Philippines: clash of the political dynasties reveals an open split in the ruling class

The Philippines was ravaged by the sixth typhoon of the month in November, but no one from the ruling class is putting any meaningful effort into alleviating the disaster for the masses. Instead, they are preoccupied with another storm: the rancorous political fracas between former allies President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. (also known as ‘BBM’) and Vice President Sara Duterte.

Public insults and threats have been traded between both sides, to the point where the vice president is now being impeached at the whim of the president. Behind these ludicrous theatrics, what does this show about the state of the capitalist crisis in the Philippines?

Clash of the ‘dynasties’

Only two years ago, the Marcos-Duterte ticket was elected to power in a landslide victory. Although BBM is the son of a former dictator of the country and Sara is the daughter of an almost equally murderous former president, the two rode atop a wave of anti-establishment anger emanating from the masses, which carried them into Malacañang Palace.

Support from Sara’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, was key in hoodwinking voters into thinking that the return of a Marcos would mean a continuation of the Keynesian spending pursued during Duterte’s presidency, as well as standing up to the US, and curbing the deep chaos in daily life that the Filipino masses feel under capitalism through the brutal ‘crime-fighting’ measures that Duterte was known for.

Support from Sara’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, was key in hoodwinking voters into thinking that the return of a Marcos would mean a continuation of the Keynesian spending pursued during Duterte’s presidency / Image: Presidential Communications Office, Wikimedia Commons

On the surface, the union of the two political dynasties seemed natural. Their relations stretch back decades, beginning with Ferdinand Marcos Sr. inviting Vicente Duterte (Rodrigo’s father) to join his cabinet.

Both dynasties have killed countless Filipino workers and toilers. They carry on taking lives as if it was a family tradition.

Under Rodrigo Duterte’s term from 2016-22, more than 6,200 died from his signature ‘anti-drug’ raids and extra-judicial killings, the scale of which placed him on the radar of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Meanwhile Bongbong Marcos, only two years into his presidency, continues to rain down police and military terror on the masses. So far he has racked up 175 killings and more than 62,000 people displaced, in the name of ‘internal security’.

And yet these two families, so similar to one another, soon fell out after coming to power together.

The first sign of a serious dispute came in late 2023. Sara Duterte’s proposal for ₱650m (around $11m USD) of the national budget to be spent on her office and the Department of Education (which she also headed) was blocked by the House, which has BBM’s cousin and potential heir, Martin Romualdez, at its head.

A war of words soon erupted. In January 2024, the Duterte family held a rally in their home base of Davao City. There, Rodrigo Duterte accused BBM of, among other things, trying to consolidate power for himself through amending the constitution (something that Duterte himself tried before), and being a drug addict:

“Bongbong Marcos was high back then. Now that he’s the president, he’s still high… We have a drug addict for a president! That son of a whore!”

Days later, Duterte called for Mindanao, one of the three main regions of the country, to secede from the Philippines due to the intolerable governance of BBM.

Bongbong Marcos, in turn, accused Duterte of being high on fentanyl when the latter made the incendiary remarks.

This Game of Thrones-esque fallout quickly escalated from a war of words to active manoeuvring, with BBM directing the machinery of the state against the vice president.

Sara Duterte resigned as education secretary in June. She was then placed under investigation for corruption, and her chief of staff was jailed. BBM even signaled a willingness to cooperate with the ICCs investigation into Rodrigo Duterte.

Drama and death threats

All this seemed to have pushed Sara Duterte over the edge. On 25 November of this year, Sara launched what is now an infamous threat against the president:

“This country is going to hell because we are led by a person who doesn’t know how to be a president and who is a liar. Don’t worry about my safety. I have talked to a person and I said, if I get killed, go kill Bongbong, Liza Araneta (the first lady), and Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke. I said, ‘Do not stop until you kill them’ and he said yes.”

The sitting vice president thereby issued death threats against the sitting president, the first lady, and the speaker of the House.

The sitting vice president thereby issued death threats against the sitting president, the first lady, and the speaker of the House / Image: Dipolog City Government, Wikimedia Commons

One would be forgiven for dismissing such hyperbole as mere political theater, and in most cases that would be true in Filipino bourgeois politics. However, the person issuing these threats is a member of the Duterte family.

The family patriarch, Rodrigo, cultivated deep ties with vigilante death squads when he was the mayor of Davao City. When he became president, he then unleashed these upon the whole country, killing thousands. Therefore, when Sara Duterte says she has assassins at her service, one must believe her.

The threats do not end there. “I wanted to remove [BBM’s] head. I realised the relationship was already toxic.” Sara Duterte told a press conference. “[I] just imagine myself cutting his head”, she repeated, gesturing with her hands. She even threatened that she would “dig up the president's father and throw him in the sea.”

