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Clan politics reign but a family is divided in the race to rule the Philippines

Julie McCarthy

example of speech about politics in the philippines

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter Sara Duterte arrive for the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2018. AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his daughter Sara Duterte arrive for the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2018.

A foiled succession plan, sensational allegations, and a family feud at the pinnacle of power — these are the ingredients in what promises to be a riveting race to succeed outgoing Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

The no-holds-barred contest scheduled for May 2022 has already produced what some observers see as an unsettling alliance: the offspring of two presidents pairing off in an unprecedented bid to run the country.

Taking full advantage of their prominence, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr., has teamed up with Sara Duterte, daughter of President Rodrigo Duterte in the national election.

He is running for president in this dynastic duo, while she vies for vice president.

Are dynasties and celebrities narrowing democracy?

Political dynasties in the Philippines are nothing new.

Richard Heydarian, an expert on Philippine politics, says they are such a dominant feature in the country that between 70% and 90% of elected offices have been controlled by influential families.

But even by those standards, this Marcos-Duterte coupling takes powerful clan politics to a new level, says University of the Philippines Diliman political science professor Aries Arugay.

Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. is surrounded by supporters after attending the recount of votes in the 2016 vice presidential race at the Supreme Court. Marcos narrowly lost that contest to Leni Robredo, the current vice president. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Speaking at a recent online forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Arugay says second generation dynasts are behaving like a "cartel".

He says their calculus is as damaging as it is simple: "Why can't we just share power, limit competition, and make sure that the next winners of the presidential and national elections come from us?"

Then there is the celebrity factor.

Heydarian notes a narrowing of democracy in the pairing of dynasties with the celebrity class, which includes former film stars, television personalities and sports figures. He says the two elite groups monopolize national office, putting elected office beyond the reach of a lot of ordinary Filipinos who he says may have the merit and passion to serve, but are effectively blocked from fully participating.

It makes a "mockery" of democracy, Heydarian says, but it's also a trend that could be difficult to reverse.

"After all, in politics you need a certain degree of messaging, communications machinery and charisma," he said. And, he added, especially in the age of social media, "It's not for dull people."

Running on a name, not a track record

Consider Manny Pacquiao.

His stardom as one of the legends of the boxing world has catapulted him into the race for president next year. He is currently a sitting senator and is in the running for the highest office not on the power of his record in the upper chamber marked by absenteeism, but on the strength of his career as the country's most acclaimed athlete.

So prized have name recognition and celebrity status become in winning Philippine elections that observers worry it's turning democracy into the preserve of the rich and well-connected.

Marcos is part and parcel of the phenomenon, according to Manila-based analyst Bob Herrera-Lim, who notes that his undistinguished career as a senator and congressman has been no barrier to his ambition for the presidency.

"[Marcos] is running on entitlement. He is running on the weaknesses of the system," Herrera-Lim said.

Sara Duterte poses for a selfie with city hall employees in Davao city, on the southern island of Mindanao. Manman Dejeto/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Sara Duterte poses for a selfie with city hall employees in Davao city, on the southern island of Mindanao.

Marcos' vice presidential partner Sara Duterte is an accomplished politician, occupying the post her father held for decades as the mayor of Davao City, the third largest in the country. But the fact the 43-year-old First Daughter, whose work is little known outside Davao, led in a presidential opinion poll this past summer can only be put down to the power of a famous family name.

Revisionism, a PR campaign of distortion — and fond memories of the Marcos era

Bongbong Marcos is now making waves, rewriting the past and embellishing his family's legacy.

It's been 35 years since his father was ousted by a popular uprising, exiled, and exposed for rights abuses and kleptocracy.

Marcos Sr. is believed to have amassed up to $10 billion while in office, and now his son has been resuscitating the family's image with a sophisticated social media campaign.

Marcos Jr. narrates seamlessly scored videos that cast his parents, Ferdinand and Imelda, as generous philanthropists, and his father as a great innovator who made possible new strains of rice and united the archipelago with infrastructure heralded as the "Golden Age" of the Philippines.

Critics decry what they call the revisionist history and systematic airbrushing of the sins of the father's 20-year rule that turned the country into his personal fiefdom.

Marcos Sr. engaged in land-grabbing, bank-grabbing, and using dummies to hide acquisitions from public view, according to Professor Paul Hutchcroft of the Australian National University, who has written extensively on the political economy of the Philippines.

The late dictator dispensed special privileges to relatives, friends and cronies, writes Ronald Mendoza, dean of the School of Government at Ateneo de Manila University, providing them access to the booty of the state, "even as the country failed to industrialize and was eventually plunged into debt and economic crises in the mid-1980s."

Activists wear masks with anti-Marcos slogans during a rally in front of the Supreme court in Manila in 2016 as they await the high court's decision on whether to allow the burial of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the "Cemetery of Heroes." Ted Aljibe/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Yet, despite all of it, the Marcos family is not without its loyalists among both the elites and ordinary Filipinos.

At a small community market in central Manila, where fishmongers congregate amid aquariums and chopping blocks, vendors and shoppers talk about the Marcos era with a sense of nostalgia.

Chereelyn Dayondon, 49, says she likes how Marcos Sr. ran the country before and she wants that to come back. The single mother earns $80 a month directing traffic and worries that the cost of living is getting too high.

"It's not going to be enough," she says. "You never know, maybe Bongbong can change the Philippines. Let's try him out."

Meanwhile, fish seller Teodora Sibug-Nelval, 57, reminisces about the old Marcos era and memories of cheap food and law and order.

"I had a good life. I was able to send my sibling to school ... I was able to buy a house," she says.

In the pandemic, however, Sibug-Nelval lost her home and her vending stall. And now she wants her life back. She says she believes that if Marcos wins the election, "our lives will be better."

Herrera-Lim also says that many Filipinos see a confusing, chaotic political situation: "There is no clear delineations, political parties don't work for our benefit, we are looking for order."

And that, he says, is what Marcos is offering.

"Bongbong Marcos is saying that during his father's time, there was this order. There was peace in the country, which again, is a myth," he says.

The challenger to the dynasty

Leni Robredo is the current vice president of the Philippines and a liberal progressive.

A lawyer by training, Robredo co-authored an anti-dynasty bill when she served as a member of the Philippine House of Representatives.

In the Philippines, the vice president and president are elected separately and Robredo is on the opposite end of the political spectrum from President Duterte, with whom she has repeatedly sparred over human rights, the handling of the pandemic and Duterte's close ties with China.

Among the many candidates for president, including a former police chief, the mayor of Manila and Duterte's closest aide, Robredo appears to represent the greatest challenge to Bongbong Marcos.

Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo gestures to a crowd of supporters in Manila on Oct. 7, 2021, the day she filed her candidacy for the 2022 presidential race. Jam Sta Rosa/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo gestures to a crowd of supporters in Manila on Oct. 7, 2021, the day she filed her candidacy for the 2022 presidential race.

Robredo defeated Marcos Jr. for vice president in 2016, and now she has pledged that if she wins the top office, she will recover the Marcos family's plundered riches.

Alluding to Marcos' perceived popularity, Robredo told a news conference last weekend that it was "sad that the people allow themselves to be fooled" into believing Marcos would save the country when the family's ill-gotten wealth "was the reason they are poor."

Yet Robredo may need more than tough rhetoric and moral rectitude.

Marites Vitug, the editor-at-large for the online news site Rappler, whose CEO won this year's Nobel Peace Prize , said the country was witnessing the "rehabilitation of the Marcos dynasty." Young people were especially susceptible to the Marcos rebranding, she said, because there were no standard history textbooks in the Philippines that explained the Marcos martial law years.

"I was shocked to hear from some millennials that this was never discussed in class," she said.

Vitug said the odd teacher or professor may present it, but it was not systematic.

"It should have been required reading," she said.

Political economist Calixto Chikiamco adds that the revived Marcos family fortunes represent a counter-revolution to the one that ousted Marcos Sr. in 1986. That so-called Yellow Revolution was a model that Chikiamco says has failed to deliver genuine change.

"Because our politics remain dysfunctional, our economy is still not doing so well, a quarter of the workforce is unemployed ... still a large number of people go abroad to seek better opportunities. So it is a revolt against their present situation," he said.

"That's the reason the Marcoses are making a comeback."

The Duterte dynasty is a house divided

The campaign promises to be one of the Philippines' most bitterly fought contests in years, not least because the Marcos-Duterte tie-up has not won the blessing of Sara Duterte's father.

Rodrigo Duterte did make the controversial decision to allow the late dictator's remains to be moved to the "Cemetery of Heroes," a decision confirmed by the Supreme Court. But the once-friendly relations between Rodrigo Duterte and Bongbong Marcos have frayed, possibly beyond repair.

Duterte had wanted his daughter to seek the presidency, not play second fiddle, to provide him protection from the International Criminal Court investigating his violent anti-drug war. The probe has been suspended for a procedural review, but court watchers expect the case of alleged crimes against humanity to resume. Meanwhile, Chikiamco says while Sara may talk of continuing her father's policies, by declining to run for the top job, she has gone her own way.

"The daughter is fiercely independent and didn't want to be under the thumb of President Duterte. And also she could not perhaps tolerate the president's men," Chikiamco said.

A grandmother and her grandchild light a candle beside mock chalk figure representing an extra judicial killing victim during a prayer rally condemning the government's war on drugs in Manila in 2017. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Herrera-Lim adds that daughter and father apparently "did not see eye to eye on many things related to the family or on the governance of Davao."

Fundamentally, though, Herrera-Lim says President Duterte doesn't trust Bongbong Marcos to shield him from ICC prosecutors.

"On these matters, family is very important," he said.

And even if there were such a bargain between the two men, Herrera says Duterte would worry it might not hold.

In what analysts regard as a means to protect himself, Duterte is making a bid for a seat in the Senate in the 2022 election.

One authoritative poll shows Marcos the early frontrunner to succeed him. But not, it seems, if President Duterte has anything to say about it.

He ignited a stir earlier this month by declaring in a televised address that an unnamed candidate for president uses cocaine.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. AFP/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.

Without identifying who, he said the offender was a "very weak leader" and that "he might win hands down."

Marcos took a drug test this past week, saying he was clean. Other candidates hurriedly lined up to clear their name.

Marcos is also under attack by groups eager to have him disqualified from running at all. The Commission on Elections is reviewing four separate petitions challenging his candidacy. At least one charges that Marcos misrepresented his eligibility to seek the presidency by stating he had no criminal conviction that would bar him from office. Petitioners argue that his 1995 conviction for failing to pay taxes for several years in the 1980s ends his bid for the presidency.

The Commission on Elections announced no ballots will be printed until the petitions are decided.

The campaign that officially begins in February is already generating drama enough for some to lament that the race for president is fast becoming a "political circus."

But Richard Heydarian says circuses are not always the worst thing. "Sometimes," he says, "they can produce a magical outcome. Let's see."

Correction Dec. 16, 2021

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Aries Arugay was a professor at Philippine University. He is with the University of the Philippines Diliman. Also, Ateneo de Manila University was misspelled as Ateno de Manila University.

We’re All Being Manipulated the Same Way

Conservative or liberal, American or Filipino, everyone is a victim of tech platforms’ attack on the truth.

In the Philippines, we’re 33 days before our presidential elections. Filipinos are going to the poll and we are choosing 18,000 posts, including the president and vice president. And how do you have integrity of elections if you don’t have integrity of facts? That’s a reality that we’re living with.

I put all of this stuff together in a book, and this is part of the reason you’ll see these ideas over and over. And the question I really want to ask you is the question we had to confront: What are you willing to sacrifice for the truth? Because these are the times we live in. The prologue for the book—which I pushed in at the end of last year—started with Crimea and the annexation in 2014, because that’s when you began to see the splintering of reality that had geopolitical impact. And of course, I’ve had to revise it once Russia invaded Ukraine . And the question that goes through my head is, if in 2014, eight years ago, we did something about it, would we be where we are today? No, we wouldn’t be.

Read: The information war isn’t over yet

So here’s what I’m going to talk about today, really just three things: What happened? How did it change us? And what can we do about it? These are critical for me. It’s existential. I call it an “Avengers assemble” moment in the Philippines. And guess what? Your elections are coming up too. Ain’t so far away for you here.

I’ve said this over and over, that, really, this is like when 140,000 people died instantly in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The same thing has happened in our information ecosystem, but it is silent and it is insidious. This is what I said in the Nobel lecture: An atom bomb has exploded in our information ecosystem. And here’s the reason why. I peg it to when journalists lost the gatekeeping powers. I wish we still had the gatekeeping powers, but we don’t.

So what happened? Content creation was separated from distribution, and then the distribution had completely new rules that no one knew about. We experienced it in motion. And by 2018, MIT writes a paper that says that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts. This is my 36th year as a journalist. I spent that entire time learning how to tell stories that will make you care. But when we’re up against lies, we just can’t win, because facts are really boring. Hard to capture your amygdala the way lies do.

Read: The grim conclusions of the largest-ever study of fake news

Think about it like this. All of our debate starts with content moderation . That’s downstream. Move further upstream to algorithmic amplification. That’s the operating system; that’s where the micro-targeting is. What is an algorithm? Opinion in code. That’s where one editor’s decision is multiplied millions and millions of times. And that’s not even where the problem is. Go further upstream to where our personal data has been pulled together by machine learning to make a model of you that knows you better than you know yourself, and then all of that is pulled together by artificial intelligence.

