Marcos Junior, president of the Philippines, 36 years after his father?

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Ferdinand Marcos Jr, known as “BongBong Marcos” or “BBM” (Filipinos love to give nicknames to their elected officials) is about to bring his clan back to power, 36 years after the dismissal of his father driven out by a popular uprising. The ballot, at Philippines, is one turn away. And the polls promise him an absolute majority, far ahead of his main rival, Leni Robredo, current vice-president and human rights lawyer – even though he has remained rather discreet in the media and has not participated in none of the debates organized during the campaign and that he refuses to answer the on-the-fly questions launched by the journalists.

This return to favor is explained by a total rewriting of history, which began in the 90s when the family returned from exile, and which then intensified thanks to social networks.

TikTok, in particular, has become the echo chamber for a massive disinformation campaign to rehabilitate the regime of Marcos Sr. We see videos claiming that he was “the best president in the world”that the approximately 10 billion dollars amassed by the clan do not come from the looting of public coffers, but from his income as a lawyer.

Forgotten the designated opponents “enemies of the state” arrested and tortured by the tens of thousands during this period, for the trolls who spread on the networks, martial law was above all synonymous with stability and economic growth (when in reality it led the country to bankruptcy). Voters are sensitive to this discourse: more than half of them are under 40, they were not born during the reign of Marcos Sr. or are too young to remember.

As for the older ones, they see above all that the successive governments since 1986 have not improved the lives of the poor (a fifth of the population still lives below the poverty line), that clientelism persists. Their disenchantment is such that one Marcos heir or another, today they don’t really see the difference.

What can we expect from the mandate of “BongBong Marcos”? The larger his victory, the firmer his grip.

Aged 64, nothing will prevent him from revising the Constitution to consolidate his power and weaken democracy. NGOs fear that human rights abuses will increase. The affairs of the clan, they could be definitively buried.

However, the Presidential Commission on Good Governance, which investigates ill-gotten gains, has not finished its work. She is still involved in 89 different trials, in the Philippines, the United States and Switzerland. But it is under the tutelage of the Head of State. With Marcos Junior in power, it is unlikely that it will result in any condemnation.


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