With these words, the heads of two of the leading Filipino political dynasties are now caught up in open hostilities that could potentially escalate beyond the halls of power.

The Marcoses and their clients represent the northern, Luzon-based ruling class, while the Dutertes, in addition to being the leading dynasty of the southern, Mindanao ruling class, also built up a sizable following of the petty bourgeoisie and lumpenproletariat across the country.

Given there is a complete absence of a genuine political alternative for the working class, many Filipino workers, who are steeped in crisis, are understandably sympathetic to Duterte’s demagogy.

The clash of these two families therefore has the potential to go well beyond the parliamentary arena. In the process they are destabilising the whole of Filipino bourgeois ‘democracy’, and in turn pushing the masses towards revolutionary conclusions.

But conflicting personal interests are far from sufficient in explaining why the rift exists in the first place. In fact, there is a far more powerful force at play underneath the surface, one that is a defining feature of the present epoch of world capitalist crisis: the rivalry between the US and China.

Inter-imperialist rivalry

Although it gained formal independence from the United States in 1946, the Philippines remains dominated by US imperialism to this day.

Historically, the Philippines was a key part of the US’ strategy to ‘contain’ the spread of communism during the Cold War. This was especially the case after the strengthening of the Soviet Union and the success of the Chinese Revolution after World War Two.

Historically, the Philippines was a key part of the US’ strategy to ‘contain’ the spread of communism during the Cold War / Image: public domain

A key pillar of Marcos Sr.’s decades-long dictatorship was the backing of the US. Although the Cold War is over, the Philippines remains a key strategic part of the US’s efforts to contain its burgeoning competitor on the world stage of capitalism: China.

The domination of US imperialism has always been fully supported by the Filipino national bourgeoisie, who like any other national bourgeoisie of a country dependent on imperialism, have material interests in keeping the country in subservience and its population super-exploited. Therefore, although the Philippines is a country brimming with potential, capitalism and imperialism continues to trap it and most of its population in extreme backwardness and poverty.

But as US imperialism goes into relative decline and China continues to rise as its imperialist competitor, the ruling class of dominated countries that do business with both could find it beneficial for their own class interests to shift away from the US towards China.

Indeed the Philippines, which neighbours China, enjoys growing trade and investment relations with it. Chinese Foreign Direct Investment into the Philippines rose by 514 percent between 2010 and 2018. It is therefore only natural that some segment of the national ruling class would be attracted to pivot away from the US’s agenda so as to benefit their own.

This policy was carried out under Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency. Duterte inaugurated the shift away from the US by publicly telling then US President Obama:

“I am the president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any masters other than the Filipino people… son of a bitch, I will swear at you [Obama] in front of everybody.”

Thereafter, the Duterte government took big steps in strengthening ties with China. In the process he gained some support for himself by presenting himself as someone who stands up to US imperialism, which is widely reviled by the Filipino masses.

Bongbong Marcos, despite being a scion of a US-puppet dictator par excellence, also presented himself during his election campaign as someone who would continue Duterte’s policy of strengthening ties with China. This was a key reason why the Marcos and Duterte ‘UniTeam’ ticket seemed solid at the time, and most commentators of international affairs expected this to be the case once BBM took office.

About-face

But once in power, BBM made an about-face that surprised everyone by dramatically tilting the Philippines back towards the US.

BBM granted four new military bases to the U.S. in the northern Philippines. All of them are close to the sensitive South China Sea, where the Philippines often clashes with the Chinese navy over the disputed territory of the Scarborough Shoals.

BBM also upgraded security ties with the US and Japan, directly congratulated Taiwanese President William Lai for his election, and signed many wide-ranging bilateral economic agreements with the Biden administration.

Towards China, BBM took an assertive stance against the claim made by Beijing to the disputed waters near north Luzon. He has seemed more than willing to escalate the conflict between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, or as some call it, the West Philippine Sea.

Once in power, BBM made an about-face that surprised everyone by dramatically tilting the Philippines back towards the US / Image: public domain

In recent months, BBM has been pushing for the idea of a constitutional change that would allow for 100 percent foreign ownership of businesses, including in education. It would not be surprising if American investments were granted preferential treatments to buy up Filipino industries under this scheme.

BBM’s hard turn back to the old road of selling off the country to the US is at the root of his conflict with the Dutertes, who maintain their call to build ties with China. This is far beyond a difference of opinion between two families. It reflects a general divide within the Filipino ruling class on this question, which has a defining significance for the country and for all of Southeast Asia.

The turn towards China as championed by Rodrigo Duterte, although it has a certain basis among a section of the ruling class, remains a minority position amongst the Filipino bourgeoisie.

