World

The son of the late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos on Wednesday claimed victory in the presidential election, vowing to be a leader “for all Filipinos”, his spokesman said.

With an initial count almost complete, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, popularly known as “Bongbong”, has secured over 56 percent of the vote and more than double the tally of his nearest rival, liberal Leni Robredo.

The win is an astonishing reversal in the fortunes of the Marcos family, who have gone from the presidential palace to pariahs and back again in the space of a few decades.

“To the world, he says: Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions,” spokesman Vic Rodriguez said in a statement.

Voters had been predicted to back Marcos by a landslide in Monday’s election, after relentless online whitewashing of the family’s past, the backing of powerful political dynasties and public disenchantment with post-dictatorship governments. 

For years pro-Marcos accounts have flooded social media, leaving many young Facebook-educated Filipinos believing his father’s rule was a golden period of peace and prosperity.

In reality, Marcos senior left the Philippines bankrupt, and killed, tortured and jailed tens of thousands of opponents during his corrupt dictatorship.

Hours after his thumping victory Marcos Jr visited his father’s grave at the national heroes’ cemetery in Manila. 

Photos posted on official Marcos social media accounts on Wednesday showed him standing before the oversized tomb with his head slightly bowed and covering his eyes with his right hand, as if crying.

“This is a victory for all Filipinos, and for democracy,” Rodriguez said in the statement. 

“To those who voted for Bongbong, and those who did not, it is his promise to be a President for all Filipinos. To seek common ground across political divides, and to work together to unite the nation.”

Marcos is waiting for the vote count to finish before he fronts the media to declare victory, Rodriguez told reporters at Marcos’s campaign headquarters in Manila.

Marcos arrived at the building a short time later and was greeted by a crush of supporters outside. 

The crowd erupted in cheers when he grabbed a cardboard sign from a fan that read “Thank you 31 million”, referring to the number of votes he won. 

“I am so happy, so overwhelmed,” said Joseph Bugayong, a 30-year-old gardener standing outside the headquarters.

“I saw him in person and even shook his hand. My wait was worth it.”

– Questions over leadership style –

The Marcos family’s astounding journey from ignominy back to political favour has overshadowed questions about what Marcos Jr’s administration would do.

There were few hints on the campaign trail after Marcos snubbed televised debates and largely avoided media interviews as he sought to avoid own goals.

Rights groups, Catholic church leaders and political analysts fear the huge win could embolden Marcos to rule with a heavy fist and push through constitutional changes that could entrench his rule. 

Marcos’s running mate Sara Duterte, the daughter of the outgoing president, also won the vice presidency, which is elected separately, in a landslide.

Their success at the ballot box means the two offspring of authoritarian leaders will hold the highest elected positions for the next six years. 

The overwhelming win has devastated Robredo’s supporters, who saw the election as a make-or-break moment for the country’s fragile democracy.

Many of them went door to door across the vast archipelago in a months-long effort to convince voters to support the liberal candidate for the top job.

Robredo, a 57-year-old lawyer and the current vice president, has admitted “clear disappointment” about the result but vowed to continue the fight against poor governance.

Marcos will have to contend with this opposition that could congeal into a potent pro-democracy movement.  

“I think they could still be in a position to check the worst instincts of the incoming Marcos and Duterte administration,” said political analyst Richard Heydarian. 

A Hong Kong scholar who helped run a now-disbanded defence fund for democracy protesters was arrested at the airport under the national security law, two legal sources told AFP on Wednesday.

Hui Po-keung, a prominent cultural studies scholar, was on his way to take up an academic post in Europe before he was detained on Tuesday, the sources said, asking not to be named.

The arrest was confirmed by a second legal source. Police have yet to respond to a request for comment.

Hui was arrested for “collusion with foreign forces”, one source said, an offence under a new security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in response to huge protests three years ago.

The law has crushed dissent in the once outspoken business hub and can carry up to life in jail.

Hui was one of six trustees of the “612 Humanitarian Relief Fund” which helped arrested protesters pay for their legal and medical bills.

Other trustees of the fund include retired cleric Cardinal Joseph Zen, veteran barrister Margaret Ng, gay rights activist and pop singer Denise Ho as well jailed democracy activist Cyd Ho.

The fund disbanded last year after the city’s national security police demanded it hand over operational details including information about its donors and beneficiaries.

Shortly before the fund closed, Hong Kong’s Lingnan University confirmed that its contract with Hui had ended the month before but declined to state a reason on personal privacy grounds.

Academics who played prominent roles in Hong Kong’s now largely decimated democracy movement have often found themselves dropped by universities and are struggling to find work.

An active social commentator and prolific author, Hui taught for more than two decades at Lingnan University and was credited by prominent former student leader Nathan Law for inspiring his political career.