And that’s the mother lode. Surveillance capitalism, which Shoshana Zuboff has described in great detail, is what powers this entire thing. And we only debate content moderation. That’s like if you had a polluted river and were only looking at a test tube of water instead of where the pollutant is coming from. I call it a virus of lies.

Today we live in a behavior-modification system. The tech platforms that now distribute the news are actually biased against facts, and they’re biased against journalists. E. O. Wilson, who passed away in December, studied emergent behavior in ants. So think about emergent behavior in humans. He said the greatest crisis we face is our Paleolithic emotions, our medieval institutions, and our godlike technology. What travels faster and further? Hate. Anger. Conspiracy theories. Do you wonder why we have no shared space? I say this over and over. Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without these, we have no shared space and democracy is a dream.

Read: What Facebook did to American democracy

Surveillance capitalism pulls together four things. We look at them as separate problems, but they’re identical. The first is antitrust: There’s three antitrust bills that are pending at the U.S. Senate. Then data privacy: Who owns your data? Do you? Or does the company that collates them and creates a model of you. Third is user safety: Do we have a Better Business Bureau for our brains? And the fourth: content moderation. As long as you’re thinking about content, you’re not looking at everything else.

This is how we discovered what social media was doing to democracy in the Philippines. In September 2016, a bomb exploded in Davao City, the home city of President [Rodrigo] Duterte. A six-month-old article, “Man with high quality of bomb nabbed at Davao checkpoint,” went viral. This is disinformation: You take a truth and twist it. The story was seeded in fake websites; one of them is a Chinese website today. And it was seeded on Duterte and [Bongbong] Marcos Facebook pages.

Rappler ran a story on the disinformation called “Propaganda War: Weaponizing the Internet.” It was part of a three-part series. The second part was “Fake Accounts, Manufactured Reality on Social Media.” One account we investigated was called Luvimin Cancio. And we looked at this account and found it strange that she didn’t have many friends, but was a member of many, many, many groups. And then we took the photo and did a reverse imaging scan. It was not this person.

And then we took a look at who she was following, who were her friends. This is 2016, so you could still get that. We checked everything about them and tried to prove whether it was actually true: where they went to school, where they lived. Every single thing was a lie. This was a sock-puppet network.

I wrote the last part of the trilogy in 2016, which is “How Facebook Algorithms Impact Democracy.” It didn’t get better. It got worse.

Read: Social media are ruining political discourse

So what did we do? We realized it’s systematic, that it is taking a lie and pounding—that it is using free speech to stifle free speech, because when you are pounded to silence, you kind of shut up, unless you are foolish like me. We took all the data and gave it to our social-media team. Rappler is one of two Filipino fact-checking partners of Facebook. I’d say we’re frenemies. But I think tech is part of the solution.

After we published that “weaponization of the internet” series in 2016, we watched social media to see what would happen. Take the Facebook page of Sally Matay as an example. This has now been taken down, but it was a cut-and-paste account. We were still catching their growth. The data is pretty incredible. Everything I tell you is data-driven. We kept track of how many times they were posting in which Facebook pages. This is the first time we saw Marcos and Duterte disinformation networks working together.

I’m going to bring it back to you because the methodology is the same. The Election Integrity Partnership mapped the spread of “Stop the Steal.” This is the same methodology that was used to attack me. In “Stop the Steal,” you can see that the narrative of election fraud was seeded in August 2019 on RT, then picked up by Steve Bannon on YouTube. Then Tucker Carlson picks it up and then QAnon drops it October 7 and then President Trump comes top-down.

Read: Facebook is hiding the most important misinformation data

What happened to me in 2016? A lie told a million times became a fact. My meta-narrative? Journalist equals criminal. And then a year later, President Duterte came top-down with the same meta-narrative, except he did it in his State of the Nation Address. And then a week later, I got my first subpoena. That year, we had 14 investigations. In less than two years, by 2019, I got 10 arrest warrants, posted bail 10 times. It’s the same methodology. See how it is happening to you.

In 2020, my former colleague and I were charged in the first case of cyber libel, for a story that was published eight years earlier. The period of prescription for libel is only one year; lo and behold, it became 12 years. I was convicted, and so I’m appealing this at the Court of Appeals. The New York Times ran a story called “Conviction in the Philippines Reveals Facebook’s harms.” These are real-world harms.

This is happening to women. Women journalists. Mark Zuckerberg quotes Louis D. Brandeis all the time, saying, the way you get at bad speech is to have more speech. Brandeis wrote that in 1927, in the old days. In the age of social media, the age of abundance, we have to look back at Brandeis’s words. He also said that women are burned as witches. These words reminded me how gendered disinformation hits women journalists, politicians.

Social media brings out the worst of us. If you’re my age, you remember the old cartoon when you have a conscience and you have a devil and an angel trying to tell you what to do on each shoulder. But what social media has done, what American tech has done (well, you’ve got to include TikTok now) is it’s kicked off the angel, it’s given the devil a megaphone, and it’s injected directly into your brain.

In a UNESCO report called “The Chilling: Global Trends in Online Violence Against Women Journalists,” I was the example for the global South. Carole Cadwalladr, the British journalist who broke the Cambridge Analytica story, was the global North. ICFJ, the International Center for Journalists, said that 73 percent of women journalists experienced online abuse. Twenty-five percent received threats of physical violence like death threats. I get a lot of those. Twenty percent had been attacked or abused offline in connection.

Read: The global war on journalists

What happens in the virtual world happens in the real world. That thing where people think they’re different, disabuse your mind of that. There is only one world because we live in both worlds.

The UNESCO report looked at almost half a million social-media attacks against me. There was a point in time when I was getting 90 hate messages per hour. Sixty percent were meant to tear down my credibility. There’s a reason why you don’t believe news organizations anymore; that is an information operation. And then the other 40 percent were meant to tear down my spirit. It didn’t work, but it’s really painful.

After the Nobel, I came back home and realized, Oh my gosh, I’m getting new attacks again . I just went through and found out where the attacks were coming from. We looked at the creation dates of the Twitter accounts, and they were all created around the time of elections. Did I mention it’s 33 days before elections in the Philippines?

It’s like 1986 all over again: Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is running against another widow, Leni Robredo. She’s our vice president. The pro-Marcos accounts had a big spike, but not the pro-Leni accounts. So you can see something that would be looking more organic versus something that looks artificial. We did a story and then we gave the information to Twitter, and then Twitter suspended over 300 accounts in the Marcos network. There’ll be more, which hopefully we will be seeing. If you are the gatekeeper, you cannot abdicate responsibility, because you subject all of us to the harms.

Here’s the solution: tech, journalism, community. Those are the three pillars of Rappler , even from the beginning. Part of the reason I’m here is because I testified at the Senate subcommittee on East Asian affairs and I asked for legislation. It’s not where I started in 2016, because I thought tech platforms were like journalists and could have self-regulation. They’re not. Technology needs guardrails in place.

Read: The most powerful publishers in the world don’t give a damn

Journalism needs to survive. We built Rappler ’s platform. I spent a lot of money on it, and it took a long time because so much of our money was going to legal fees. But it’s rolling out in time for our elections. We’ve got to help independent media survive. And that’s part of the reason, before the Nobel, I agreed to co-chair the International Fund for Public Interest Media that’s asking democratic governments to actually put some money to help journalists survive.

Now I want to show you how they all come into effect, because we’re in the last 33 days before elections. I call it the #FactsFirst page. It’s a tech platform going through the four layers of this pyramid. We really started—this is kind of what I used the Nobel for—we started building this community in January. News organizations rarely share with each other, have never really in the Philippines. And so what we did is: 16 news organizations committed to fact-check the lies. We asked our communities, when you see a lie, send it to us on a tip line, and then we said, “All right, we’re going to meta-tag everything. It’s going to have the data, and then we’re going to be able to course it through the four layers of this pyramid.”

What are the four layers? Each of the newsgroups have links to each other—that’s good for search. And they also then share each other. Use your power. And then beyond that, it moves to the second layer. I call it “the mesh,” like in that movie Don’t Look Up , where the Planetary Defense system came together like a mesh. That’s kind of the way we have to live right now on social media, because meaning has been commoditized and each of us has to take our area of influence and clean it up. Then we connect it to each other, like a mesh. So all our human-rights organizations, our business groups, the church, environmental groups, civil societies, and NGOs are taking what the newsgroups are doing and sharing it with emotion.

And then after mesh, you go up to research. This was actually inspired by your Election Integrity Partnership in the U.S. Every week a research group will come out and tell Filipinos how we are being manipulated, who is gaining, and who is behind the networks of disinformation.

Renée DiResta: It’s not information. It’s amplified propaganda.

The last layer is the most important one, and they’ve been quiet for too long: legal groups. If you don’t have facts, you cannot have rule of law. These legal groups now are working hand in hand with the pyramid. They get the data pipeline and they then file both strategic and tactical litigation. I’ll tell you how it goes in 33 days, but it’s already working. Just on April Fools’ Day, and it wasn’t an April Fools’ joke, seven new legal complaints against me were thrown out. That’s good. But we also have 60 more new ones, so this isn’t ending. It’s still a whack-a-mole game, but we will win it. The one that I think is important is from the solicitor general, who really started the weaponization of the law, and he called fact-checking prior restraint. We’re going to win this.

What this world shows us is that we have a lot more in common than we have differences, believe it or not. As a journalist, I grew up looking at each country and every culture differently. But what the tech platforms actually showed us is the silver lining: We’re all being manipulated the same way. We have a lot more in common. So even things like identity politics, what happened in the U.S. in 2016, when both sides and Black Lives Matter was pounded open. Be aware. Think slow. Not fast.

About the Author

Here's the Full Transcript of President Bongbong Marcos' Second State of the Nation Address

President Bongbong Marcos delivered his second State of the Nation Address today. Watch his speech here, then read the full transcript below.

The full transcript of Bongbong Marcos' State of the Nation Address 2023:

Vice President Sara Z. Duterte;

Former Presidents Joseph Ejercito Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and Rodrigo Roa Duterte;

Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri and the Honorable Members of the Senate;

House Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez and the Honorable Members of the House of Representatives;

Chief Justice Alexander Gesmundo and the Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court;

His Excellency, Most Reverend Charles John Brown and the esteemed members of the Diplomatic Corps;

Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin and the members of the Cabinet;

First Lady Louise Araneta Marcos;

Former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos;

Other distinguished guests;

Mga minamahal kong kababayan;

Ladies and gentlemen;

Magandang hapon po sa inyong lahat.

One year ago today, I stood here before you, setting forth the plans that we have to improve our economy, bring jobs to our people, improve the ease of doing business, recalibrate our educational system to adapt to the new economy, lower and rationalize energy costs, boost agricultural production, enhance healthcare, and continue social programs for the poor and the vulnerable.

Let me now report to the people on the successes that we can now lay claim to, and also the challenges that we continue to face.

Last year, we emphasized certain strong headwinds that were confronting us along with the rest of the world in our post-pandemic economic recovery.

The biggest problem that we encountered was inflation.

Maraming kaganapan sa mundo ang nakapag-pagulo sa maayos na takbo ng pandaigdigang merkado. Bukod sa digmaan sa Ukraine, naroon ang patuloy na epekto ng pandemya. Pinalala pa ito ng pagbabawas ng produksyon ng mga bansang pinag-kukuhanan natin ng langis. Nang tumaas ang presyo nito, nagsunuran na rin ang presyo ng iba't ibang bilihin—gasolina, kuryente, at pagkain.

Ramdam sa buong daigdig, pati na sa Pilipinas, ang naging pagtaas ng mga presyo ng bilihin noong mga nakalipas na buwan.

Sinuri nating mabuti ang sitwasyon. Sa tulong ng ating mga ekonomista, nakapag-balangkas tayo ng mga polisiya na magsisilbing pundasyon ng ating ekonomiya sa mga susunod na taon. Ito ay nakasaad sa ating Medium-Term Fiscal Framework, na sinuportahan ng ating Kongreso.

Kasabay nito ay ang paglu-lunsad ng mga istratehiya na magpapalakas sa kakayahan ng ating mga kababayan at mga sektor ng ating ekonomiya.

Nakakita tayo ng magagandang resulta.

While the global prospects were bleak, our economy posted a 7.6 percent growth in 2022—our highest growth rate in 46 years. For the first quarter of the year, our growth registered at 6.4 percent. It remains within our target of 6 to 7 percent for 2023. We are still considered to be among the fastest-growing economies in the Asian region and the world. It is a testament to our strong macroeconomic fundamentals.

Our financial system, the nerve center of our economy, remains strong and stable. Banks, the transmission arms of our monetary policy, have strong capital and liquidity positions.

Stimulated by the relaxation of pandemic restrictions, transactions once again flourished—alongside the booming e-commerce that was undeterred by the pandemic. In 2022, the digital economy contributed

2 trillion pesos, equivalent to 9.4 percent of our GDP. The economy is revived and rejuvenated, backstopped by a favorable enabling environment and the strong rule of law.

This year, the World Bank projects a 6 percent overall growth rate, well within the range of our target for the year. This is anchored on strong local demand, underpinned by consumer spending, and draws strength from the BPO industry, steady flow of remittances, and the continuing jobs recovery.

Inflation rate is moving in the right direction. From 8.7 percent in January, our inflation has continued to ease up in all regions, settling at 5.4 percent this June. What this means is that in spite of all the difficulties, we are transforming the economy. We are stabilizing the prices of all critical commodities.

