alliance and gotten tougher on Beijing over the last two years. That is why the Duterte government has re-embraced the U.S. The Philippines tried an outstretched hand and China bit it. defense commitments in the South China Sea.īut when it comes to foreign policy, Marcos will not have the same space for maneuver that Duterte did. And, like Duterte, he is skeptical of the value of U.S.
#Martial law in the us crack
He has, however, been clear that he would like to take another crack at improving ties with Beijing, as current leader Duterte has tried with mixed success. He has avoided presidential debates, shunned interviews, and has been silent on most issues. Unlike Leni, with her coherent platform for good governance and development at home and standing up to China abroad, Marcos is a policy cipher. But the United States doesn’t get a vote in its allies’ elections. government would doubtless have found it easier to work with Marcos’s leading opponent, Vice President Leni Robredo. But barely a year out from the Capitol insurrection and with a twice-impeached former president angling for a return to power in 2024, the United States would be better served by engagement rather than criticism of the democratic headwinds buffeting the Philippines. The country’s democratic institutions have already been battered by six years of the Duterte presidency and the rise of online disinformation, alongside the decades-long corrosives of oligarchy, graft, and poor governance. This is not the end of Philippine democracy, though it may accelerate its decay. Like his father at the start, he will soon be the duly elected president. The passage of time, the failure of the post-Marcos political establishment to deliver for many Filipinos, and of course, the echo chambers of social media, created a ready audience for that historical fiction.īongbong Marcos’s margin of victory is too wide for argument. Their power and wealth have allowed them to rewrite the family’s story as one of persecution and recast the dictatorship as a time of relative peace and prosperity. And yet, within a system built in symbolic opposition to them, the Marcoses have thrived. The post-1986 political order in the Philippines was self-consciously framed as one of national revitalization after the dark years of martial law. The congressional seats and governorships of the Marcos’s native Ilocos Norte continue to rotate among the family. Both children would later win nationwide races for Senate. Imelda won her own seat in 1995, as did her daughter Imee in 1998. Less than a year later, Imelda unsuccessfully ran for president, but Bongbong secured a seat in the House of Representatives.
It started with the family’s 1991 return to the Philippines to face charges of corruption (the elder Marcos died in 1989). The election doesn’t change that any more than those of Rodrigo Duterte or Donald Trump did.īongbong’s rise to the presidency has been decades in the making. But the U.S.-Philippines alliance is vital to both nations’ security and prosperity, especially in the new era of competition with China. government, will greet the news of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s victory with private chagrin. Many Americans, including inside the U.S. Thirty-six years later, they have elected the dictator’s son president. When the family fled to exile in Hawaii, millions of Filipinos rejoiced. In between, the Marcos dictatorship imprisoned, tortured, and killed thousands, sent the economy into a tailspin, and oversaw a kleptocracy famously epitomized by First Lady Imelda’s collection of 3,000 pairs of shoes. He declared martial law in 1972 and was finally toppled by the People Power Revolution of 1986. The Return of the Marcoses and the U.S.-Philippines Allianceįerdinand Marcos was first elected president of the Philippines in 1965. Responding to Egregious Human Rights Abuses.Building Sustainable and Inclusive Democracy.Family Planning, Maternal and Child Health, and Immunizations.Energy, Climate Change, and Environmental Impacts.Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation.Defense Industry, Acquisition, and Innovation.Intelligence, Surveillance, and Privacy.
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