Marcos Jr. will shape the Philippines in his own way
LESS than a week after the presidential elections, the shape of things to come in the Philippines can already be seen. As the new governing team led by President-elect Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr., aka Bongbong Marcos or BBM for short, said, the winning team will “hit the ground running” as indeed it is expected to.
Speculations are raging on who will be tasked with the foreign affairs secretary job, given the actuations of the US and its lackey NATO to escalate intrusions into Asia-Pacific affairs. The reverberating and only name on the list at this time is retired UP professor Clarita Carlos who said upon announcement of the 2016 arbitral ruling: “Let’s not flaunt this thing, and let’s just be sober.”
Congratulatory messages have come to BBM from nearly all countries and particular attention has been given to the messages. Chinese President Xi Jinping’s congratulatory note was the earliest; the letter was hand-carried by Ambassador Huang Xilian to President-elect BBM himself. US President Joe Biden called BBM and expressed a subtle reminder about “human rights.”
BBM was solicitous with Biden, inviting Biden to his June 30 inauguration assuring that “the Philippines has always held the United States in high regard as a friend, an ally and a partner.”
Should that worry the Filipino anti-MDT (Mutual Defense Treaty), anti-EDCA (Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement) and anti-VFA (Visiting Forces Agreement) advocates?
While President Rodrigo R. Duterte had successfully dangled the abrogation of the Mutual Defense Treaty without finally severing it, the peril of Ukrainization in the Asia-Pacific is rising as the US and NATO are heightening the decibels calling for the “protection of Taiwan” from a non-existent threat and intensifying war games in the north of the Philippines.
We have learned how suave BBM is in handling conflict, his unique quality endearing to many Filipinos is equanimity in the face of aggression and hostility. While the US officialdom is deferential to BBM today, the US media has not given an inch and sustains its black propaganda lambasting the “dictator’s son,” from CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to John Oliver on HBO.
The US has started on the wrong foot in heavily slandering the winner of the presidential elections in the Philippines — Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. US media’s constant black propaganda will not help the US in cultivating good relations with the new administration. The Filipino people are, however, now perceiving that the US is ready to push for “regime change” as soon as BBM is inaugurated as president using the usual strategies of raising tens of thousands of urban middle class to rally and demonstrate, interrupt normal functioning of government and conspire with military factions to oust a legitimate government. When the US ousted the elder Marcos using these tactics, the significance of US economic and military clout in the Philippines was overwhelming, but today the US is no longer in such a preeminent position. Any regime change strategy is bound to fail.
Domestically, the US minions called “Amboys” (that is American Boys) in the Philippines are following the “regime change” playbook against the BBM-Sara administration even before its inauguration. There are daily demonstrations alleging vote fraud, student activists boycotting classes, and paid rabble barging onto election regulator’s offices.
The usual Amboy suspects in media slander BBM relentlessly with opinion pieces reacting to the BBM win: “Start pimping our women to Chinese opportunists.” US ersatz Nobel laureate Maria Ressa writes, “Marcos win will spur more disinformation.”
Naturally, the agitation is not working with the unassailable win of BBM and Sara Duterte, but the Amboys keep pushing their luck with the spigot from additional $500 million anti-China information fund from the US Congress this year. The rabble rousers are a few hundred but the pro-US local media make them seem like the Maidan demonstrations.
The picture I am painting here is how the early aftermath of the 2022 Philippine presidential elections looks like. The present looks messy and tentative, as expected. But the future looks bright. BBMSara has a firm landslide majority win, the Western predators have been significantly weakened and its “regime change” threats are only inflated by media.
The Philippine economy that BBM is inheriting from Duterte is looking up. First quarter 2022 GDP grew by 8.3 percent; the longest Cebu-Cordova Link Bridge has just been opened after two Chinese donated bridges easing Metro Manila traffic opened the past year; FDI rose by 46.3 percent in February, though inflation is a threat as is the case for the rest of the world.
The official canvassing of the votes by Congress is not expected to face delays with the massive landslide victory of BBM-Sara. The inauguration of the BBM presidency will be on June 30, 2022 after the monthlong congressional canvassing, or official acceptance of the vote tally and formal proclamation of the winners on May 27 or 28.
Between now and June 30 when the new president is sworn in, we will see how a BBM-Sara governance will take shape.
The author is the founder of Philippine-BRICS Strategic Studies, a Philippine think tank. He is a writer-columnist of SovereignPH.com and the Philippine News Agency news site, broadcast and online political-economic host and commentator. This article was first published in the Global Times on May 15, 2022. The Global Times is an English-language Chinese tabloid under the People’s Daily, an official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party.