According to the Bangko Sentral, inflation is expected to ease further by the close of the year, and projected at 2.9 percent by 2024.

On matters of the economy, there are many things over which we have no control. But over those where we do have control, we are doing everything we can.

Puspusan ang ating ginagawa upang pataasin ang produksyon ng ating ekonomiya. Pinapalago natin ang mga industriya. Dinadag-dagan natin ang mga imprastraktura, upang mas mapabilis ang daloy ng mga produkto at serbisyo. Higit sa lahat, pinapalakas natin ang kakayahan ng mga mamamayan upang mapaganda nila ang kanilang pamumuhay. Ito ang puno't dulo ng ating Philippine Development Plan.

Investments in public infrastructure and in the capacity of our people—through food, education, health, jobs, and social protection—remain our top priority. For this year, economic and social services were allocated almost 70% of the national budget.

Higher revenue collections will be critical in our bid to bolster public investments. Under our fiscal framework, we envision our tax and revenue efforts to further increase, to up to 16.9 percent and 17.3 percent by 2028.

Revenue generation has improved this past year. From January to May, the Bureau of Internal Revenue has posted record collections, amounting to 1.05 trillion pesos, an increase of almost 10 percent over the last year. For its part, the Bureau of Customs has also increased its collection by 7.4 percent for the first seven months of 2023, amounting to 476 billion pesos. Since July 2022, we have seen increased revenues from PAGCOR of 47.9 percent, and from the PCSO of

20 percent.

We, therefore, seek once again the continued support of Congress to enact into law the policies and reforms under our fiscal framework.

Sa mga nakalipas na buwan, nakita natin ang pagbaba ng presyo ng bilihin sa iba't ibang mga sektor.

Napatunayan natin na kayang maipa-baba ang presyo ng bigas, karne, isda, gulay, at asukal.

Malaking tulong ang mga KADIWA stores, na ating muling binuhay at inilunsad. Ang layunin ng KADIWA ay pag-ugnayin ang magsasaka at ang mamimili. Walang iba pang namamagitan. Walang dagdag na gastos at patong. Maganda ang kita ng magsasaka. Nakaka-tipid din ang ma-mimili.

Sa mahigit pitong libong KADIWA na idinaos sa buong Pilipinas, 1.8 milyon na mga pamilya ang nakinabang sa mababang presyo ng bilihin. Sa kabuuan, halos pitong-daang milyon piso ang naging benta ng mga ito, na nakapagbigay ng hanapbuhay sa mga miyembro ng mahigit tatlong libong mga kooperatiba at samahan.

Maganda ang nakita nating resulta, kaya papalawigin pa natin ang KADIWA sa buong bansa. Kamakailan lamang ay nagsanib-puwersa ang mga ahensiya ng pamahalaan upang lalo pang patibayin ang KADIWA. Katuwang natin dito ang buong sektor ng agrikultura at lokal na pamahalaan.

Our aim is to boost our local agricultural production—through consolidation, modernization, mechanization, and improvement of value chains—augmented by timely and calibrated importation, as needed.

Nakita nating tumaas nang 2.2 percent ang sektor ng agrikultura sa unang tatlong buwan pa lang ng taong ito.

In our quest for food security, our methods are now more guided by science and the balance of nature, so that production is both sustainable and responsible, benefiting both this and future generations.

Our Fisheries Code must be revisited to incorporate and strengthen science-based analysis and determination of fishing areas. This approach will protect both the interests of our fisherfolk and our fisheries and aquatic resources.

To this end, we will seek the support of Congress to amend the Code to guarantee sustainable development of our fisheries sector in harmony with environmental balance.

Ipinag-bubuklod natin ang mga magsasaka, sa

pama-magitan ng farm and fisheries clustering at mga livestock multiplier farms. Tatlong daang clusters na ang ating natukoy, na binubuo ng halos siyam na raang kooperatiba, at may lawak na mahigit dalawang-daang libong ektarya ng bukirin.

Upang mas mapabilis at mapadali ang pagbuo ng kooperatiba, kakailanganin natin ang suporta ng Kongreso na maamyendahan ang Cooperative Code.

Sa pamamagitan nito, unti-unting lalakas ang kanilang produksyon at puwersa sa merkado. Totoo ang kasabihan: mas malakas kung sama-sama!

Pinapalawak natin ang kanilang kaalaman sa makabagong mga teknolohiya at pamamaraan. Isa na rito ang paggamit ng bio-fertilizers, na gawa sa Pilipinas at subok din at maa-asahan. Sa balanced fertilizer strategy, gaganda ang ani ng mga magsasaka. Hindi na nila kailangan pang umasa sa mas mahal at imported na fertilizer.

Bilang tulong sa mga magsasaka, namigay ang pamahalaan ng mahigit dalawampu't walong libong mga makabagong makinarya at mga kagamitan sa iba't ibang dako ng Pilipinas.

Sa ilalim ng iba't ibang mga programa ng Kagawaran ng Agrikultura, namigay ang pamahalaan ng mahigit na limampung milyong binhi ng palay, mahigit isang milyong binhi ng mais, at sari-saring mga binhi ng gulay. Nagpamigay tayo ng mahigit isandaang libong binhi ng niyog at nagpatanim sa halos sampunlibong ektarya ng lupa sa buong bansa.

Lahat ng mga binhing ito ay makabago, hybrid, at mataas na kalidad.

Sa naging pagtaas ng presyo ng gasolina at pataba, nagdala ng kaunting ginhawa ang mga fuel at fertilizer discount vouchers na ating pinamigay sa mga nahirapang magsasaka. Ang mga natanggap nating donasyon na pataba mula sa Tsina, ipinamigay na rin natin agad sa kanila.

Isa sa mga dahilan ng pagtaas ng presyo ay ang mga smugglers, hoarders at nagmamanipula ng presyo ng produktong agrikultural. Hinahabol at ihahabla natin sila. Sadyang hindi tama ang kanilang gawain, at hindi rin ito tugma sa ating magandang layunin. Pandaraya ang kanilang ginagawa. Napapahamak hindi lamang ang mga magsasaka, kundi tayo na ring mga ma-mimili. Kaya hindi natin papayagan ang ganitong kalakaran. Bilang na ang mga araw ng mga smugglers at hoarders na 'yan.

Mahalaga ang imprastraktura para masuportahan ang may labing-apat na milyong ektarya ng sakahan. Inayos natin ang Geo-Agri map ng mga farm-to-market roads ng buong bansa, upang maidugtong mabuti ang mga sakahan sa mga pamilihan. Alinsunod dito, karagdagang anim na raang kilometro ng mga FMRs ang ating nilatag sa iba't ibang panig ng bansa.

Binigyan din natin ng patubig ang mahigit na apatnapu't siyam na libong ektarya ng bukirin sa buong Pilipinas.

Nagpagawa tayo ng halos apat na libong mga karagdagang fabrication labs, production at cold storage facilities na magagamit ng lahat. Sa tulong ng Kongreso, nakapag-patayo tayo ng dalawampu't apat na multi-species hatcheries upang maparami ang produksyon ng mga isda.

Nakabantay tayo sa anumang banta ng mga sakit at peste na maa-aring dumapo sa mga pananim at alagang hayop. Malapit na tayong magkaroon ng mga epektibong gamot at bakuna laban sa mga ito. Samantala, pinapalakas natin ang bio-security levels ng mga alagang hayop bilang panlaban sa mga sakit.

Tayo rin ay naghahanda para sa El Niño na nagbabadyang tumama sa mga darating na buwan. Nagsimula na tayong maghanda ng mga buffer stocks at mga kagamitang patubig. Kung kinakailangan, magsasagawa pa tayo ng cloud-seeding upang makapagdala ng ulan. Kasabay ng lahat ng ito, hinihimok din natin ang ating sambayanan na magtipid ng tubig para sa malawakang paghahanda sa banta ng tagtuyot.

Tulad ng ating ipinangako, ipinagpa-patuloy natin ang repormang pan-sakahan. Mahalagang haligi ito ng sektor ng agrikultura na ating inaayos. Nitong nakalipas na taon, mahigit pitumpong-libong titulo ng lupa ang ginawad sa mga benepisyaryo ng repormang agraryo.

Tamang-tama ang ating pagpapa-tigil ng mga bayarin ng mga benepisyaryo, sa ilalim ng ating nilagdaang EO No. 4. Isang taon mula noong aking unang SONA, naisabatas na ang bagong Agrarian Emancipation Act. Dahil dito, ang 57 bilyong pisong utang na pinapasan ng mahigit anim na raang libong benepisyaryo ay tuluyan nang nabura.

Sa ngalan ng mga magsasakang ito at kanilang mga pamilya, maraming salamat muli sa ating mga mambabatas.

Ang tubig ay kasing-halaga rin ng pagkain. Kailangan nating tiyakin na may sapat at malinis na tubig para sa lahat at sa mga susunod na salinlahi. Kasama na rito ang tubig na ginagamit natin para sa mga sakahan.

Considering its fundamental importance, water security deserves our special focus. Our efforts must not be scattershot, but rather, cohesive, centralized, and systematic.

Given that urgency, we have created the Water Resources Management Office to specifically handle the delicate job involving this most precious resource. Nakikipag-ugnayan tayo sa Kongreso upang maipasa ang batas para sa pagbuo ng isang Department of Water Resource Management.

This year, we have allocated 14.6 billion pesos for water supply projects, which will benefit communities all over the country. Recently, the water supply of NCR and Rizal received a significant boost from the first phase of the Wawa Bulk Water Supply Project. The water supply will increase as the Project enters the second phase.

We have installed six thousand rainwater collection systems across the country, in preparation for the looming dry spell brought about by El Niño.

One of the keys to continuing economic growth is infrastructure development. So, we will build better, and more. Our 8.3-trillion peso "Build Better More" Program is currently in progress and being vigorously implemented.

Ang buong bansa ay maki-kinabang sa isandaan at siyamnapu't apat na proyekto sa ilalim ng Programang ito.

Hindi lamang natin ipinag-papatuloy ang mga nasimulan nang mga proyekto. Lalo pa nating pina-palawak. Kaya naman, ang isangdaan at dalawampu't tatlong proyekto dito sa ating Build-Better-More program ay bago.

The flagship projects cover investments in the areas of physical connectivity, water resources, agriculture, health, digital connectivity, and energy. Physical connectivity infrastructure—such as roads, bridges, seaports, airports, and mass transport—accounts for

83 percent of the program. Our infrastructure spending will be at four to six percent of our GDP.

The underlying logic to our infrastructure development is economic efficiency. We are opening up all gateways to mobilize goods and services at less cost and in less time, and ultimately, to drive the economy.

Our road network plans must link not only our three major islands, but all prospective sites of economic development.

The 1,200-kilometer Luzon Spine Expressway Network Program will effectively connect Ilocos to Bicol from

20 hours to just 9 hours of travel.

Under the Mega-Bridge Program, 12 bridges totaling 90 kilometers will be constructed, connecting islands and areas separated by waters. The Program notably includes the Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge and the Panay-Guimaras-Negros Island Bridges, each spanning 32 kilometers, and the Samal Island-Davao City Connector Bridge.

As of June this year, we have constructed, maintained, and upgraded more than 4,000 kilometers of roads and around 500 bridges across the country. Crucial airport and port development projects across the country have been completed, including Cebu's Pier 88 smart port, and the new passenger terminal buildings of Clark Airport and the Port of Calapan.

We initiated several railway projects, with a total length of more than 1,000 kilometers. Notably, the southern leg of the North-South Commuter Railway System is now in full swing. In a few years, travel from Pampanga to Laguna will be reduced from four hours to just two.

Inter-modal connectivity will be a primary consideration. Roads, bridges, and mass transport systems will be interconnected. This network will provide access and passage to vital and bustling economic markets, such as agriculture hubs, tourism sites, and key business districts.

For strategic financing, some of the nation's high-priority projects can now look to the newly established Maharlika Investment Fund, without the added debt burden.

In pooling a small fraction of the considerable but underutilized government funds, the Maharlika Fund shall be used to make high-impact and profitable investments, such as the Build-Better-More program. The gains from the Fund shall be reinvested into the country's economic well-being.

To ensure sound financial management, a group of internationally recognized economic managers shall oversee the operations of the Fund, guided by principles of transparency and accountability. This guarantees that investment decisions will be based on financial considerations alone, absent any political influence.

The funds for the social security and public health insurance of our people shall remain intact and separate.

Owing to favorable market conditions, the price of crude oil has stabilized. Since last year, gasoline and diesel prices have gone down by 18 to 29 percent, respectively.

We have built eight new additional power plants. This brings to 17 the total number of power generation facilities that have been switched on across the country since last year, substantially increasing our energy production by 1,174 megawatts.

Alongside power generation, we are also as relentless in pursuing total electrification. Since my assumption into office, almost half a million homes have been given access to electricity. We will spare no effort to achieve full household electrification by the end of my term. 100%-electrification is within our reach.

Renewable energy is the way forward. We are aggressively promoting renewables, so that it provides a 35 percent share in the power mix by 2030, and then on to 50 percent by 2040. To accelerate the realization of this green energy goal, we have opened renewable energy projects to foreign investments.

Since last year, an additional 126 renewable energy contracts with potential capacity of 31,000 megawatts have been awarded. To date, we have over a thousand active projects spread all over the country. 299 of these are solar; 187 are wind; 436 hydroelectric; 58 biomass;

36 geothermal; and 9 are ocean-powered.

