The struggle between the Marcos and Duterte clans isn’t just a battle between two houses. It is becoming a proxy fight between the United States and China for the future of the Indo-Pacific.
July 2024
Last month in the Philippines, the inevitable happened: Vice-President Sara Duterte officially resigned from her cabinet position as education secretary amid irreconcilable differences over a host of policy and personal issues with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Although the country’s top two elected positions are contested separately, Marcos and Duterte had run under a single “UniTeam” ticket in 2022. It was an alliance of convenience that advanced the ambitions of both notorious political dynasties.
Riding on the Dutertes’ popularity, the Marcoses managed to return to Malacañang Palace in style by securing a landslide victory. Sara Duterte, a former provincial mayor who lacked any experience in a national office, immediately became the power behind the throne, while avoiding the impression of direct dynastic succession after her father Rodrigo’s exit from power that year.
In her resignation speech on July 19, Duterte provided little explanation for her decision, but subtly portrayed herself as a victim of political intrigue and persecution. Less than a week later, she warned that three members of her family — her father as well as her two brothers, Sebastian (the current mayor of Davao City) and Paolo (a congressman for Davao City) — would seek seats in the Philippine Senate, the powerful upper house of the national congress, in next year’s midterm elections. In effect, Sara presented herself as the leader of a burgeoning opposition to the Marcos administration.
It didn’t take long before the vice-president, who now holds only a ceremonial position, raised the political temperature: On July 11, she announced she would be snubbing the president’s State of the Nation Address on July 22, thus cementing her position as the de facto leader of a Duterte-led opposition. Things took an even more ominous turn when Sara declared herself the “designated survivor” for the address — presumably a reference to the Netflix thriller of the same name, which narrates how a lowly cabinet member ended up president following a catastrophic event. The ambiguous statement only reinforced rumors of potential plots against the incumbent. Earlier this year, Philippine military authorities publicly warned of coup plots, though they later played down any suggestion of disgruntlement in the barracks to avoid panic. Under the Philippine Constitution, the vice-president is automatically next in the line of succession should an unfortunate event befall the commander-in-chief. No wonder then, many interpreted Duterte’s statement as a thinly veiled threat against Marcos Jr.
Barring any catastrophes in the coming months, the two powerful dynasties are set for a dramatic showdown in the May 2025 elections, which will serve as a referendum on both the Dutertes and the Marcoses. But the intensifying interdynastic conflict also reflects larger geopolitical developments in the Indo-Pacific region. Domestic politics in the Philippines are being shaped by the looming U.S.-China rivalry, with Beijing heavily banking on the restoration of the Duterte dynasty and a more anti-Western foreign policy in Manila. For the first time in history, foreign-policy issues, namely the festering conflict in the South China Sea, may become central to the elections. The Philippines is in the midst of a Cold War at once between two powerful political dynasties as well as two international superpowers.
The Boiling Frog
What began as a fruitful tactical alliance and secured the largest share of votes in contemporary Philippine history (58.8 percent for Marcos Jr. and 61.5 percent for Duterte), soon turned into a political nightmare. From the very beginning it was clear that each family had a radically different set of expectations and interests at stake.
For the Dutertes, they anticipated broad policy continuity under a Marcos Jr. presidency. After all, both dynasties shared, at least on the surface, a similar brand of right-wing populism, which had catapulted Rodrigo Duterte to the presidency in 2016. Crucially, the Dutertes fatally underestimated Marcos Jr., whom the former president openly dismissed as a “weak leader” ahead of the 2022 elections. The Dutertes expected their ally to remain a pliable and subservient president, with Sara Duterte effectively dictating key policies of the state.
But as I have written in these pages, the namesake son of the former Philippine dictator had other plans. Traumatized by his megalomaniac father’s sudden fall from grace in the mid-1980s, when a “people power” revolt toppled the Marcos dictatorship, he prioritized his family’s full political rehabilitation once in office.
Accordingly, Marcos Jr. followed a broadly “reformist” approach by, among other things, dialing down his predecessor’s deadly “drug war”; cultivating warmer ties with Western democratic allies; and adopting a friendlier relationship with media as well as liberal dissidents, who suffered persecution under Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency. For Marcos Jr., the priority was to rebrand his notorious family’s reputation and, accordingly, pave the way for the seamless political rise of his sons, most notably Ferdinand “Sandro” Marcos III, who is currently a top leader in the Philippine Congress.
The breakdown in the UniTeam came in three acts. First, Marcos Jr. refused to hand the Dutertes and their allies any vital positions. While Sara Duterte was denied the powerful Department of National Defense, former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a key Duterte ally, was denied leadership of Congress — a position that went to Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, the president’s first cousin.
The second act came a year later when Sara Duterte was stripped of her sizeable and notorious discretionary funds, the so-called “confidential funds,” which were the staple of unaccountable politics and misgovernance under the Duterte dynasty at both the local and national levels. In response, former president Rodrigo Duterte publicly attacked the Congress as “the most rotten institution” and accused them of persecuting his daughter.
The final straw was the decision by Marcos allies to go after a key Duterte ally, the controversial pastor Apollo Quiboloy, who has long been on the FBI’s most-wanted list on charges of human trafficking. The Philippine legislature launched its own investigations into the alleged crimes of the controversial religious leader from Davao City. Once seen as the ultimate powerbroker in Philippine politics, and the purported owner of an influential pro-Duterte media network, Quiboloy was eventually forced into hiding in order to avoid arrest by government authorities. As of now, he remains in hiding.