Sri Lankan police have been ordered to go on the offensive and use live ammunition to prevent “anarchy”, a top official told AFP Wednesday after another night of sporadic arson attacks.

Police say eight people have died since Monday, when frustration at a dire economic crisis erupted into violence between backers and opponents of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, injuring over 200.

Even with a curfew and thousands of security forces told to “shoot on sight” to prevent further unrest, a luxury hotel said to belong to a Rajapaksa relative was set ablaze Tuesday evening.

“It is no longer spontaneous anger, but organised violence,” the senior security official said on condition of anonymity.

“If the situation is not brought under control, there could be total anarchy.” 

He said the 85,000-strong police “have been asked to adopt an offensive stance”, and have been ordered to use live ammunition against troublemakers.

As well as the hotel fire, on Tuesday evening police said they shot into the air at two locations to disperse mobs trying to torch vehicles. 

They also stepped up security for several judges, saying they were targeted too.

– Gota go –

On Wednesday, protestors defied the curfew and remained camped out in front of the president’s office.

“We want the whole Rajapaksa clan out because they are so, so corrupt. They have been eating into Sri Lanka like a caterpillar eating into some fruit or leaf,” activist Kaushalya Fernando told AFP.

In a tweet, Rajapaksa on Wednesday called for “all Sri Lankans to join hands as one, to overcome the economic, social & political challenges”.

But the main opposition SJB party reiterated they will not be a part of any government with Rajapaksa still president, even after his brother Mahinda’s resignation as prime minister on Monday.

Rajapaksa’s government in 2020 restored the president’s constitutional right to appoint and fire ministers as well as judges.

“In the guise of angry mobs, violence is being incited so military rule can be established,” SJB head Sajith Premadasa tweeted.

“Rule of law should be maintained through the constitution not with GUNS. It is time to empower citizens not disempower them.”

– Turning point –

Sri Lankans have been suffering shortages of essential goods, fuel and medicines for months in the island’s worst downturn since independence in 1948.

But the crisis moved into a darker phase on Monday when government supporters with sticks and clubs attacked demonstrators who had been protesting peacefully for weeks demanding the president’s resignation.

Mobs then retaliated across the country late into the night, torching dozens of homes of ruling-party politicians. 

Mahinda Rajapaksa had to be rescued in a pre-dawn military operation on Tuesday and taken to a naval dockyard for safety after protesters tried to storm his official residence.

One ruling-party politician gunned down two people on Monday night after his car was surrounded. Another shot dead a 27-year-old man and them himself, police said.

Echoing the UN rights chief and the European Union, the United States on Tuesday said it was concerned both with the violence and the deployment of the military.

“We stress that peaceful protesters should never be subjected to violence or intimidation, whether that’s on the part of the military force or civilian units,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

India, meanwhile, was forced to deny social media rumours — some using old images of Mahinda boarding a helicopter — that it was helping family members to flee.

“The High Commission would like to categorically deny speculative reports in sections of media and social media about India sending her troops to Sri Lanka,” it said.

With vital tourism torpedoed by the pandemic, Sri Lanka last month defaulted on its foreign debts of $51 billion, some of it stemming from Rajapaksa vanity projects built with Chinese loans.

The International Monetary Fund this week began a “virtual mission” of staff-level talks on a possible bailout.

IMF mission chief Masahiro Nozaki said the lender aimed to be “fully prepared for policy discussions once a new government has been formed.”

Despite his Oxford education and jet-set lifestyle, the Philippines’s president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Junior sailed to victory this week as a champion of the poor.

Now they expect him to deliver.

Residents of the impoverished Baseco neighbourhood in Manila do not think of 64-year-old Marcos, nicknamed Bongbong, as the mega-rich scion of a political dynasty famed for extorting billions, stockpiling designer shoes and treating public coffers like an all-you-can-eat buffet.

In this thick lattice of roads, lanes and alleyways jam-packed with street kids, push trikes and hawkers, Marcos means hope.

“A lot of change will happen when he becomes president,” 30-year-old JR Foras says matter-of-factly, as he waits for customers in a stuffy port-side barbershop brightened by a florescent striplight and posters of K-Pop hair models.

He predicts that by the end of Marcos Jr’s six-year term “there will be a lot of jobs”, enough to go around.

“Maybe I’ll get another job. Maybe — I’ll become a security guard,” he says while admitting he lacks the necessary training.

Like many young Filipinos, Foras has bought into the torrent of misinformation that has reinvented the Marcos family image.

For believers, Marcos senior’s bloody decades-long rule has been transformed into a gilded age for the Philippines, making Bongbong the obvious choice to restore those imagined glories.