The Malampaya project has been a boon to our country, energizing 20 percent of Luzon. The renewal of the contract guarantees continued revenues and energy production for another 15 years. Aside from Malampaya, we will also push for more gas exploration in other parts of the country.

The national government has partnered with the BARMM in regard to energy exploration, development, and utilization within its territorial jurisdiction. We, therefore, expect to see renewed investor interest in its promising sites.

We finally have a Unified National Grid, with the interconnection of the Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao grids. The "One Grid, One Market" will enable more efficient transfers and more competitive pricing of electricity throughout the country.

However, 68 grid connection projects are much delayed, according to the ERC's count. We are conducting a performance review of our private concessionaire, the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines. We look to NGCP to complete all of its deliverables, starting with the vital Mindanao-Visayas and the Cebu-Negros-Panay interconnections.

Habang pinapabuti natin ang lagay ng ekonomiya, pinapalakas din natin ang kakayahan ng Pilipino. Ito ay sa pama-magitan ng maha-halagang armas ng edukasyon, magandang kalusugan, at trabaho. Malaking bahagi ng pondo ng pamahalaan ay inilaan natin para sa mga ito.

Sa ating pagtahak sa kaunlaran, walang mama-mayang Pilipino ang maiiwanan. Para sa atin, ang bawat buhay ay mahalaga—anuman ang edad, kasarian, pangkat, relihiyon, o pisikal na kundisyon. Sila ay kukup-kupin at tutulungan.

Naglaan tayo ng sapat na pondo para sa pag-lingap sa mga lubos na nanga-ngailangan. Layunin natin na sila ay makabangon, mabigyan ng sapat na kakayahan, at maging produktibo.

Hindi lamang DSWD, kundi pati ang DO-LE, DepEd, TESDA, at CHED, ay tumutulong sa ating mga kababayang nanga-ngailangan. Ang AICS, TUPAD, TVET for Social Equity, Social Pension for Indigent Senior Citizens, at ang Cash-for-Work para sa mga PWDs ay ilan lamang sa mga maha-halagang programa ng pamahalaan para sa kanila. Nariyan din ang Integrated Livelihood Program-Kabuhayan upang matulungan ang mga maliliit na negosyo.

We are inclusive in our pursuit of social protection. The pension of the military and uniformed personnel is as important, urgent, and humanitarian as that of all other civilian Filipino employees. Efforts are underway to make it fully functional and financially sustainable. We are working closely with Congress to ease the transition from the old system to the new one, so as to be able to guarantee that no effects are felt by those in the uniformed services.

Nagsisimula ang lahat sa edukasyon. Ito ay para palakasin ang isip at kakayahan ng bawat Pilipino.

Ang ating butihing Bise-Presidente, na Kalihim din ng Kagawaran ng Edukasyon, ay tumutulong upang tiyakin na ang bawat batang Pilipino ay mabibigyan ng nara-rapat at kalidad na edukasyon.

We have renewed hope in giving the best to our next batches of students, especially the 28.4 million learners who returned to school this year. Learning recovery will be at the forefront of our education agenda.

The MATATAG Agenda for basic education has been launched, focusing on relevance of curriculum, rapid and responsive delivery, and the welfare of both learners and teachers.

We are augmenting our school workforce.

90 percent of the newly created teaching positions have been filled, while additional administrative personnel have been hired to unburden the teachers.

Taking to heart the lessons of the pandemic, alternative delivery modes and blended learning methodologies have been adopted to ensure unhampered learning. Additional social safety nets, such as school-based feeding programs, are also being implemented.

Learners will be made more resilient. Our public schools and facilities are being increased and fortified.

The shortage of classrooms and facilities is being addressed. Aside from new constructions, schools, and facilities are being retrofitted to become ready for the future—ready for hybrid and high-tech learning, and also climate-ready and disaster-proof. Through the DepEd Partnership Assistance Portal, private sector partners continue their assistance in the rehabilitation and improvement of schools, as part of their corporate social responsibility programs.

We are recalibrating the K to 10 curriculum to ensure that it is always relevant, responsive, and at par with international standards. Literacy and numeracy skills are to be strengthened. The virtue of good citizenship and sense of community are also integrated in our curriculum.

We continue to exhaust all efforts to keep our young people away from the sinister influences in the dark corners of society. We are making available to them their participation in formal schooling, alternative learning, non-diploma courses, or in technical-vocational education and training (TVET).

TVET continues to prove itself to be an empowering educational intervention. There are many examples of how its graduates have gone on to secure competitive technical jobs.

Since last year, more than a million Filipinos graduated from TVET, one-third of whom were TESDA scholars.

More and more of our higher education institutions (HEIs) have reached world-class status. This year, 52 Philippine HEIs have been included in the World Universities Rankings, compared to just 15 last year.

We will not let a student's financial constraints be a hindrance to education. We have activated social safety nets, such as skills development training and youth employment programs. Tertiary education in state universities and colleges will remain free for our qualified students.

Last year, out of the 4.1 million enrolled college students, almost 50 percent were beneficiaries of the country's free higher education under the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education program.

Deserving and talented students without the financial capacity to attend school, will not be left behind in our education agenda.

A culture of innovation, working hand-in-glove with a culture of entrepreneurship, must be fostered. This is "FILIPINNOVATION." Science and technology, especially R&D, will be at its foundation.

The DOST leads the development of our capabilities in science, technology, and innovation.

Science and technology-related scholarships are made available for the talented and technically-gifted students, from high school all the way to graduate school.

To address the challenge of staying at the cutting-edge of technology, 44 renowned Filipino scientists in diverse areas of expertise have returned home under the Balik-Scientist Program. They will undertake research in various priority fields, and will be supported by upgraded facilities and R&D funding.

The Philippines has launched two additional satellites into space. Together with the first satellite, they will track weather, predict storms, evaluate soil and water supply, analyze shifts in population, and be used for traffic management, geo-hazard mapping, and risk assessment, including security and defense.

Science, technology, and innovation will drive the quality and competitiveness of our workforce, as well as our manufacturing, export, creative, and service industries, in existing markets and in new ones waiting to be explored.

The bane of the mismatch between jobs and skills among our workforce is being rectified through strengthened government-industry-labor-academe partnerships, and continuous reskilling and upskilling training programs.

For our seafarers to continue to excel, maritime education in the Philippines has been strengthened. This will progress and solidify our country's position as a "global maritime hub", through the steady supply of competent Filipino seafarers to foreign merchant marine vessels.

The question about the European Union's recognition of the standards of training of Filipino seafarers has, after 17 years, finally been resolved. This development now effectively maintains the Filipino seafarer's distinct competitive advantage in the global shipping labor market.

To address the current shortage of healthcare professionals in our country, and to help us achieve our goal of universal healthcare, we are greatly expanding our medical and nursing education programs. We will push the envelope further. We are helping nursing graduates hurdle their board exams, so that they will obtain their licenses and join our pool of healthcare professionals.

Ang kalusugan ang ikalawang armas: para sa lakas ng panga-ngatawan ng bawat Pilipino. Isinu-sulong nating muli ang kalusugan ng Pilipino.

We are now refocusing our health priorities, applying the lessons learnt from the pandemic, and addressing the weaknesses that it has exposed.

Healthier communities and lifestyles are our advocacy.

We have launched convergent programs to address hunger and nutrition-related issues among our people, especially the children, like stunting and wasting. Last week, we introduced the pilot Food Stamp Program (FSP), which seeks to supply the nutrition needs of the million most food-poor Filipinos.

The FSP shall complement our nutrition continuity programs, such as the First 1,000 Days program that ensures nourishment for the first three years of the child's life. The Supplemental Feeding Program is for our children attending daycare centers. The K-to-6 Program will feed Kindergarten to Grade 6 public school students, who are suffering from severe wasting.

We are catching up on the routine vaccinations of our children. As of this year, more than 80 percent of our eligible children have been vaccinated against measles, rubella, and polio.

Nananawagan ako sa lahat ng mga magulang na kumpletuhin ang mga bakuna ng kanilang mga anak, at magtungo sa pinaka-malapit na health center para sa mga libreng bakuna.

The whole of society must exert efforts to suppress the alarming rise of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS. To stem the tide, the strategic plan is to ensure early diagnosis and treatment, and ample testing sites and medications.

Our healthcare system is undergoing structural enhancements.

Public health facilities are being increased, both in number and in capability. Last year, more than 3,400 projects were completed. To improve capacity for specialized medical treatment, specialty centers in various fields are being established and integrated into our government hospitals. In the last year, additional 60 specialty centers have been opened to the public.

Just last week, we inspected the site of what shall soon be a five-hectare multi-specialty center in Pampanga, which will specialize in pediatrics, cardiology, kidney, and cancer treatment.

We are working towards a more direct and efficient delivery of services, through integrated primary care providers and networks, in partnership with the LGUs and private sector. These shall of course be supported by what is now a better and more efficient PhilHealth.

Ang presyo ng mga mahahalaga at pangunahing gamot ay bumaba nang humigit-kumulang na apat-napung porsyento. Mayroon ding iba na bumaba hanggang siyam-napung porsyento.

Aside from the maximum retail price regulation being implemented, strategic VAT exemption also lowered the prices of 59 essential medications, such as those for cancer, diabetes, hypertension, kidney disease, and mental illness.

Palapit nang palapit na tayo sa hangarin na ang lahat ng Pilipino ay makakakuha ng serbisyong-pangkalusugan: sa ngayon, mahigit 93 percent na ang kasapi sa PhilHealth!

Sa pinagandang Konsulta Package ng PhilHealth, dalawampu't isang klase ng mga gamot at labin-tatlong laboratory services ang ibibigay nang libre. Ngayon, mayroon na tayong mahigit dalawanlibong Konsulta centers sa buong bansa. Ang bilang na ito ay mas marami nang tatlumpu't limang porsyento mula noong nakalipas na taon.

Upang mas lalong makatulong sa mga pasyente, ang dating siyam-napung libreng dialysis sessions ay inakyat na natin sa isandaan at limampu't anim. Mga kababayan, libre na po ngayon ang dialysis para sa karamihan.

Noong nakalipas na taon, mahigit 3.4 milyong Pilipino ang nabigyan ng tulong sa ilalim ng Medical Assistance for Indigent Patients (MAIP) program ng DOH.

Tinutugunan natin ngayon ang ating kakulangan sa mga doktor at mga nars, sa pamamagitan ng mga reporma sa edukasyon, patuloy na pagsasanay, at paniniguro sa kanilang kapakanan.

Naglagay tayo ng mga doktor sa halos dalawangdaang munisipyo sa bansa. Lalagyan natin ng doktor ang natitirang labing-siyam na bayan na wala pa.

Upang masuklian ang naging sakripisyo ng ating mga health workers sa pribado at pampublikong mga ospital noong nakaraang pandemya, ipapamahagi na sa kanila ang kanilang COVID health emergency allowance at iba pang mga nabinbing benepisyo.

Kasabay ng panga-ngalaga natin sa edukasyon at kalusugan ng ating mamamayan, tinitiyak din natin na may sapat at magandang hanapbuhay—sa loob at maging sa labas ng bansa.

As of May this year, our employment rate rose to 95.7 percent, clear proof of the improvement from the severe unemployment that we experienced during the height of the pandemic. Employment then was at a low of 82.4 percent.

But even with our current high rate of employment, we must do more. We will generate additional jobs for the remaining 4.3 percent of our workforce, as well as for the 11.7 percent underemployed Filipinos seeking better employment opportunities.

Under the banner of our fast-growing economy, we are aggressive in our investment and business promotions and facilitations. For that, we have not limited ourselves to the local economy, but have looked to the global economy for partnerships and agreements.

Our independent foreign policy—a friend to all and enemy of none—has proven effective. We formed strategic alliances with our traditional and newfound partners in the international community.

We have embarked on foreign trips to promote the interests of the country, for peace-building, and for mutually beneficial purposes. Those economic missions have yielded an estimated total investment value of 71 billion US dollars, or 3.9 trillion pesos, with a potential to generate 175,000 jobs.

The implementation of recent economic reforms is underway. BOI-approved investment projects have reached 1.2 trillion pesos during our first year, while other strategic investments approved for processing through the newly established "green lanes" amount to 230 billion pesos.

Our existing bilateral and multilateral trade agreements, notably within the ASEAN framework, and with Japan, and with Europe, allow us to leverage our competitive advantages and reap economic benefits. We will continue to forge more of these international partnerships that will lead to a more balanced trade strategy and a healthier economic position.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is now in force. It is a multilateral trade arrangement with the ASEAN and other countries, such as Australia, China, Japan, Korea, and New Zealand. We can now have competitive access to a regional market of 2 billion people.

As we address our weaknesses and develop competitiveness in other potential areas, we also must play to our strengths. Our competitive advantage must be leveraged. As a "service export powerhouse", we must continue to nurture the growth of the services sector, particularly the Information Technology-Business Process Management (IT-BPM) and tourism industries.

Our tourism has always been a reliable pillar of our economic growth through the years, providing livelihood to more than 5 million of our citizens. Because of the reopening of the economy, and the phenomenon of "revenge travel", this sector is headed for a great rebound.

From January to June this year, we have received

3 million international visitors. This number is already 62 percent of our 4.8-million target for the entire year.

Mga kababayan, ang lahat ng mga ginagawa nating ito ay magbibigay-bunga sa libo-libong hanapbuhay sa ating bansa.

