For months, the Philippines has been pulsing with the energy of a major election campaign.
It was a lively scene of one massive rally after another during the race, drawing crowds to events that take place more like concerts or street parties in the nation of the archipelago.
On Monday, more than 67 million registered voters will cast ballots to decide the next head of state, voting for a new president, vice president and 12 senators, as well as 300 lower house deputies and about 18,000 officials, including mayors, governors and local district councilors.
Many see this election as a turning point in high stakes for the Philippines, which will determine how it is managed and how it recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Much of the country is plastered with election posters near the Manila polling station. (Aaron Favila / Associated Press)
Outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte was a popular but polarizing figure who pressured the free press and violated human rights with his signature policy on the “war on drugs”.
Human Rights Watch appreciates that tough policy resulted in the deaths of more than 12,000 people, with about 3,000 in the hands of police.
However, Duterte’s supporters believe he has been effective in imposing discipline on the population and reducing crime and corruption.
And in a country with one of the highest levels of poverty in the world, the fight against poverty in jobs, health and education is largely at the heart of every candidate’s platform.
Who is the presidential favorite?
While the list of candidates includes 10 people after the campaign ended, it turned into a two-way race between current Vice President Lenny Robredo and Ferdinand (Bongbong) Marcos Jr., a former senator and son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Recent opinion polls put Marcos Jr., 64, in a comfortable position. His candidate, Sara Duterte-Carpio, is the daughter of the current president.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr. spoke to supporters during a rally to announce his candidacy for president in 2022 in the province of Bulacan, north of Manila, on February 8. After returning to the Philippines in 1991 from exile following his father’s overthrow, Marcos sought to restore his family’s image to a new generation born after an often brutal dictatorship. (Basilio Sepe / Associated Press)
Marcos’ popularity is the result of a major rehabilitation of his family 36 years after Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was ousted from the country’s “people’s power” revolution after years of brutal dictatorship – an era steeped in corruption and violence.
“Our political system is truly monopolized and dominated by powerful political families,” said Sheila Coronel, a Filipino investigative journalist and professor at Columbia University in New York.
“Our political system is very undemocratic. I would say that there are perhaps more than 2,000 families who have a monopoly on local and national political services in a country of over 100 million people.”
In his quest to regain his public office, Marcos Jr. had to “rebuild the myth of the Marcos era as the golden age of the Philippines, where there was peace, progress, prosperity,” Coronel said.
“They’ve invested a lot in that, especially on social media,” she said. “They are especially aimed at younger voters – those under 40 who have no memory of martial law or the Marcos regime.
Marcos Jr., on the right, shown with his family in the gardens of the Manila Palace in December 1977, is his father’s namesake, a dictator overthrown by the 1986 uprising (Daniel Simon / Gama-Rafo / Getty) Images)
During the campaign, Marcos gave up debates and media appearances in favor of announcements made for social media platforms, including TikTok, Facebook and YouTube.
“Social media for the 2022 election played a huge role in the rehabilitation of the Marcos brand,” said Jonathan Ong, a disinformation researcher and associate professor at the University of Massachusetts.
With opinion polls showing this 56 percent of voters will choose Marcos, Ong said, much of that support is actually for his family’s brand, “which has been changed, refined, whitewashed, sanitized by social media.”
“This is something that did not happen during the campaign season, but is a project of six, even seven years,” he said.
What about his contender?
Lenny Robredo, a former human rights lawyer, has built his campaign around attempts to oppose Marcos’ social media machine – and the recognition of the name that comes with his political dynasty.
She and her team are proud to run a massive campaign driven by volunteers, some of whom go from house to house to speak directly to voters.
While 57-year-old Robredo is acting vice president, she has distanced herself from the Duterte administration.
Philippine Vice President and opposition presidential candidate Lenny Robredo welcomed his supporters during a pre-election rally in Passay, a suburb of Manila, on April 23rd. (Ted Aljibe / AFP / Getty Images)
In the Philippines, the president and vice president should not run as one ticket, and both competed with different tickets in the 2016 competition. When she was elected, she had a separate inauguration from Duterte.
This race was also the first time she faced Marcos Jr. and she defeated him for the position of vice president.
Supporters of Robredo see her candidacy as a turning point in which the Philippines can move away from the Duterte era – when the country often grabbed the world’s headlines for the president’s poor human rights record.
In swearing speeches, Duterte often boasted that he had ordered the killing of accused drug dealers without due process.
Robredo is a former human rights lawyer and staunch liberal who is campaigning for a mass population driven by volunteers, such as this woman in a pink dress talking to a fishmonger during a house-to-house blitz in Quezon City. Philippines, May 5. (Lisa Marie David / Reuters)
Robredo, on the other hand, promised to protect human rights for the country’s citizens.
This is a message that resonates with activist Julie Jamora, who organizes foreign Filipino voters in the United States. She is also the National Secretary General of the Malaya Movement USA, which approved Robredo.
There are almost two million Filipino voters living abroad.
“We really have a stake in what happens in the election and what will determine the course of the next six years,” Jamora said.
She said Duterte’s previous six years had been marked by “massive human rights violations, militarized COVID responses and… reduction of democratic spaces”.
Who are the other candidates?
Some of the other candidates in the election made the preparations for the vote exciting for Filipinos, including celebrity and world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao.
Although his figures show that he is lagging behind in the polls, Pacquiao is a well-known name in the Philippines and around the world. He won a seat in the country’s Senate in 2016.
Philippine senator and boxing icon Manny Pacquiao took part in a motorcade while electing the country’s president in Manila on April 9th. (Ezra Akayan / Getty Images)
Pacquiao’s personal history is a well-known story: he rose from extreme poverty to become one of the richest people in the country.
In interviews and pre-election rallies, Pacquiao said he was running to serve the same communities he started in in order to lift them out of poverty with jobs, health and education.
Other high-ranking candidates include Manila Mayor Francisco Domagoso and Panfilo (Ping) Laxon, a current senator and former police general.
What is at stake?
The next president of the Philippines will face a long list of issues that could determine the country’s future for years to come: economic recovery after the pandemic destroyed millions of jobs, shaping foreign policy amid China’s territorial threats and protecting against the future emerging crises, such as climate change.
For Coronel, who will be in the Philippines to witness the coming results, this election is for a young democracy that has not yet found its foundation, noting that the vote comes just three decades after the country’s presidential palace was stormed. to overthrow a dictator.
“I was right at the gates of the palace when Marcos fled the country. So I want to see this whole rainbow of this whole story,” she said.
“These [last] “36 years have been years of dysfunction and corruption – people are getting poorer, inequality is growing,” Coronel said.
“I think this election is about challenging democracy and whether it is still a meaningful project for the Filipinos to support.
WATCH Marcos is leading the polls in the Philippines despite the controversial family:
Marcos is conducting polls in the Philippines, despite a controversial family
The son of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos led the polls ahead of the Philippine election. The family’s controversial history has been sanitized by a social media campaign in which Bong Bong Marcos Jr. runs a colorful list of candidates, not including Rodrigo Duterte, who is no longer eligible to run. 5:06
Add Comment