Philippines

The Philippine election verdict is in. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr – the son of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos who was deposed in the peaceful 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution – is the next President of the Philippines. Sara Duterte, the daughter of the current President Rodrigo

Vietnam recently banned the film Uncharted from domestic distribution due to a scene depicting an “illegal image” of China’s infamous “nine-dash line”. This is not the first time popular culture has become embroiled in the politics of the South China Sea. In 2021, the Philippines’

Ferdinand Marcos Jr, only son and namesake of the Philippines’ late kleptocratic dictator, looks set to win the country’s upcoming presidential election in May. Consecutive polls in January and February have the junior Marcos winning with a staggering 60 per cent of the national vote. Bongbong

While broadly similar to other presidential forms of government, the Philippines’ system of choosing its leaders does hold some nuisances which reveal deeply-rooted problems in Philippine democracy. The following are some of the long-standing realities of its politics:   Leaders

The Philippines national election looms in May 2022. Sitting President Rodrigo Duterte is running to become a senator, while his daughter is campaigning to be vice-president to Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, the offspring of another strongman. Current senator and Duterte’s closest ally

The Philippine labour diaspora is one of the largest in the world with around 9 million people or 10 per cent of the population working overseas, and sending massive remittances (US$33.5 billion in 2019) that contribute to the economy. Yet the popular construction of the Filipino migrant is that of

On 25 August, Rodrigo Duterte announced his intention to seek the second-highest post in the Philippines government in next year’s elections. “I will run for vice president,” he said. “I will continue this crusade [against] insurgency, then criminality [and] drugs.” But by 2 October

Boxer and Philippine senator Manny Pacquiao knows how to pick his fights. For weeks, the champ has engaged President Rodrigo Duterte in a word war. First, Pacquiao jabbed Duterte’s leniency on the incursion of Chinese ships in the West Philippine Sea ­– a major thorn in the President’s side

With the passing of former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III, the country’s political future becomes even more uncertain in the run-up to an election next year.     The former president passed away on 24 June, aged 61. His death comes as the Philippines grapples with

On 20 March, the Philippine government’s National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea reported that more than 200 Chinese fishing vessels, with suspected members of China’s maritime militia on board, had congregated around Juan Felipe Reef (aka Whitsun Reef) and appeared to be neither

It’s hard to tell whether the Philippine government intentionally sought to mark exactly one year since 15 March 2020 Metro Manila Covid lockdown by tightening quarantine restrictions once again, first on 15 March and then further on 22 March. New Covid cases have been piling up at

A civil war has been going on in the Philippines for over 50 years, waged by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) with the armed guerrillas of the New People’s Army (NPA). The rebels boast a strength spread across 73 out of the country’s 81 provinces. Every president since the conflict

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines addressed the United Nations General Assembly last month, the first time he has done so since he assumed office in 2016. During his speech, Duterte said that the “Philippines will continue to protect the human rights of its

Earlier this month, days after Manila went back into a hard lockdown due to a sharp rise in Covid-19 infections, unidentified assailants slipped past the Philippine capital’s strict quarantine measures and approached the home of Randall Echanis, a left-wing party leader and longtime activist. When

The Philippine House of Representatives opened the second regular session of congress last month, with some legislators looking to kick-start the controversial process of amending the constitution. Charter change – or “cha-cha”, as locals put it – has been part of President Rodrigo Duterte

After almost four months of lockdown measures due to Covid-19, the Philippines government in June eased restrictions for the majority of the country. But even as public transport systems slowly got back to running, something was missing: the distinctive jeepneys, still banned from plying their trade

In the midst of a delicate war-to-peace transition, still punctuated by military operations, attacks from militant groups and vendettas between feuding clans, the newly created autonomous region of Bangsamoro, in the southern Philippines, is now living in fear of Covid-19. While the extent of the

The announcement by the Duterte administration last month that it will terminate the 1998 Philippines-US Visiting Forces Agreement will likely also raise questions about the future of the Australia-Philippines political and security relationship. Australia and the US are the only two countries that

The termination of the 1998 Philippines-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) initiated by the Duterte administration will mark a historic disruption of American power projection in the Asia-Pacific, and deal a serious blow to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea–based maritime order

Martial law was lifted in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao on 1 January, an indication of what a military spokesperson called an “improved security climate” in the region. The move, in theory, ends 31 months of heightened military presence on the island, put into effect in May 2017,

Mindanao has always been a militarised zone due to the combined influence of insurgency, high criminality, and clan violence. Yet the five-month Marawi siege in 2017 and the aftermath has further amplified what can be best described as a “securitised” state. More than 12,000 troops were deployed

The recent declaration of a national dengue fever epidemic in the Philippines has sounded a public-health alarm in the Western Pacific, as cases of the tropical virus continue to rise throughout the region. The statement by the Philippines Department of Health earlier this month follows a

It has been an unusually intense time for elections across Southeast Asia in the past year with both a stunning upset and more predictable returns of incumbents. But the striking thing from a quick tour of some of the main battlefields is how the general absence of clear policy reform debate in

Last Wednesday, two days after the Philippines mid-term elections, the loose coalition of forces that amounts to an opposition were having a crisis meeting. They were moving quickly for fear of what convenor Corazon “Dinky” Soliman described as a “horror scenario” – that the vice