To create these investment opportunities, we must ensure that an enabling business environment is in place; that there is peace and order, and that the rule of law governs. We will solidify our country's reputation as an attractive and reliable investment destination.

Building on institutional reforms of recent years, we have created "green lanes" for strategic investments, and expedited the business processes in various sectors and investment modalities.

A progressive and rationalized system of taxation is a component of the ease of doing business. The CREATE Law has made our corporate tax and incentive schemes equitable and business-friendly. There are more structural tax reforms that must be introduced to allow us to reach our socioeconomic targets.

Digitalization is the call of today; not of the future—but of the present. It is here. It is needed, and it is needed today.

Government must fully embrace digitalization to provide better service to the people, through its vital frontline services and its back-end functions.

Digitalization will support the government's data-driven and science-based planning and decision-making. It is the greatest and most powerful tool, not just to improve ease of doing business, but also against many forms of graft and corruption.

Data shows that digitalization, in conjunction with government's streamlining efforts, has significantly boosted efficiency. Notable examples are in the areas of government payments, company and business registrations, issuance of permits and licenses, loan applications, and revenue collection.

All our digitalization efforts will be linked to our payment systems, whose digital transformation has been accelerating at a remarkable rate.

Digital payments accounted for 42 percent of the total retail payments made in 2022, whether by businesses, individuals, or by the government. Its high trajectory is now well-positioned to achieve Bangko Sentral's target of 50 percent of total retail payments by this year.

The eGov PH app has also been launched. As envisioned, all key government services are to be integrated into this single and centralized mobile app, for the convenience of the general public.

The National ID system will be at the core of this digitally transformed network of government services. It will fundamentally change the lives of each Filipino. At 87% total registration, we are now closer to establishing a complete, accurate, and reliable digital database of our entire population. This has already been integrated into the eGov PH app, and can be accessed by our citizens.

Consistent with this transformative policy direction, all government offices must then ensure that their vital services are digitalized immediately.

In response to this call, the DMW launched last week the DMW Mobile to make the journey of our Overseas Filipino Workers easier.

Because of system upgrades, our internet speed has improved. As of June this year, our fixed broadband speed ranks 47th among 180 countries. This ranking is 11 places higher than it was in 2022. Our mobile internet speed is now ranked at 83 out of 142 countries, which is 8 places higher than it was last year.

There will be more improvements, as our internet infrastructure undergoes further upgrades. Early this year, Starlink went live in the Philippines, now providing high-speed satellite broadband connectivity. Our National Fiber Backbone and Broadband ng Masa projects will also deliver high-connectivity and high-speed internet. We are prioritizing geographically isolated and disadvantaged areas.

The DICT has been directed to consolidate all these digitalized government services into the eGov PH app, to establish the National Government Portal and the Philippine Business Databank, and to improve the internet speed in our country.

With our E-Commerce Roadmap firmly in place, we are poised to take this digitalization drive further and beyond, utilizing e-commerce to take full advantage of new technologies.

The first bill that I signed into law was the SIM Registration Act. We are mindful of the risks and vulnerabilities that can lead to negative consequences. Digital users and consumers shall be protected from identity theft, phishing, and other online scams, through essential systems and safeguards, such as cybersecurity, data privacy, consumer complaint mechanisms, and financial literacy campaigns.

The trainings necessary to ease the transition of those whose jobs would be affected by the shift to digitalization are now included in the curricula and programs offered by TESDA, DICT, and other agencies of government.

It is our wish that one day foreign employment will be driven by choice, not by necessity. It remains a noble calling that our OFWs have answered, requiring great sacrifice from them, their families, and their communities.

We are engaging with our partners in the international community to ensure a safe working environment for our countrymen. As we do so, we are also putting in place responsive mechanisms for the social welfare, repatriation, and reintegration of our returning OFWs into the Philippine economy.

As the world economy reopens, we are witnessing a rise in overseas Filipino deployment. In 2022, the number has increased by 62 percent. OFWs continue to send in historically high remittances, solidifying their role in our transformative economic growth. In 2022, our OFWs contributed 32.5 billion dollars, or roughly 1.8 trillion pesos, to our economy.

Several countries have signified interest to explore bilateral labor cooperation with the Philippines in the areas of healthcare, tourism, hospitality, engineering, construction, and information technology. Recently, we signed agreements with Singapore, Austria, and the province of Alberta in Canada.

Our priority is to ensure that the principles of ethical recruitment, fair employment, and the safe and orderly migration of our people, are embodied in our agreements with other countries.

For example, the deployment issue in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been resolved. As of today, 70,000 of our OFWs have already been deployed to Saudi Arabia for employment.

Moreover, the unpaid salaries and other related claims of some 14,000 OFWs, who have been put out of work in Saudi Arabia during the pandemic, are being processed. The Crown Prince himself personally committed to me that the unpaid claims of Filipino workers would be paid.

The continued employment of some 50,000 workers and the deployment of many more Filipino seafarers aboard EU vessels, has also been assured. The lesson for us all is that our education and skills must always be attuned to the high, exacting, and constantly evolving global standards.

Sa pagsusumikap ng mga mama-mayan, walang hindi kakayanin. Kahit ang mga mata-tayog na pangarap ay maa-abot, kasama na ang inaasam na tahanan.

Katuwang natin ang lokal na pamahalaan at pribadong sektor upang matulungan ang Pilipino sa

panga-ngailangan na pabahay.

Patuloy ang serbisyo ng Pag-IBIG Fund upang makatulong sa kanyang labinlimang milyong miyembro para makabili ng bahay. Sa nakaraang taon, mahigit isandaang libo ang kumuha ng housing loan sa Pag-IBIG, na nagkaka-halaga ng 117 bilyong piso. Ito ang pinakamataas na bilang sa buong kasaysayan ng Pag-IBIG!

Itong nakalipas na taon, mahigit 148 thousand na kabahayan at mahigit tatlumpung libong mga certificates of eligibility of lot award ang naipamahagi sa Luzon, sa Visayas, at sa Mindanao—sa ilalim ng sari-saring mga programang pabahay ng pamahalaan!

Mahigit tatlumpu't limanlibong residential free patent at agricultural patent titles naman ang naibigay sa mga benepisyaryo nito sa buong bansa!

Hindi pa rito nagtatapos. Papalawigin pa natin ang ating programa sa abot-kayang pabahay, lalo na para sa mga mahihirap nating kababayan. Itong nakalipas na taon, inilunsad natin ang Pambansang Pabahay Para sa Pilipino Housing Program o 4PH.

Nagkaroon na tayo ng groundbreaking sa dalawampu't limang lugar sa iba't ibang bahagi ng bansa. Nagpirmahan na rin ng mga kasunduan upang simulan ang mga proyekto sa mahigit isandaang lokasyon! Kung susumahin natin ito, mahigit isang milyong kabahayan ang maiaalay natin sa ating mga kababayan sa buong bansa!

The building blocks of progressive, livable, and sustainable communities will never be complete without appropriate and responsible action to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

We can never lose sight of our responsibility to the future. The economic agenda cannot and will not ever be incompatible with our climate change agenda.

Climate change is now an important criterion in our integral national policies, in planning, decision-making, up to the implementation of programs. The potential advantages of such enlightened policies extend to jobs and livelihood, with the unlocking of the development of the green and blue economies.

We have learned many painful lessons from past disasters. We continue to be alert and prepared in our disaster response. It has, in fact, been commented that sometimes we are over-prepared for such natural disasters. To continue that, we are reorganizing our response teams to make them more adaptable, agile, and effective in times of calamities and crises, with a clear unity of command.

Our evacuation centers are being upgraded to withstand the greater forces of the new normal of extreme weather, as well as other natural and man-made disasters. Furthermore, new evacuation centers are also being built, of which 55 have already been completed.

We remain committed to global decarbonization goals, and the reduction of our carbon footprint. We preserve and protect the treasure that is our forests. Their value to the environment, the ecology, and the economy is incalculable.

We have adopted the concept of the "circular economy", using nature as our model. The aim is to keep raw materials in a closed loop. In our world with scarce resources, the circular economy allows us to fully use these resources, minimize waste and reduce the need for new resources—as it is in nature.

Just like our climate change action, this new system requires the participation of all sectors of society, up to each individual citizen, for it to succeed.

Only a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach will enable us to do all of these. It is necessary to apply all the resources that are at hand if we are to progress as quickly as we need to.

Collaboration is the key: between and among government offices; between government and the private sector; between industries and the academe; between government and international partners. And most importantly, collaboration between and among our populace.

Kakailanganin natin ang tulong at kakayahan ng buong pamahalaan at ng buong bansa.

And so, we shall do the same for the next five years. We seek not only to become more effective, but more, to become truly transformative.

This approach will be operationalized through inter-agency cooperations; as well as through coordinated efforts between and among the three branches of government, and the independent constitutional bodies. We have organized private sector advisory councils, and national-local mechanisms to establish the needed linkages.

Once again, on this same principle, I urge Congress to enact a new Government Procurement Law and a new Government Auditing Code, to make government procurement and auditing more attuned to these changing times.

We will give effect to the mandate of the Constitution and the Local Government Code, as clarified by the Supreme Court, soonest. Almost all of the required Devolution Transition Plans of the LGUs are done. To fully prepare them for optimal devolution, the necessary technical and financial assistance is being extended to our local governments.

In everything that we do, the enduring Filipino quality of Bayanihan will be our guide.

Limang taon mula noong matinding kaguluhan, babangon na ang Marawi City. Nanunumbalik na ang sigla sa pamayanan. Maraming proyekto ang nakukumpleto at mga imprastrakturang naitatayo. Kasalukuyan na tayong nagpoproseso ng tulong-pinansyal para sa mga biktima ng Marawi siege upang sila ay makapag-simulang muli. Nawa'y mamayani ang pag-asa. Nawa'y magpatuloy ang pagkakaisa, pagmamatyag, at paghahangad ng kapayapaan at kaunlaran.

We are proud of the progress that the BARMM has taken. It will be self-governing, progressive, and effective.

But, this was made possible only because of the cooperation of all key groups. The local government, the royal families, the MNLF and the MILF were all consulted and represented in the transition phase. The international community has also supported us in this smooth transition. Former adversaries are now partners in peace. Its functions have been defined, and its basic laws are being written.

Through the BARMM, we have strengthened the nation's prospects for finally achieving sustainable progress anchored on a true and lasting peace in Southern Philippines. We will continue to support the progress of the BARMM, apace with our singular vision for all Filipinos.

A strong and stable rule of law will strengthen the foundation of our transformation.

Our Police and Armed Forces are being strengthened and modernized, to be more effective in maintaining peace and order and in defending our sovereignty. We fully support the Judiciary's efforts to improve the justice system and to protect constitutional rights.

The campaign against illegal drugs continues—but it has taken on a new face. It is now geared towards community-based treatment, rehabilitation, education, and reintegration, to curb drug dependence among our affected citizenry. Last year, we launched the Buhay Ingatan, Droga'y Ayawan or BIDA Program, and established additional 102 Balay Silangan Reformation Centers nationwide.

We will relentlessly continue our fight against drug syndicates, shutting down their illegal activities and dismantling their network of operations.

Unscrupulous law enforcers and others involved in the highly nefarious drug trade have been exposed. I will be accepting their resignations. In their stead, we will install individuals with unquestionable integrity, and who will be effective and trustworthy in handling the task of eliminating this dreaded and corrosive social curse. We cannot tolerate corruption or incompetence in government.

For almost half a century, some of our fellow Filipinos have taken to arms to make their views heard. We are now at a point in our history when their armed struggle has evolved. We have now progressed together towards peace and development.

We have incorporated capacity-building and social protection into our reintegration programs, to guarantee full decommissioning of former combatants. Through community development and livelihood programs, the Barangay Development and Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Programs have been effective in addressing the root cause of conflict in the countryside.

To complete this reintegration process, I will issue a Proclamation granting amnesty to rebel returnees. I ask Congress to support us in this endeavor.

Our journey to progress requires not only unity and social cohesion among our people. It is also imperative that our nation remains intact and inviolable, our sovereignty preserved. We will protect our sovereign rights and preserve our territorial integrity, in defense of rules-based international order.

With our national interest paramount, we will always pursue constant dialogue and diplomatic approaches to the resolution of any issue that may arise.

So, the initial results of our efforts inspire confidence. Let us continue to be relentless in our aspiration of peace and progress. This has not been the work of a single person. Neither a single branch of government, nor even the whole Government acting alone.

This is the collective synergy achieved by all Filipinos working together. It took a whole-of-nation effort to achieve this immediate recovery from our pandemic slump. Unity was what made us rise once more.

Nagsisimula pa lamang tayo. Ang pagbangon ng ating bayan ay magpapatuloy pa.

Hinihiling ko ang inyong tiwala at pakikiisa. Sa ganitong paraan, maka-kamtan natin ang ating tanging hangarin: ang maginhawa, matatag, at panatag na buhay para sa lahat ng Pilipino.

Makikipagtulungan tayo nang mabuti sa Kongreso para sa mga mahahalagang batas na kakailanganin natin sa ating tuloy-tuloy na pag-ahon.

