Philippines: Marcos Jr. and Duterte daughter to lead country?

Politics & Elections
1

The Philippines’ presidential campaign has just started. The front-running team is Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. for President, and Sara Duterte – daughter of the current president – for Vice President. As of a few days ago, they had a 20-point lead in opinion polls.

Marcos Jr. refuses to address continuing charges against his parents that they looted some $10 billion from the country. And Filipinos don’t seem to care much about that.

(Side note: I saw this on NHK News from Japan. Is there anything at all about it in US news outlets? You can find it, if you dig a little, on Bloomberg news (a business-related story) and US News.)

I can’t say what this development bodes for the future of The Philippines. What do you folks think?

2

At this point, being abused by the Marcos family is basically a tradition in the Philippines.

It’s not just about stealing money. Marcos Sr. had a political opponent assassinated.

Imagine Benedict Arnold’s son running for president in the US. This is probably worse than that.

3

Corruption is entrenched at every level in the Philippines. Many of the common folks even excuse it by saying that office-holders need to be corrupt because buying votes costs so much. In case you didn’t know, vote buying is extremely common there.

It’s only moderately better in the US, where vote buying occurs almost exclusively at the Congressional level.