Chennai – It looks like a soap opera with family sagas, boxers, actor-dancers, billionaires shooting banknotes with a cannon. The Filipino electoral campaign that will end on May 9th, when the next president and vice-president will be voted for, as well as for many administrative positions, up to individual municipal councilors from all over the country, looks like a circus. But behind the antics, the bickering between a father president and a daughter running for vice president and the legal troubles of the son of a former dictator still recommended by the famous mother Imelda, the game is actually very serious. Not only for the serious economic recession that pushes 4 and a half million Filipinos to unemployment, for schools in collapse, for a brutal fight against drug trafficking with 27,000 deaths and rampant corruption, but also because this archipelago is an important piece in the mosaic of the challenge between China and America.
Who will lead the Philippines? In three months, 65 million and 700 thousand voters will decide this, ten million more than the presidential elections that Rodrigo Duterte, known as Duterte Harry for speech and violent acts, won in 2016. While enjoying 67% of the votes in the polls, he cannot reapply. His daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, Mayor of Davao, was expected to show up in his place. But when a name emerged capable of splitting the conservative vote, that of the only son and namesake of the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, that Junior known to all as “BongBong,” Sara Duterte decided to run instead for the vice presidency, for fear that a battle between the Marcos and the Duterte would win the opposition. In fact, the only one capable of beating BongBong is human rights lawyer Lenor “Leni” Robredo, incumbent vice president and hope of the left.
The Marcos-Duterte saga is full of traps. Although the Marcos funded Duterte in 2016, the president says Marcos Jr. is “a pappamolla.” In the Philippines, there are no permanent allies or friendships, only permanent political ambitions. Thus, now Duterte does not support the candidacy of his daughter, an ally of the Marcos. Not yet, at least. The macho president swore he would retire from politics. Then he realized that too many international courts are waiting to try him for those 27,000 dead, alleged drug dealers and drug addicts murdered in the fight against drugs with summary executions by vigilantes and licensed policemen. So he seeks senator immunity.
Sara Duterte-Carpio proposes a soft, modern image, attentive to words and less vulgar. Also because she could become president, since BongBong still has pending charges in the Electoral Commission. Despite having been a parliamentarian and senator, this 64-year-old son of a father may not have all the credentials. Not for the $ 10 billion in public funds that his father (a dictator who after 20 years in power was kicked out by the 1986 revolution) was accused of stealing from Hawaii. But for having evaded the tax authorities in the eighties, when he was a very young governor. Out of four lawsuits filed by associations of victims of the dictatorship, one was rejected by the Commission, but three others will remain pending for months. It could also happen that BongBong wins the presidential elections, but he has to abdicate his daughter Duterte thanks to a court whose judges have been chosen by Duterte father.
In these electoral games, boxing champion Manny “PacMan” Pacquaio, an MP who distributed rolls of cash and bags of groceries to the crowd, appears as a candidate. Former girl idol, actor Francisco Moreno Demagoso, known as “Isko,” also tries with ballets on TikTok. There is a cardiologist, a trade unionist, a former evangelist preacher and also a former policeman. They go strong on social networks, it is not said that they collect votes at the polls. More likely, the ticket of the two dynasties known for violations of human rights, or the champion of rights, will win. It is also likely that Duterte’s pro-Chinese policy will step backwards, because the disputed waters with Beijing in the South China Sea are an issue that makes the blood boil for a large part of the Filipino electorate.