Once again, I appeal to Congress for its support for the following priority legislations:

1. The essential tax measures under our Medium-Term Fiscal Framework, such as

Excise tax on single-use plastics
VAT on digital services
Rationalization of mining fiscal regime
Motor vehicle user's charge/road user's tax
Military and Uniformed Personnel Pension

2. Amendment of the Fisheries Code;

3. Amendment of the Anti-Agricultural Smuggling Act;

4. Amendment of the Cooperative Code;

5. New Government Procurement Law;

6. New Government Auditing Code;

7. Anti-financial accounts scamming;

8. Tatak-Pinoy (Proudly Filipino) law;

9. The Blue Economy law;

10. Ease of paying taxes;

11. LGU income classification; and

12. The Philippine Immigration Act.

In the past year, it has been a source of great hope and optimism to me to now know that there is an enormous pool of highly competent and dedicated workers serving in our government. It is up to us to provide good leadership and guidance. They love the Philippines, and have responded to our call.

I have stated before that my confidence in our future was grounded in our world-class quality workforce that we have—be they the farmers in the field, corporate giants, government officials, school teachers, health workers, or employees.

That confidence has been further buoyed by their demonstration of love for the Philippines. They have unanimously risen to the challenge that we have made to them to be part of the nation's future. Handa silang maghandog ng tulong, dahil mahal nila ang kanilang kapwa-Pilipino, at mahal nila ang Pilipinas.

With this in my heart, I know that the state of the nation is sound—and is improving.

Dumating na po ang Bagong Pilipinas.

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What are 5 political rights in the Philippines?

What are 5 political rights in the Philippines：The five political rights in the Philippines include the right to vote and participate in elections, freedom of speech and expression, the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to participate in government, and the right to petition the government.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Background of political rights in the philippines.

The Philippines, as a democratic republic, upholds the concept of political rights as central to its governance. The following sections elaborate on these rights in the Philippine context ，What are 5 political rights in the Philippines?.

History of Political Rights

Tracing the history of political rights in the Philippines reveals a rich tapestry of evolution. From the pre-colonial era to the present democratic government, the nation’s political rights have shaped its unique identity.

The Philippine Constitution and Political Rights

Constitutional provisions.

The Philippine Constitution serves as the cornerstone for all political rights in the country. The provisions directly related to political rights are multifaceted and encompass various aspects:

Right to Suffrage

Article V of the Constitution specifically covers the right to suffrage, granting every citizen of the Philippines, who is at least 18 years of age, the right to vote.

Freedom of Speech and Expression

Article III, Section 4 of the Constitution guarantees the freedom of speech and expression, allowing every citizen to voice opinions without fear of censorship or reprisal.

Right to Petition the Government

The Constitution protects the right of the people to petition the Government for redress of grievances.

Separation of Church and State

Article II, Section 6 emphasizes the separation of Church and State, underscoring the non-establishment of religion and the freedom to exercise religious preference.

5 political rights in the Philippines

Right to vote and participate in elections.

Eligibility and Process : The right to vote in the Philippines is granted to citizens who are at least 18 years old. They can participate in national and local elections, including voting for the President, Senators, and local officials.
Challenges and Reforms : Issues such as voter education, electoral fraud, and accessibility are ongoing challenges.
Media Landscape : The Philippines has a vibrant media landscape, where freedom of the press plays a crucial role.

Right to Peaceful Assembly and Association

Constitutional Basis : This right is protected under Article III, Section 4 of the Constitution, allowing peaceful assembly for lawful purposes without needing a permit.

Applications and Challenges : Various protests, demonstrations, and gatherings are conducted under this provision. Balancing security concerns with the right to assemble remains an area of debate and reform.

Right to Participate in Government

Inclusive Governance : The Philippines encourages citizens’ participation in government through elections, public consultations, and other mechanisms.

Local Government Participation : Various local government units (LGUs) foster participation through local councils and bodies.

Legal Provisions : The right to petition the government for redress of grievances is a fundamental right that allows citizens to express their concerns directly to governmental bodies.

Mechanisms and Practices : Various mechanisms, such as online platforms and public hearings, facilitate the right to petition, making government more accessible and responsive to citizens’ needs and concerns.

Comparative Analysis

Political rights in the philippines vs. other southeast asian countries.

Common Regional Values : Many Southeast Asian countries share common democratic values, and this section explores how the Philippines aligns or diverges from its neighbors.

Global Perspective and International Rankings

United Nations Involvement : The Philippines’ alignment with United Nations’ declarations and its role in various international human rights bodies are detailed, reflecting its commitment to global standards.
Democracy Index : The Philippines’ ranking in global democracy indices, and its implications, are explored, drawing comparisons with other nations.
Freedom of Press : The country’s position in international press freedom rankings, and what it signifies, can be accessed here .
Human Rights Metrics : An analysis of the Philippines’ standing in various international human rights measurements, and how they correlate with its internal policies and practices.
Challenges and Opportunities : The section concludes with an analysis of the challenges and opportunities faced by the Philippines in aligning with international political rights norms and standards.

Recommendations and Policy Considerations

Government initiatives.

Strengthening Electoral Processes : Implementing measures to enhance the transparency and integrity of elections, including technology, voter education, and fraud prevention.
Promoting Civic Participation : Encouraging citizens to participate actively in governance through town halls, online platforms, and public consultations.
Protecting Freedom of Speech : Enforcing and strengthening laws that protect freedom of speech, media, and expression, while balancing with responsible journalism.

Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Civil Society

Collaboration and Engagement : Encouraging collaboration between the government and NGOs to foster civic engagement, human rights, and community development.
Advocacy and Education : NGOs and civil society can play a vital role in advocating for political rights, conducting voter education, and raising awareness on various issues.
Monitoring and Accountability : Empowering NGOs to monitor governmental actions, promote transparency, and hold authorities accountable for their obligations toward political rights.

Future Legal and Regulatory Considerations

Digital Democracy : Policies enhance political participation through e-voting and online engagement.
Balancing Security and Rights : Regulations balance security with protection of political rights.
Adhering to International Standards : The Philippines aligns with international legal standards on political rights.

What is the basic law in the philippines, what are the 4 types of laws in the philippines, what is the most important law in the philippines, what is bill of rights in the philippines.

Southeast Asia
Philippines - Government and Crime

POLITICS IN THE PHILIPPINES

Politics in the Philippines has traditionally been dominated by clans and political bosses and patronage and is characterized by law makers that make decisions based on fiscal incentives rather that beliefs and voters that make choices based on personality rather than reasoned policies. Under the traditional “itang na loob” system of patronage, or obligation earned through favors, voters expect money or jobs in return for their political support. In many cases politician’s performance was based on dole-outs not on programs or policies. Philippine concepts about debt repayment and kinship responsibilities plays a major role in how political networks are set up and run (See FILIPINO CHARACTER AND PERSONALITY: HIYA, AMOR PROPIO Under People).

Personalities are more important than parties in Philippine politics. Movie stars and other celebrities have enjoyed considerable success. In addition1, several prominent families play a disproportionate role in politics. The support of the military and the Catholic church are key to political survival and success in the Philippines. Promises are generally not kept. Arroyo, for example, pledged to bring cheap power to the poor as a campaign pledge and then doubled power rates after she was elected. She also promised not to run for a second time but changed her mind because she said God made her decide to run.

The Philippines is known for its rough-and-tumble political scene. Politicians are rountinely killed and sometimes they even do the do the killing themselves. Every now and then it seems the entire country is on the verge of collapse because of a coup attempt, People Power protest or impeachment effort. On the day-to-day level, politicians are unable to achieve many of their goals and carry out programs they proposed due to political opposition, mainly from the ruling elite. Arroyo and her cabinet said that political fighting and sniping exhausted and frustrated them deeply.

Carlos H. Conde wrote in the New York Times, “In the Philippines, politics is a blood sport. Here, politicians often behave like gladiators: To survive they have to entertain the spectators. The turmoil from the [Arroyo] scandal has once again brought Filipinos and their unique brand of rambunctious democracy to international attention, providing a sideshow to the more pressing problems. Filipinos are no longer surprised by election fraud. Thanks to the damage Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator, did to the democratic institutions that American-style democracy helped establish after World War II, and the prevalence of an almost feudal political structure, particularly in the provinces, Filipinos have come to accept election cheating as normal. [Source: Carlos H. Conde, New York Times, July 2, 2005]

Pollster Social Weather Station and Pulse Asia.

Development of Philippines Politics After the Marcos

In 1991 Philippine politics resembled nothing so much as the "good old days" of the pre-martial law period — wide-open, sometimes irresponsible, but undeniably free. Pre-martial law politics, however, essentially were a distraction from the nation's serious problems. The parties were completely nonideological. Therefore, politicians and office-holders switched parties whenever it seemed advantageous to do so. Almost all politicians were wealthy, and many were landlords with large holdings. They blocked moves for social reform; indeed, they seemed not to have even imagined that society required serious reform. Congress acquired a reputation for corruption that made the few honest members stand out. When Marcos closed down Congress in 1972, hardly anyone was disappointed except the members themselves. *

The February 1986 People's Power Revolution, also called the EDSA Revolution had restored all the prerequisites of democratic politics: freedom of speech and press, civil liberties, regularly scheduled elections for genuine legislatures, plebiscites, and ways to ensure honest ballot counting. But by 1991 the return to irrelevant politics had caused a sense of hopelessness to creep back into the nation that five years before had been riding the euphoric crest of a nonviolent democratic revolution. In 1986 it seemed that democracy would have one last chance to solve the Philippines' deep-rooted social and economic problems. Within five years, it began to seem to many observers that the net result of democracy was to put the country back where it had been before Marcos: a democratic political system disguising an oligarchic society. *

Powerful Families in Philippine Politics

Hrvoje Hranjski of Associated Press wrote: “Philippine elections have long been dominated by politicians belonging to the same bloodlines. At least 250 political families have monopolized power across the country, although such dynasties are prohibited under the 1987 constitution. Congress — long controlled by members of powerful clans targeted by the constitutional ban — has failed to pass the law needed to define and enforce the provision. "Wherever you go, you see the names of these people since we were kids. It is still them," businessman Martin Tunac, 54, said after voting in Manila. "One of the bad things about political dynasties is they control everything, including business." [Source: Hrvoje Hranjski, Associated Press, May 13, 2013 |=|]

“School counselor Evelyn Dioquino said that the proliferation of political dynasties was a cultural issue and other candidates stood little chance because clans "have money, so they are the only ones who can afford (to run). Of course, if you have no logistics, you can't run for office." Critics worry that a single family's stranglehold on different levels of government could stymie checks against abuses and corruption. A widely cited example is the 2009 massacre of 58 people, including 32 media workers, in an ambush blamed on rivalry between powerful clans in southern Maguindanao province. |=|

Ana Maria Tabunda from the independent pollster Pulse Asia said that dynasties restrict democracy, but added that past surveys by her organization have shown that most Filipinos are less concerned about the issue than with the benefits and patronage they can receive from particular candidates. Voters also often pick candidates with the most familiar surnames instead of those with the best records, she said. "It's name recall, like a brand. They go by that," she said. |=|

The American anthropologist Brian Fegan, writing in "An Anarchy of Families," a book published in the 1990s, told the New York Times that "the Filipino family is the most enduring political unit and the one into which, failing some wider principle of organization, all other units dissolve." Filipinos look at political continuity as merely the transfer of power among family members, Fegan said. Thus, they also look at political competition in terms of rivalry between families. "A family that has once contested an office, particularly if it has once won it, sets its eye on that office as its permanent right," Fegan said. [Source: Carlos H. Conde, International Herald Tribune, July 16, 2005 \~/]

Political Family Dynasties in the Philippines

Politics in the Philippines has been dominated by powerful families for as long as anyone can remember. Aquino was the wife of a opposition leader. Arroyo was the daughter of a president. In 2004, Arroyo’s son and brother-in-law held Congressional seats and five relatives of Aquino were in Congress and one was a Senator. Even the Marcos family remains powerful and influential in Philippines politics, especially in northen Luzon. Many local positions and governments are dominated by clans and powerful and wealthy families.

One Philippine political analyst told the Washington Post, “Some dynasties have made positive contributions, but by and large the dynastic system in the Philippines has stunted the growth of real democracy. It is not representative of the broad majority in any place.” Efforts to reduce the hold on power of local families by establishing term limits has meant that families hand over power from one family member to another.

The system of family dynasties has its roots in U.S. colonial rule when initially voting rights were only granted to Filipinos with property and education, allowing the landed aristocracy to attain a monopoly of power in the provinces. The United States also put in place a Congressional system that allowed families to establish local fiefdoms rather than fostering competition through an electoral list system.

This trend is beginning to change in some places. Grace Padaca, a former radio commentator, was elected governor of Isabela Province in 2004. She moved into the mansion of the former governor, from the powerful Dy family, thought he had built for himself. Padaca won by nonstop campaigning and dedicated grassroots volunteer movement.