The Quiboloy episode was largely seen as a dress rehearsal for a crackdown on the Dutertes themselves. The Philippine Congress, packed by Marcos allies, soon pursued multiple charges against the Dutertes over corruption scandals and widespread human-rights violations. The Dutertes ended up like a “boiling frog,” witnessing their steady marginalization and potential prosecution. To view the inter-dynastic clash as a purely domestic political affair, however, misses the point. Unlike any period in contemporary Philippine history, broader geopolitical tectonic shifts are having a direct bearing on domestic politics.
The Frontline State
All politics is local, so the saying goes. But the upcoming midterm elections will be a contest of international scope: Both China and the United States have a direct interest in the future direction of Philippine political leadership. In geopolitical terms, today’s Manila somewhat resembles Berlin in the mid-twentieth century, when competing superpowers tried to carve out their own spheres of influence.
Despite the Marcoses’ noxious family reputation, including multiple U.S. court cases involving corruption and human rights violations during the dictatorship from 1971–86, Marcos Jr. has been warmly welcomed in Western corridors of power. Throughout the past two years, top leaders of the European Union, Australia, and Japan — not to mention U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris and diplomatic chiefs from practically all major Western capitals — have visited Manila to build warm ties with Marcos Jr., who has adopted an increasingly tough stance against China amid the disputes in the South China Sea.
Over the past year, Chinese and Philippine maritime forces have collided in the disputed waters on at least three occasions, while Chinese forces employed water cannons to disrupt Philippine resupply missions to Second Thomas Shoal on as many as five occasions. Tensions reached new heights when Chinese forces forcibly boarded and then disarmed Philippine naval servicemen during a tense standoff near the contested shoal in mid-June. The upshot was an injured Filipino soldier and damage to multiple Philippine vessels, thus raising the specter of armed confrontation.
The United States carefully followed the situation, given its mutual defense treaty (MDT) with the Philippines, in order to assess the need for intervention. Marcos Jr. sought to de-escalate tensions by refusing to characterize China’s latest action as an “armed attack,” which would have triggered the Philippine-U.S. MDT, but he made it clear that he won’t alter his country’s foreign-policy direction. Accordingly, the Philippines is contemplating joint patrols and resupply missions with the United States and other like-minded powers to ward off China. The Marcos Jr. administration is also committed to fortifying the Philippines’ de facto military bases in contested shoals such as Second Thomas Shoal. With the vast majority of Filipinos advocating for a tough stance in the South China Sea, Marcos Jr. is in no position to compromise over the country’s sovereign rights, which were affirmed by an arbitral tribunal at The Hague in 2016.
China not only rejects the international-court ruling, but insists that the former Duterte administration had agreed to a series of secretive deals under which the former president promised not to fortify the Philippine position in disputed areas. The Marcos Jr. administration has categorically denied the existence of any binding agreement with China over the issue, thus insisting on its sovereign prerogative to defend its position in the disputed waters.
Just as worrying for China, however, is Marcos Jr.’s decision to grant the Pentagon access to additional military facilities near Taiwan’s southern shores. In fact, Manila is contemplating granting the United States permission to pre-position advanced-weapons systems in the area, with an eye on potential contingencies in the Taiwan Strait and Bashi Channel.
Backed by Western powers, Marcos Jr. is showing no signs of compromise with China. As a result, China’s best hope of resetting bilateral ties, and protecting its interests in the South China Sea and Taiwan, would largely depend on the political fortunes of its proxies in the Philippines. The Dutertes, who have refused to criticize China’s actions, are the most powerful backers of warmer bilateral ties and a more “independent” foreign policy that eschews Western allies and partners.
The stage is now set for a particularly vicious showdown between the Dutertes, backed by China, and the Marcoses, supported by the West. Disagreements over the direction of Philippine foreign policy will become a major issue in next year’s midterm elections, although economic concerns will predictably be the dominant concern of voters. While the Marcos camp will brandish its patriotic credentials and likely portray the Dutertes as a pro-China faction, the latter will lash out at the incumbent as a supposed pro-American proxy and warmonger in the South China Sea.
Next year’s elections will serve as a referendum not only on the domestic policies of the incumbent but also on his foreign policy. It remains to be seen if the two dynasties will flirt with outright political violence, given the extremely high stakes in the race. For the Dutertes, it will be a battle for survival; should they and their allies win a sufficient number of seats in the Senate, the dynasty will be in a good position to orchestrate a political comeback ahead of the 2028 presidential elections. After all, Sara Duterte enjoys the highest trust rating among government officials and is still seen as a frontrunner to succeed the incumbent. The ensuing clash of dynastic titans will not only shape Philippine domestic politics, but also the trajectory of great-power competition in the broader region.
Richard Javad Heydarian is a senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines, Asian Center, and a columnist at the Philippine Daily Inquirer. His books include The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy (2018) and The Indo-Pacific: Trump, China, and the New Struggle for Global Mastery (2020).
Copyright © 2024 National Endowment for Democracy
Image credit: Ezra Acayan/Getty Images
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