As journalist Marites Vitug explained to the Diplomat, even Rodrigo Duterte’s own defence and foreign ministers were largely adversarial towards China. The ease with which BBM turned back towards the US after his election showed that such a move was endorsed by a large section of the ruling class and the state.

All this underscores that dependence on the US remains a key characteristic of most of the Filipino ruling class. However, as US imperialism’s decline continues, and with the incoming Trump administration turning more towards isolationist policies, the struggle amongst the pro-US and pro-China Filipino capitalists will only continue.

The stage is set for a deepening of the political crises in the Philippines, as expressed by the rivalry between BBM and Sara Duterte today.

Chaos ahead

Amidst the political brawl between the two top political figures, BBM uttered a sentiment keenly felt by the Filipino masses: “If it is that easy to threaten the life of a president, how much more [easy is it to threaten] ordinary citizens”.

This statement illustrates a few points that are painfully true. Firstly, the political situation in the Philippines is in such a mess that politicians feel the need to make crazy threats openly. But they also know they can do so with virtual impunity on account of the weak establishment.

For now it would seem that the feud has undermined both BBM and Sara Duterte's popularity, with Sara taking a much bigger hit. The caricature of two squabbling families is not a good look for either of them – or for the Filipino ruling class generally – especially when a midterm election scheduled for May 2025 is approaching.

But now that the cat is out of the bag and the feud has become irreversible, BBM has every incentive to ruin Sara Duterte’s political future.

This is especially urgent for BBM, given that according to a Pulse Asia poll conducted in April this year, Sara Duterte ranks among the top choices for president in the next general election set to take place in 2028, with 34 percent. Meanwhile, Imee Marcos, BBM’s sister and another potential successor, ranks at a distant fourth, with merely five percent of support.

Should an impeachment against Sara be carried through, it could mean the end of her political career as an individual. This would be an affront to the Duterte family, who still reign supreme in a large segment of the south of the country and have a layer of rabid followers they can mobilise in the streets. The Dutertes, above all Rodrigo, will not simply take this without recrimination. The politics of the Philippines will only have more chaos ahead.

What now for the Filipino working class?

Does all this mean that the Filipino working class will hopelessly submit to this system, choosing one kleptocratic bourgeois family over another? Not in the slightest.

Although some among the masses held illusions in Duterte’s demagogy for a time, there is now a general search for an alternative outside of the Marcos, the Dutertes, and all of the establishment. Many seem to be rallying behind independent senator Raffy Tulfo.

Many seem to be rallying behind independent senator Raffy Tulfo / Image: public domain

Before entering into politics, Raffy Tulfo was a popular television personality and YouTuber known for his sharp criticisms of the whole of the Filipino establishment. He is especially critical of the establishment for neglecting problems faced by most working-class Filipinos. He enables workers from all walks of life to submit their grievances for him to share on his show, where he tries to help resolve them.

Through this, Tulfo gained a whopping 28.7 million subscribers on YouTube, making his the single most subscribed channel in the country. He also handily won a seat in the senate in 2022 as an independent with 23 million votes.

Even though Tulfo has explicitly ruled out running for president, at this point he is the only person in the country who could beat Sara Duterte in the 2028 presidential election, according to the Pulse Asia poll cited above.

Tulfo’s meteoric rise is not an accident. His stature as a true outsider rather than a part of an establishment dynasty, coupled with his tirade against the whole of Filipino politics, connects with a burning desire in the ranks of society for an alternative that represents their class interests.

The very same phenomenon already emerged in many other countries, such as with Pablo Iglesias in Spain (who also began as a television personality), Bernie Sanders in the US, Beppe Grillo and the Five Star Movement in Italy, and so on.

Yet as of now Tulfo suffers from the same political weakness that led to all the aforementioned figures’ eventual downfall. Like them, he only articulates the desires of millions of working-class people for change, but he does not put forward a programme that actually aims to tackle the root of the problem: capitalism. Instead, so far, he limits his criticisms to the ‘bad actors’ within the system, while accepting capitalism as a whole.

We shall see whether a larger social phenomenon or even a movement will crystallise around Raffy Tulfo as the crisis of Filipino capitalism deepens. But the enormous interest in Tulfo, coupled with how the masses react to the latest political drama, all show the masses are looking for a decisive break with the status quo, in order to escape the whirlpool of crisis that is dragging the Philippines down.

The only ideas that can fulfil the justified wish of the Filipino masses are the ideas of genuine Marxism. As the capitalist Philippines descends into further crises and is pulled into inter-imperialist conflicts, it is high time for sincere class fighters in the Philippines to join us in the Revolutionary Communist International – to build an alternative for the country and the region.