Filipino Clans, Celebrities Dominate Midterm Polls in 2013

Hrvoje Hranjski of Associated Press wrote: “From Imelda Marcos to Manny Pacquiao, familiar names of Philippine political clans and celebrities dominated the ballots for congressional and local elections, which will gauge popular support for the president's anti-corruption drive and other reforms. [Source: Hrvoje Hranjski, Associated Press, May 13, 2013 |=|]

“Among 33 senatorial candidates are two of Aquino's relatives, Binay's neophyte daughter, Estrada's son, a son of the sitting chamber president, a son of a late president, a spouse and children of former senators and there's a possibility that two pairs of siblings will be sitting in the me house. Currently, 15 senators have relatives serving in elective positions. The race for the House is even more of a family affair. Toppled dictator Ferdinand Marcos' widow, the flamboyant 83-year-old Imelda, is expected to keep her seat as a representative for Ilocos Norte province, the husband's birthplace where the locals kept electing the Marcoses despite allegations of corruption and abuse during their long rule. Marcos' daughter, Imee is seeking re-election as governor and the son, Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., is already a senator. Boxing star and incumbent Rep. Manny Pacquiao is running unopposed and building a dynasty of his own: his brother Rogelio is running to represent his southern district and his wife Jinkee is vying to become vice-governor for Sarangani province. |=|

Palakasan System" in the Philippine Government

Iamthur.blogspot.jp reported: “How to get a job in the Philippine Government provided that there is a vacancy? First, you must be a Filipino citizen. Then, you should have a bachelor's degree related to the job, certification of eligibility from Civil Service Commission, experience related to the job, and other documents as the office/agency concerned may require. But in these days, there is a big problem. In a partisan system if they suspect you for not voting for a certain winning candidate, your chances to get hired even though you're qualified is lame. That's sad but true. [Source: iamthur.blogspot.jp ==]

“This scenario has been the headache for long a time. The recent official that being seated on certain position will going to terminate all people that being hired under the term of previous official. I can say this because, I already witnessed this when I visit our municipality. I've noticed that there are new faces working there, and old employees are replaced already. ==

“Nowadays in Philippines, it is very difficult to acquire a job in the government. Even though you have the qualities, abilities, and capabilities that match the criteria for a certain job you're applying for, sometimes it just not enough to get the job. That's because you don't have what they call a "backer", it's a certain people in the government with a high position or ranking that supposedly one of your relatives, friends or acquaintances. There are lots of people getting hired easily in the government even though they don't have what it takes for that certain position, but they made it possible because of their contacts(red tape) in the government. It is what you called the "Palakasan System" that run for so long. It's very unfair and disappointing to those honest and deserving Filipino job-seekers who aim to work for the government. ==

“The government now is full of corrupt people. I'm still hoping that someday this system will be changed. All corrupt must be washed out, and let the honest and dignified people work for their beloved county, who looks equally to all people under their good governance.” ==

Old-Style Politics in the Philippines Countryside

Philippine politics, along with other aspects of society, rely heavily on kinship and other personal relationships. To win a local election, one must assemble a coalition of families. To win a provincial election, the important families in each town must be drawn into a wider structure. To win a national election, the most prominent aristocratic clans from each region must temporarily come together. A family's power is not necessarily precisely correlated with wealth — numbers of followers matters more — but the middle class and the poor are sought mainly for the votes that they can deliver. Rarely will they be candidates themselves. [Source: Library of Congress *]

The suspension of elections during martial law seemed at first to herald a radical centralization of power in Manila, specifically in the Marcos and Romualdez clans, but traditional provincial oligarchs resurfaced when Aquino restored elections. To the dismay of her more idealistic followers, Aquino followed her brother's advice and concluded agreements with many former Marcos supporters who were probably going to win elections anyway. About 70 percent of the candidates elected to the House of Representatives in 1987 were scions of political dynasties. They included five relatives of Aquino: a brother, an uncle, a sister-in-law, a brother-in-law, and a cousin. Another brotherin -law was elected to the Senate. The newly elected Congress passed a bill prohibiting close relatives of government officials from becoming candidates, but it did not take effect until after the 1988 local elections. Many of the same prominent families who had dominated Philippine society from the Spanish colonial period returned to power. Commonly, the same two families vie for control of provinces. The specific reason for social and political bipolarity is not known, but it nourishes feuds between rival clans that are renewed generation after generation. *

Coercion is an alternative to buying votes. Because the population of the Philippines has multiplied by a factor of nine in the twentieth century, there is not enough land to go around. As a result, tenant-landlord relationships have become more businesslike and less personal, and some old elite families now rely on force to protect their interests. Article 18 of the constitution directs the dismantling of all "private armies," but it seemed unlikely that it could be enforced. *

Failure of People in the Philippines

Jim Gomez and Oliver Teves of Associated Press wrote: “The world watched in awe in 1986 as Filipinos, clutching rosaries and flowers, mounted a human barricade against tanks and troops and brought dictator Ferdinand Marcos down without a shot. What they did gave birth to the term "people power." Fifteen years later similar forces toppled President Joseph Estrada over alleged corruption, and even now, the nation's democracy remains fragile.” In the late 2000s, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo faced impeachment proceedings over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption and declared a state of emergency to quashed a coup plot. She said the political opposition and extremists on both left and right were determined to bring down her elected government. [Source: Jim Gomez and Oliver Teves Associated Press, February 25, 2006 +^+]

“Has "people power" gotten out of hand in the island nation where it was born? Even its most prominent beneficiary, Corazon Aquino, who succeeded the ousted Marcos in 1986, thinks so. "I would still prefer that we do it through a constitutional process," she said recently when asked if she would join an uprising against Arroyo. "Things are different now, we have other options." Besides democracy, little has changed in this nation of 86 million. It remains mired in appalling poverty, rural backwardness, chronic inequality, long-running Marxist and Muslim insurgencies and chaotic politics. Imelda Marcos, the dictator's widow once reviled for the extravagance epitomized by her vast shoe collection, retains political clout and still shows up occasionally to work the Manila social circuit. +^+

“The images of "people power" are fading into history, but remain iconic: nuns kneeling in prayer in front of tanks, and unarmed civilians trying to push back military vehicles with their bare hands. Historian Maria Serena Diokno said the administrations of Aquino and Arroyo, both from wealthy landowning clans, faced the same accusations as their predecessors - human rights violations, massive corruption and failure to enforce effective land reform. +^+

Carlos H. Conde wrote in the International Herald Tribune, “If there is any consensus it is that the system has to go, says Manuel Quezon 3rd, a political analyst and historian. "The problem is, no one agrees what system to replace it with," Quezon said.Experts on politics and governance do agree, however, that the families and politicians who have a lock on government here have been the bane of Filipinos, thriving on so-called patronage politics that keeps democratic processes in a state of dysfunction. The result is a faulty electoral system, a low level of political awareness among the populace and a degree of corruption that has seriously damaged Philippine society and hobbled economic development. [Source: Carlos H. Conde, International Herald Tribune, July 16, 2005 \~/]

“All of these factors conspire to push the country near the edge of chaos in a kind of cyclical pattern that has decayed what was once among the region's most promising democracies. Worse, the few new and young leaders who emerge are frequently co-opted by traditional politicians. These new leaders then establish political dynasties themselves or fortify existing ones, perpetuating a vicious circle.” \~/

Why the Powerful Family and Patronage System Endure in the Philippines

Carlos H. Conde wrote in the International Herald Tribune, “The reality here is that the same old faces, the same old families and the same old interests continue to hold sway over the political life of this country. The Philippines, which once boasted an intelligentsia that was deemed the most sophisticated in Southeast Asia, is still going through what one Filipino columnist recently called "the most drawn out political adolescence in modern history." [Source: Carlos H. Conde, International Herald Tribune, July 16, 2005 \~/]

“Why do a few oligarchic families continue to dominate the political life of this former Spanish colony, in a pattern once familiar in many Latin-influenced countries? To put the question another way, why has the Philippines failed to produce a leader like Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, a figure who springs from the bottom up and who, for better or worse, ushers in new politics that, on the surface at least, promise a better life for the people? \~/

Clarita Carlos, an expert on governance and politics at the University of the Philippines, said she believed that Philippine politics merely facilitated the "circulation of elites, people who have mastered how to be economically and socially mobile by taking advantage of the limitations of the system." As a result, the Filipino political class "has become so inbred that they've become detached from the concerns of the majority," said Quezon, who is himself the grandson of a former president. \~/

“In a healthy political environment, Quezon said, the oligarchy would relinquish power to a new political class. "Sadly, this is something most Filipino oligarchs never did," he said.Steven Rood, the country representative here of The Asia Foundation and an expert on local governance, thinks it is not so much a question of why Philippine politics has the same faces but why the situation has not changed over many decades. "I would say that the basic fundamental reason is that the people who run the system are the ones benefiting enough from it that they're worried about change," Rood said. That has been the case for decades and, as Steven Rood of The Asia Foundation explained, "there's an enormous amount of historical continuity at play" in the present crisis. Rood traces this back to the period of Spanish colonization and the American colonization that followed it. \~/

"The two decades of Marcos blocked off a generation of young, emerging leaders," said Nereus Acosta, a 39-year-old congressman who teaches public policy at the Ateneo School of Government. After Marcos was toppled in 1986, the political families that he cultivated were replaced by new ones allied to the next regime, that of Corazón Aquino. As if that were not enough, the lines that at first separated Marcos and anti-Marcos politics became so blurred that it is not surprising today to find a former Marcos foe hobnobbing with the scions and friends of the former dictator. Switching sides thus became widespread. Filipino political parties had intermarried to such an extent that, today, it is difficult to know which party is allied with whom. "We're paying for this damage now," Acosta said. \~/

“Given this, Acosta said, it would be difficult for idealism to evolve. "You may have new guys coming out, yes, but unfortunately, wealth and power being so confined to a few, this new generation will have limitations," he said. There has never been a shortage of idealistic Filipinos who can provide the kind of strong leadership the country needs. "Believe me, there are many Filipinos who are competent," said Carlos, the political science professor. The problem is, officials said, once they are inside the system, they are easily compromised. \~/

Is the U.S. to Blame for the Philippines’s Political Failures

Steven Rood of The Asia Foundation told the International Herald Tribune that the Americans did not change the Filipino social structure. "They imposed a political system that allowed this social structure to gain political power," he said. "It's been the marriage of social position and political power ever since that produced essentially the same state that we have now." [Source: Carlos H. Conde, International Herald Tribune, July 16, 2005 \~/]

Luis Teodoro, the executive director of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, a political research institute in Manila, told the International Herald Tribune that the Americans had a hand in this predicament. They supported regimes led by powerful political families who, in turn, furthered American interests and helped suppress the nationalist politicians who tended to undermine them. "To a great extent, the United States is responsible for keeping these political dynasties in power," Teodoro said. Without U.S. support, he said by way of example, the regime of Ferdinand Marcos would not have lasted as long as it did and Marcos would not have been able to inflict the heavy damage on political institutions here that he is generally held responsible for. \~/

Carlos H. Conde wrote in the International Herald Tribune, “Marcos persecuted the oligarchs who went against him and befriended those who were willing to cooperate with his regime. While he used these families to prop up his regime and amass the wealth for which he would later be infamous, these families went on to exploit their ties with him, widening and strengthening their political bases and enriching themselves even more. Marcos, in turn, used these power bases, particularly in the provinces, to keep himself in the presidential palace. This resulted in a kind of political interregnum. Because the dictator, his wife, Imelda, and his closest cronies were the only kingmakers, they either corrupted young and idealistic politicians or made sure that those who could challenge them did not stand a chance. \~/

Philippine Mayor Killed at Manila Airport

Political violence is not confined to candidates running in elections that threaten the oligarchy status quo. It can strike sitting politicians—and innocent bystanders. In December 2013, Al Jazeera reported: “Gunmen have shot dead a town mayor and three other people at the airport in Manila, sending travellers fleeing for safety, authorities said. Ukol Talumpa, the mayor of the town of Labangan in Zamboanga del Sur province, was killed together with his wife, an 18-month-old baby and one other person, Al Jazeera's Jamela Alindogan reported from Manila on Friday. Four other people were wounded in the incident, airport manager Jose Honrado said. [Source: Al Jazeera, December 20, 2013]

“Honrado said that Talumpa was waiting for a ride with his family outside an airport terminal when the gunmen on a motorcycle shot him and others at close range. Airport security force chased the gunmen but they escaped on their vehicle in the heavy late-morning traffic outside the terminal, Honrado said. He added that the authorities did not know the identity of the attackers nor the motive for the attack "Government agencies are trying their best to determine the perpetrators and bring them to justice," the airport manager said. Talumpa, a member of the political opposition, won a hotly contested electoral contest for mayor of Labangan in last May's local elections. [Ibid]

Politicians in the Philippines

Personality and image count for a lot on Philippines politics. Presidential candidates have included high school drop out movie stars. In some cases they have had no public service experience before running for office. It is common in Philippine politics for movie stars, basketball players and comedians to be elected to public office. The two top vote getters in a 1992 Senate election were a former action-movie star and slapstick comedian. In the 1998 election, more than 100 candidates in national elections were former entertainers. Former police chief and Manila mayor Alfredo Lim was nicknamed "Dirty Harry" for having little respect for civil liberties.

According to everyculture.com: “Men of rank in the military also move into the political arena. Joseph Estrada, whose term as president is 1998–2004, entered the public eye as a popular film star. He then became the mayor of a large city and went on to become vice president in the Ramos administration. Previous presidents have had political or military backgrounds, with the exception of Corazon Aquino, the president from 1986 to 1992, who became politically active after her husband was assassinated. [Source: everyculture.com]

It is also not unusual for Philippines politicians to have a criminal record. The top politician on the island of Palawan, Edward Hagedorn. who has been greatly praised for his can do achievements, himself grew up as a petty criminal and became a gambling lord who was jailed for allegedly killing two policeman in a shootout and abandoned his wife and child to live with a showgirl he met at a bar. Using managment skills that he may have picked as a gangster he got roads paves, cracked down on illegal logging and fishing, and delivered on promises of bringing low-cost housing, clinics and garbage collection to remote villages. Hagedorn became so famous his life was made into a film staring future presidential candidate Edward Poe.

