This development—catalyzed by coordinated actions of the government, executive and court to protect President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s strength and destroy his greatest rival—had been building since the prosecution of Vice President Sara Duterte, Duterte’s child.
The tenacity of autocratic dominance, as demonstrated by no less than the Marcoses, raises concerns about the Philippines ‘ political direction and its capacity to break free from its hold.
The Marcos lineage has a lot of anxiety. In 1972, two centuries into his second term as president, Ferdinand Marcos Sr appeared on television and claimed that revolutionary parts were plotting to overthrow the government, using it as a pretext to declare martial law.
What followed was not just political revolution but also a tremendous unfolding that put the country on a program of political and economic decline. Under Marcos Sr, who consolidated power and sparked the fracturing of political parties, the two-party system fell apart, leaving a legacy of division and factionalism ( Teehankee, 2024 ).
Cronyism became entrenched. Towards the end of autocratic concept. Nearby warriors had authority. The country descended into financial mismanagement, where hardship soared and prosperity disparities widened. A state liberated from two imperial experts found itself ensnared in a period of political and economic difficulties less than three decades after independence.
Marcos Sr abused the defense to thwart criticism and strengthen his position of authority. Historian Alfred McCoy notes 3, 257 extrajudicial killings, 35, 000 torture victims and 70, 000 incarcerations during the Marcos years ( McCoy, 1999 ).
Under Marcos Sr., lawlessness, a long-standing component of Philippine politics, grew into a tool of the state. He authorized and equipped private militias to thwart communist uprisings, but in reality to impose political dominance ( Parada, 2023 ).
Now, private armed organizations operate with tacit state aid, serving as democratic officers and suppressing criticism for local warlords. A rival family from the 2022 gubernatorial race ( Parada, 2023 ), according to rumors, carried out the massacre of a governor and nine others in Negros Oriental in March 2023.
The 2009 Maguindanao murder, which saw the end of the conflict between the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu groups, is the bloodiest example of this. 32 of the victims were journalists, 32 of them editors.
Warlordism and fortification are just part of the equation. Innovations like “behest money” and kickbacks made it possible for friends to become the new elites, consolidating power in controlled service sectors like crops, media, and power.
These old and new oligarchs exercise political power that results in financial control, as well as economical influence over political structures, many of which are forged through strategic alliances, including marriage.
Freedom House noted the Philippines ‘ low democratic status in 2024, highlighting that power remains tightly concentrated within patronage and kinship networks ( Freedom House, 2024 ). Around 70 % of the House of Representatives seats were held by political families with decades-long standing ( Freedom House, 2024 ).
Political donations, which have few legal restrictions, are dominated by a small network of major donors, further entangling this pattern of influence ( Freedom House, 2024 ). According to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, the dominance of political dynasties is directly correlated to underdevelopment and poverty, especially in Visayas and Mindanao, where the competitive environment remains weak ( Fonbuena, 2024 ).
The oligarchs have fought and coexisted with the state throughout the country, becoming thus entangled that they are now almost indistinguishable from one another. William Howard Taft, the then-president-general of the Philippines, passed laws in 1902 that ultimately gave the rich Filipino rulers greater control over sizable landmasses.
This entrenched a landed aristocracy that remains the basis of the government’s present political and economic oligarchs. They eventually seized important positions in the court, administrative, and government, adapting so well to historical shifts that they came to see themselves as the only genuine voice of the country as the only genuine voice of the country.
They parroted the co-prosperity ideology and framed collaboration with the Japanese as a matter of national survival during World War II ( Rafael, 1991 ). After the war, President Manuel Roxas granted them amnesty, erasing any lingering questions about their power and legitimacy ( Rafael, 1991 ).
This “oligarchic apparatus,” a complicated web of electricity made up of both old and new elites, laws and institutions, has since evolved into the very foundation of the country. Although Marcos Jr.’s election in 2022 may have appeared as a return to power, it was only an expression of this apparatus’s persistent strength and control.
But entrenched is the autocratic machine that attempts to issue this dominance have largely failed. Little has been made in the National Commission on Good Government (PCGG), which was established to retrieve property from the ousted president and his friends. Only$ 3.4 billion has been recovered despite an estimated$ 30 billion in unaccounted Marcos wealth ( Montalvan II, 2023 ).
In 2024, several cases tied to Marcos ‘ family assets were dismissed by the Philippines ‘ anti-graft court due to prosecution delays ( Elemia, 2024 ). Importantly, the president nominates PCGG chairpersons and commission, as with most senior positions in government, above judges and prosecutors and the director.
The autocratic apparatus has always moved unimpeded and generally unopposed, but it is now in its most organized and established type. The durability of this system raises an uncomfortable question for the ICC, which relies on government assent—and so the incumbent’s support—to bring out its mandate: is real social accountability exist in a nation where autocratic rule has become identical from the state itself?
None of this excludes other possible causes of this political slog. Strongman politics, amplified by his war on drugs, sparked by Dutte’s ( and his daughter’s ) strongman rule, which fueled a corrupt and violent police force and sparked new drug rivalries, setting in motion a new cycle of violence that ultimately turned against him.
Yet strongman politics and even the “anti-oligarch” rhetoric are hardly unique to Duterte, nor was his war on drugs new. Strongman candidates have pursued the presidency in every election since Marcos Sr’s fall in 1986 ( e .g., Alfredo Lim, Panfilo Lacson ) ( Garrido, 2020 ).
This bias toward strongman politics is a reflection of the Filipino’s changing perception of democracy, one that points to the limitations of reforms within the current democratic institutions, such as the unsuccessful attempts to break monopolies in key industries ( such as utilities ) through constitutional amendment.
To call Duterte’s arrest” justice”, then, is to deny a deeper truth: his politics was not an aberration but a reckoning—however flawed—of a political and economic hegemony decades in the making, perfected by no less than Marcos Sr, where oligarchs and the state preserve their dominance while stifling competition and perpetuating poverty, criminality, and even the drug trade in the nation’s peripheries.
Let’s not forget that the Marcos Sr dictatorship, with the support of the police and the military, also contributed to the rise of Jose” Don Pepe” Oyson, a petty smuggler who became the godfather of the methamphetamine trade ( Sidel, 1999 ). This history was obscured by Duterte’s arrest in a masterstroke of cooptation, which has not been corrected by his arrest.
In this, Marcos is not alone. A lineage of neo-colonized intellectuals has consistently assisted in breaking up the memory of earlier revolutionary struggles and negotiating agreements that only serve to further oligarchic rule. This includes progressive-minded enablers of the current regime who paint ilusory victories and underline how deeply they support the power structure they claim to demolish ( San Juan, 2024 ).
The oligarchs ‘ greatest strength is not just in their ability to influence perceptions and imitate the language of reform. It is also in their control. What appears as a battle for justice often is little more than a recalibration of entrenched power.
Oligarchy corrodes, deviating even from the laws of justice, truth, and perception. The silent hum of resistance grows beneath the decay: slow, steady, and steady, but still as persistent as steel sharpening over time.
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