“I voted for him because of what his father accomplished,” says Foras. “We were number one in Asia. I just feel like he would do it again.”

The Marcos rebranding was so successful that, according to initial results, Baseco voters narrowly backed him as president over Isko Moreno, an actor-turned-politician who grew up in the poverty of a nearby slum.

– Covid side effects –

But economists warn that even if Marcos’s government does not descend into another free-for-all of corruption and cronyism, he will have a hard time meeting lofty promises.

In a country where 43 percent consider themselves poor, and 39 percent say they are on the borderline, the Covid-19 crisis hit especially hard.

Kiosk owner Rolando Castillo, 47, says long lockdowns were ruinous, leaving him with no profit, no source of income.

“There were times we had to use up stocks from our store because we had nothing to eat.”

He voted for Marcos “because I want our economy to perform better”.

“Filipinos are expecting a lot from him,” he says.

But Marcos’s father left the Philippines as one of the most indebted countries in the world, and his son will have limited cash to invest in recovery or — crucially — stabilising the price of basic goods.

Fifty-year-old Patricio Gomez has struggled to find full-time work since his right leg was amputated below the knee, but for now, he helps out on his brother’s food stall.

They survived the last few years by delivering Sisig — a local dish of mince and offal seasoned with soy and citrus — and other homecooked meals door-to-door.

But one of Covid’s many side effects, inflation, continues to make life tough.

“Before the pandemic, electricity was 400 pesos (US$8) a month, now it is 800,” he says.

He is counting on Marcos to put that right.

“He promised the price of rice and electricity will go down,” says Gomez.

Older Baseco residents — who have seen the presidency rotate between a handful of uber-rich political dynasties — are hopeful life will improve under Marcos, but are not counting on it.

“Let’s just see what he’ll do,” says fishmonger Mary Jane Serdoncillo, signalling her expectations are low. 

“I’ve always sold fish,” she says. “This is what I’m used to. I’ve sold fish since I was young, until I had children and grandchildren.”

“I don’t have a dream anymore.”

The son of the late Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos on Wednesday claimed victory in the presidential election, vowing to be a leader “for all Filipinos”, his spokesman said.

With an initial count almost complete, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, popularly known as “Bongbong”, has secured over 56 percent of the vote and more than double the tally of his nearest rival, liberal Leni Robredo.

The win is an astonishing reversal in the fortunes of the Marcos family, who have gone from the presidential palace to pariahs and back again in the space of a few decades.

“To the world, he says: Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions,” spokesman Vic Rodriguez said in a statement.

Voters had been predicted to back Marcos by a landslide in Monday’s election, boosted by online whitewashing of the family’s past, the backing of powerful political dynasties and public disenchantment with post-dictatorship governments. 

For years pro-Marcos accounts have flooded social media, leaving many young Facebook-educated Filipinos believing his father’s rule was a golden period of peace and prosperity.

In reality, Marcos senior left the Philippines bankrupt, and killed, tortured and jailed tens of thousands of opponents during his corrupt dictatorship.

Hours after his thumping victory Marcos Jr visited his father’s grave at the national heroes’ cemetery in Manila. 

Photos posted on official Marcos social media accounts on Wednesday showed him standing before the oversized tomb with his head slightly bowed and covering his eyes with his right hand, as if crying.

“This is a victory for all Filipinos, and for democracy,” Rodriguez said in the statement. 

“To those who voted for Bongbong, and those who did not, it is his promise to be a President for all Filipinos. To seek common ground across political divides, and to work together to unite the nation.”

– Questions over leadership style –

The Marcos family’s astounding journey from ignominy back to political favour has overshadowed questions about what Marcos’ administration would do.

There were few hints on the campaign trail after Marcos snubbed televised debates and largely avoided media interviews as he sought to avoid own goals.

Rights groups, Catholic church leaders and political analysts fear the huge win could embolden Marcos to rule with a heavy fist and push through constitutional changes that could entrench his rule. 

Marcos’s running mate Sara Duterte, the daughter of the outgoing president, also won the vice presidency, which is elected separately, in a landslide.

Their success at the ballot box means the two offspring of authoritarian leaders will hold the highest elected positions for the next six years. 

The overwhelming win has devastated Robredo’s supporters, who saw the election as a make-or-break moment for the country’s fragile democracy.

Many of them went door to door across the vast archipelago in a months-long effort to convince voters to support the liberal candidate for the top job.

Robredo, a 57-year-old lawyer and the current vice president, has admitted “clear disappointment” about the result but vowed to continue the fight against poor governance.

Marcos will have to contend with this opposition that could congeal into a potent pro-democracy movement.  

“I think they could still be in a position to check the worst instincts of the incoming Marcos and Duterte administration,” said political analyst Richard Heydarian.