When voters in the Philippines choose a new president on Monday, they appear ready to choose an old name, as Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr.—widely known as Bongbong, or BBM—looks set to win a landslide victory in the country of more than 100 million.
Marcos is the namesake of his dictator father, whose two-decade grip on power ended in a popular, military-backed uprising in 1986. Marcos Sr.’s rule was infamous for its brutality following his imposition of martial law, which saw thousands imprisoned and tortured.
It also made his wife, Imelda, a byword for excess as her 3,000-strong shoe collection in a country experiencing extreme poverty became worldwide news. The family is estimated to have looted as much as $10 billion from the public purse during its time in power.
And yet, for many voters, that past doesn’t seem to matter—given that Marcos Jr. has rebranded of his father’s dictatorship as a golden era for the country. As Georgi Engelbrecht, senior analyst for the Philippines at International Crisis Group, argues: “Time has passed since the time of Martial Law, and if you look at the demographics, it is mostly older Filipinos who remember and are opposed to BBM.”
“The campaign has successfully set up a double standard wherein the sins of the father do not translate to the son,” Alan German, a public relations and political communications executive in Manila told Nikkei. “But the achievements of the father—if you even call them achievements—are inherited by the son.”
The Philippines’ famously mercurial election landscape could have looked very different. Back in October, when candidates were still jostling for position, it was President Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, who seemed the obvious choice, polling higher than Marcos, boxing legend Manny Pacquiao, and Leni Robredo, Marcos’s main rival on Monday.
Duterte-Carpio is set to win a separate election to become the country’s vice president, ensuring the Dutertes remain close to power—and safer from the International Criminal Court, which has an open investigation into her father’s tactics in prosecuting his infamous war on drugs.
Structural and technological factors also help Marcos’s chances on Monday. As well as benefiting from a split field of nine candidates, he also faces a youthful electorate; 70 percent of the country’s population is under 40 years old, making the era of martial law a distant, or even non-existent, memory.
That unfamiliarity has been exploited on social media, and especially Facebook, where much of the myth-making and nostalgia-boosting around Marcos has taken place. As Crisis Group’s Engelbrecht notes, it “was used already years ago, to rebrand the family image and name.”
Maria Ressa, the Nobel prizewinning editor of the Rappler news site, said the power of social media has helped bend perceptions toward a Marcos victory. “He looks set to win, and the only way that is possible is because history shifted in front of our eyes,” Ressa told AFP.
“This is the problem with social media: It has allowed propaganda to flourish and literally has allowed public figures like Marcos, like Bolsonaro to ignore (media) checks and balances… and to create their own realities,” she added.
But as Marco Garrido explained in the Washington Post, a savvy rebrand can’t explain all of Marcos’s appeal. A growing frustration with the democratic process following a string of scandals and failures has voters looking for more certainty.
“Many Filipinos have come to believe that they cannot change democracy by relying on the constitution, Congress, the courts, government agencies or the ‘parliament of the streets’—people power.” Garrido wrote. “They have learned through experience that these institutions are limited or can be hijacked, and thus are exploring other, decidedly less liberal avenues of political renovation.”
The unique attraction held by political dynasties, in place since the country’s past as a U.S. colony, also helps explain the Marcos resurgence. As Daniel Bruno Davis explored in Foreign Policy, voters tend to punish politicians indicted for corruption with reduced vote shares, but corrupt members of political dynasties—who can reward voters with local projects or even straight cash—see no such drop in support.
In a campaign where policy details have been largely in the background, it’s not clear where exactly Marcos will take the country’s foreign policy, as it finds itself stuck between the great power rivalry of China and the United States.
Due to his time in exile in the U.S. state of Hawaii (as well as his family’s close ties to former U.S. President Ronald Reagan), Marcos is unlikely to carry the same reflexively anti-American sentiment of his predecessor. But he is also seen as more accommodating of China, which claims some of the same maritime territory as the Philippines.
In a February debate, Marcos gave little away, saying that the country would “have to fly our own way,” and reject the imposition of spheres of influence.
“No matter what the superpowers are trying to do, we have to work within the interest of the Philippines. We cannot allow ourselves to be part of the foreign policy of other countries. We have to have our own foreign policy,” Marcos argued.