On Monday, the Philippines will go to the polls for mid-term elections, a contest that is set to be dominated by the festering feud between two of the country’s most prominent political dynasties.
Following weeks of political rallies across the country, a total of 18,280 political positions will be up for grabs in the election, including 317 seats in Congress, half of the 24 seats in the Senate, 82 governorships and vice-governorships, and thousands more executive and legislative positions at the regional and municipal level. The winners will then take office on June 30, with terms of six years for the senators and three years for all other officeholders.
The most significant and closely watched contests will be in the Senate, where 64 candidates will vie for 12 vacant seats. While the Senate election is always an important component of midterm elections, it has taken on additional significance and public interest given the bitter falling-out between President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Vice President Sara Duterte, whose relationship has deteriorated dramatically over the past 18 months.
The Duterte and Marcos families came together to form the “Uniteam” ticket ahead of the presidential election in 2022, and scored a landslide victory, but their relationship has since collapsed due to a mix of political differences and personal incompatibilities. The tensions originated in the first half of last year, when domestic and foreign policy differences between the two camps were exacerbated by a number of personal attacks, including outlandish exchanges of accusations of drug abuse between Marcos and his predecessor, Sara’s father, Rodrigo Duterte.
In mid-2024, Sara Duterte openly expressed her opposition to Marcos and resigned from his cabinet. She then came under investigation by the Marcos-aligned House of Representatives for her alleged misuse of millions of dollars in public funds. In February, she was impeached by the House for this and a series of other alleged transgressions, including a supposed threat to assassinate the president.
Tensions then reached a high pitch in March following the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte and his subsequent extradition to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where he faces charges related to his bloody “war on drugs.”
As a result, as Aaron Mallar and Aries A. Arugay wrote this week for Fulcrum, the midterm election is “shaping up to be less of an informal referendum on the Marcos Jr administration and more of an expression of betrayal and loyalty” between the two camps.
For this reason, the most closely watched contest will be in the Senate, where Marcos and Duterte have both endorsed rival senatorial slates. The outcome of these contests is significant for a number of reasons. First, and most obviously, the outcome will determine whether Marcos retains a majority in the upper house that will enable him to carry out his proposed legislative agenda.
Second, it could also determine the political fate of Sara Duterte, who faces an impeachment trial in the Senate in July. If successfully impeached – this requires a two-thirds vote – she would lose her position and be banned from standing for political office for life.
This would dash her reported plans to run for the presidency in 2028, although as Dean Dulay, assistant professor of political science at Singapore Management University, told Bloomberg, Philippine political loyalties are so fluid that there is no guarantee that Marcos-aligned candidates would vote to impeach Duterte. “This midterm election may introduce new players in the Senate, but political maneuverings render them up for grabs,” he told Bloomberg, adding that that this “sets the stage for the long game that is 2028.”
While public opinion polls conducted earlier in the campaign suggested that Marcos’ candidates were on track to dominate the Senate races, more recent polls have seen a marked swing toward the Duterte camp. In a public opinion poll conducted by Pulse Asia in March, Marcos’s approval rating fell to 25 percent, down from 42 percent a month earlier. Conversely, Sara Duterte’s approval rating rose to 59 percent, up from 52 percent.
While neither leader is on the ballot on May 12, this could indicate a swing of support for the Senate contests, which are elected on a nationwide basis. Indeed, another poll published this week by the independent opinion firm WR Numero found a “clear growth” in support for pro-Duterte candidates – the so-called “DuterTEN” – in recent weeks, with them emerging as “a growing bloc that’s reasserting its presence in the political landscape.”
Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, a long-time aide to Rodrigo Duterte who has been described as his “political son,” has risen to the top of the Senate race, his support rising from 30 percent in February to 42 percent in early April to 45 percent. A separate opinion poll conducted by Pulse Asia last month showed Bong Go in first place with more than 62 percent support.
Some observers have put this down to Duterte’s arrest and extradition, which has inflamed his supporters and fueled a campaign, marked by colorful public rallies in the Dutertes’ stronghold of Davao City, to secure his return to the country. In a curious subplot, Marcos has also been opposed by his sister, Senator Imee Marcos, who facilitated the Duterte-Marcos alliance ahead of the 2022 election. In late March, she removed her name from Alyansa Para sa Bagong Pilipinas, the ruling coalition’s senatorial slate, in protest at her brother’s decision to arrest Rodrigo Duterte and send him to The Hague, and has since earned an endorsement from Sara Duterte.
While this swing toward the pro-Duterte camp is unlikely to be decisive – the Pulse Asia poll otherwise showed pro-Marcos candidates occupying nine of the top 14 positions – it could be enough to save Sara Duterte from impeachment.
All of this personal drama, of course, has crowded out discussions of other relevant issues facing the Philippines, including the global trade war, continuing maritime frictions with China, and the employment issues and cost of living pressures that are among the top concerns of Filipino voters.
As Mallar and Arugay argued in their article for Fulcrum, the bitter fallout between Marcos and Duterte has “contained an intense emotional component that gave energy to an affective polarization that divides the elites and the Filipino people alike.” This polarization, lacking any discernible ideological content, has had the potential to “shift the conversation away from real-life implications of electoral outcomes, sideline other voices such as those of the candidates from progressive groups, and keep the public absorbed and distracted by an ‘us versus them’ narrative.”