “golden age” lived under the regime of the late dictator. And this nostalgia, accompanied by the many failures of democratic politics, paved the way for the resurrection of the Marcos.
(Translation by Giusy Muzzopappa)
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