Ferdinand Marcos was accused of killing a man. President Joseph Estrada and popular politician and president candidate Edward Poe were popular actors. See History

Speaker Jose de Venecia: the Consumate Filipino Politician

Bong Austero wrote in his blog: “Speaker Jose de Venecia says he now wants to spend the last years of his life building his legacy to the Filipino people. The speaker is 70 years old. He is the longest-serving speaker of the House of Representatives. He could have been president of this country had it not been for the fact that someone more popular and more in touch with the common man was also running for the post in that particular election. He lost to Joseph Estrada, the actor. His running mate, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, however, won the vice presidency. Estrada would eventually get booted out of office, tried, and convicted for plunder. And as fate would have it, De Venecia’s running mate became President. [Source: bongaustero.blogspot.jp, October 22, 2007 /=]

“For quite sometime, De Venecia’s political fortunes were in limbo. But he eventually bounced back from the pits and reclaimed his seat as speaker of the House of Representatives, proof of the man’s resilience and tenacity as a political animal. This is a man who has fought many battles; a man who speaks with the wisdom of not only the aged, but of someone who has been a constant fixture in the political scene in the last four or five decades. In another time and place, when someone of De Venecia’s stature and experience speaks of moral regeneration and of the urgency of reclaiming the country’s pride and honor, we should be compelled to sit up and listen. /=\

“Sadly, this does not seem to be the case today. It has become difficult to empathize with the man. Not only because in all his TV appearances last week the speaker came across as a forlorn figure, of someone betrayed and on the brink of defeat. There was no fire in his eyes and his rhetoric lacked conviction. This is sad because what De Venecia is saying is true. This country needs moral regeneration. But corruption has not only become systemic and widespread, brazen and so unspeakably scandalous. We also know theoretical solutions and intellectual discussions won’t be enough. What we need are drastic and more effective courses of action. /=\

“It is difficult to empathize with De Venecia and his cause because despite the grand pronouncements, it is clear that the man is simply fighting for political survival. This is evident in the way De Venecia continues to hem and haw about where his political loyalties now reside. Despite thinly veiled threats about possible courses of actions that he might take if the current dispensation continues to marginalize him, we know that his main motivation is self-preservation. He wants to retire as speaker and this is only possible if he plays his cards right. It’s a political zarzuela. De Venecia is saying all the right things but unfortunately fails to buttress his rhetoric with the necessary actions indicative of moral courage. Thus, we can be forgiven for not trusting him at this point.” /=\

Political Parties in the Philippines

Political parties and leaders: 1) Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (Struggle of Filipino Democrats) or LDP [Edgardo Angara]; 2) Lakas ng EDSA-Christian Muslim Democrats or Lakas-CMD [Manuel "Mar" Roxas]; 3) Liberal Party or LP [Manuel Roxas]; 4) Nacionalista Party or NP [Manuel "Manny" Villar]; 4) Nationalist People's Coalition or NPC [Frisco San Juan]; 5) PDP-Laban [Aquilino Pimentel]; 6) People's Reform Party [Miriam Defensor Santiago]; 7) Puwersa ng Masang Pilipino (Force of the Philippine Masses) or PMP [Joseph Estrada]. The United Nationalist Alliance or [UNA] - PDP-Laban and PMP coalition for the 2013 election. Political pressure groups and leaders: Black and White Movement [Vicente Romano]; Kilosbayan [Jovito Salonga] [Source: CIA World Factbook]

Philippine political parties are essentially nonideological vehicles for personal and factional political ambition. Ruling party: The Liberal Party is the party of Benigno Aquino III, the current president of the Philippines. The Liberal Party, a democratic-elitist party founded in 1946, survived fourteen years of dormancy (1972 to 1986), largely through the staunch integrity of its central figure, Senate president Jovito Salonga, a survivor of the Plaza Miranda grenade attack of September 1971. In 1991 Salonga also was interested in the presidency, despite poor health and the fact that he is a Protestant in a largely Catholic country. Former President Macapagal-Arroyo is a member of the conservative Lakas-Christian Muslim Democratic Party (Lakas-CMD).

Political parties are not that strong in the Philippines. Rewriting the constitution to eliminate term limits and establishing a strong two-party system are the reforms that are discussed most often. Politicians move from party to party as the needs of their constituencies dictate because the political parties have no ideologies. [Source: everyculture.com]

Senate - percent of vote by party for 2013 election - UNA 26.94 percent, NP 15.3 percent, LP 11.32 percent, NPC 10.15 percent, LDP 5.38 percent, PDP-Laban 4.95 percent, others 9.72 percent, independents 16.24 percent; seats by party after 2013 election - UNA 5, NP 5, LP 4, Lakas 2, NPC 2, LDP 1, PDP-Laban 1, PRP 1, independents 3; House of Representatives - percent of vote by party - LP 38.3 percent, NPC 17.4 percent, UNA 11.4 percent, NUP 8.7 percent, NP 8.5 percent, Lakas 5.3 percent, independents 6.0 percent, others 4.4 percent; seats by party - LP 110, NPC 43, NUP 24, NP 17, Lakas 14, UNA 8, independents 6, others 12; party-list 57 [Source: CIA World Factbook]

After the May 2004 election, Lakas controlled the largest faction in the House of Representatives (100 seats). Lakas-CMD has formed a governing coalition with the Liberal Party (32 seats). Others major parties in the House at that time were the Nationalist Peoples Coalition (47 seats), led by the business tycoon Eduardo Cojuangco; Struggle for Democratic Filipinos (nine seats); Nationalista Party (six seats); Akbayan (three seats); Association of Philippine Electric Co-operatives (three seats); Bayan Muna (three seats); Power of the Filipino Masses (three seats); Aksyon Demokratiko, Promdi, and Reporma, which have formed an alliance (two seats); Philippine Democratic Party (two seats); and Philippines Democratic Socialist Party (two seats).

The Communists (NPA) split among the ranks.

Political Parties After the Ouster of Marcos

Political parties grew in profusion after the Marcos martiallaw regime (1972-81) was ended. There were 105 political parties registered in 1988. As in the pre-Marcos era, most legal political parties were coalitions, built around prominent individuals, which focused entirely on winning elections, not on what to do with the power achieved. There was little to distinguish one party from another ideologically, which was why many Filipinos regarded the political system as irrelevant. [Source: Library of Congress *]

The party system in the early 1990s closely resembled that of the premartial law years when the Nacionalista and Liberal parties alternated in power. Although they lacked coherent political programs, they generally championed conservative social positions and avoided taking any position that might divide the electorate. Each party tried to appeal to all regions, all ethnic groups, and all social classes and fostered national unity by never championing one group or region. Neither party had any way to enforce party discipline, so politicians switched capriciously back and forth. The parties were essentially pyramids of patronclient relationships stretching from the remotest villages to Manila. They existed to satisfy particular demands, not to promote general programs. Because nearly all senators and representatives were provincial aristocrats, the parties never tackled the fundamental national problem — the vastly inequitable distribution of land, power, and wealth. *

Ferdinand Marcos mastered that party system, then altered it by establishing an all-embracing ruling party to be the sole vehicle for those who wished to engage in political activity. He called it the New Society Movement (Kilusang Bagong Lipunan). The New Society Movement sought to extend Marcos's reach to far corners of the country. Bureaucrats at all levels were welladvised to join. The New Society Movement offered unlimited patronage. The party won 163 of 178 seats in the National Assembly in 1978 and easily won the 1980 local elections. In 1981 Marcos actually had to create his own opposition, because no one was willing to run against him. *

Pro-Government Parties After Marcos

In 1978 the imprisoned former senators Benigno Aquino and Lorenzo Tañada organized a political party named Lakas ng Bayan (Strength of the Nation; also known by its abbreviated form, LABAN, meaning fight). LABAN won 40 percent of the Manila vote in parliamentary elections that year but was not given a single seat in Marcos's New Society Movement-dominated parliament. After Aquino went into exile in the United States, his wife's brother, former Congressman Jose Cojuangco, managed LABAN. Cojuangco forged an alliance with the Pilipino Democratic Party (PDP), a regional party with strength in the Visayas and Mindanao, that had been organized by Aquilino Pimentel, the mayor of Cagayan de Oro City. The unified party was thereafter known as PDP-LABAN, and it — along with UNIDO conducted Corazon Aquino's presidential campaign against Marcos. [Source: Library of Congress *]

In its early years, PDP-LABAN espoused a strongly nationalist position on economic matters and United States base rights, aspiring to "democratize power and socialize wealth." Later, after Aquino became president, its rhetorical socialism evaporated. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, PDP-LABAN had the distinct advantage of patronage. Aquino named Pimentel her first minister of local government, then summarily dismissed every governor and mayor in the Philippines. Pimentel replaced them with officers in charge known personally to him, thereby creating an instant pyramid of allies throughout the country. Some, but not all, of these officers in charge won election on their own in the January 1988 local elections. *

PDP-LABAN was not immune from the problems that generally plagued Philippine political parties. What mainly kept the party together was the need to keep Aquino in power for her full sixyear term. In June 1988 the party was reorganized as the Struggle of Filipino Democrats (Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino). Speaker of the House Ramon Mitra was its first president, but he resigned the presidency of the party in 1989 in favor of Neptali Gonzales. *

In 1990 Aquino announced the formation of a movement called Kabisig (Arm-in-Arm), conceived as a nongovernmental organization to revive the spirit of People's Power and get around an obstinate bureaucracy and a conservative Congress. By 1991 its resemblance to a nascent political party worried the more traditional leadership, particularly Mitra. Part of Aquino's governing style was to maintain a stance of being "above politics." Although she endorsed political candidates, she refused to form a political party of her own, relying instead on her personal probity, spirituality, and simple living to maintain popular support. *

Opposition Parties After Marcos

The New Society Movement fell apart when Marcos fled the country. A former National Assembly speaker, Nicanor Yniguez, tried to "reorganize" it, but others scrambled to start new parties with new names. Blas Ople, Marcos's minister of labor, formed the Nationalist Party of the Philippines (Partido Nationalista ng Pilipinas) in March 1986. Enrile sought political refuge in a revival of the country's oldest party, the Nacionalista Party, first formed in 1907. Enrile used the rusty Nacionalista machinery and an ethnic network of Ilocanos to campaign for a no vote on the Constitution, and when that failed, for his election to the Senate. Lengthy negotiations with mistrustful political "allies" such as Ople and Laurel delayed the formal reestablishment of the Nacionalista Party until May 1989. Enrile also experimented with a short-lived Grand Alliance for Democracy with Francisco "Kit" Tatad, the erstwhile minister of information for Marcos, and the popular movie-star senator, Joseph Estrada. In 1991 Enrile remained a very powerful political figure, with landholdings all over the Philippines and a clandestine network of dissident military officers. [Source: Library of Congress *]

Vice President Laurel had few supporters in the military but long-term experience in political organizing. From his family base in Batangas Province, Laurel had cautiously distanced himself from Marcos in the early 1980s, then moved into open opposition under the banner of a loose alliance named the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO). Eventually, the UNIDO became Laurel's personal party. Aquino used the party's organization in February 1986, although her alliance with Laurel was never more than tactical. UNIDO might have endured had Aquino's allies granted Laurel more patronage when local governments were reorganized. As it was, Laurel could reward his supporters only with positions in the foreign service, and even there the opportunities were severely limited. The party soon fell by the wayside. Laurel and Enrile formed the United Nationalist Alliance, also called the Union for National Action, in 1988. The United Nationalist Alliance proposed a contradictory assortment of ideas including switching from a presidential to a parliamentary form of government, legalizing the Communist Party of the Philippines, and extending the United States bases treaty. By 1991 Laurel had abandoned these ad hoc creations and gone back to the revived Nacionalista Party, in a tentative alliance with Enrile. *

In 1991 a new opposition party, the Filipino Party (Partido Pilipino), was organized as a vehicle for the presidential campaign of Aquino's estranged cousin Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco. Despite the political baggage of a long association with Marcos, Cojuangco had the resources to assemble a powerful coalition of clans. *

In September 1986 the revolutionary left, stung by its shortsighted boycott of the February election, formed a legal political party to contest the congressional elections. The Partido ng Bayan (Party of the Nation) allied with other leftleaning groups in an Alliance for New Politics that fielded 7 candidates for the Senate and 103 for the House of Representatives, but it gained absolutely nothing from this exercise. The communists quickly dropped out of the electoral arena and reverted to guerrilla warfare. As of 1991, no Philippine party actively engaged in politics espoused a radical agenda.

Catholic Church and Politics in the Philippines

During the Spanish colonial period, the Catholic Church was extensively involved in colonial administration, especially in rural areas. With the advent of United States control, the Catholic Church relinquished its great estates. Church and state officially were separated, although the church, counting more than 80 percent of the population as members, continued to have influence when it wanted to exert it. For much of the Marcos administration, the official church, led by archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jaime Sin, adopted a stance of "critical collaboration." This meant that although Sin did not flatly condemn Marcos, he reserved the right to criticize. Below the cardinal, the church was split between conservative and progressive elements, and some priests joined the communistdominated National Democratic Front through a group named Christians for National Liberation. Cardinal Sin was instrumental in the downfall of Marcos. He brokered the critical, if temporary, reconciliation between Aquino and Laurel and warned the Marcoses that vote fraud was "unforgivable." In radio broadcasts, he urged Manileños to come into the streets to help the forces led by Enrile and Ramos when they mutinied in February 1986. The church, therefore, could legitimately claim to be part of the revolutionary coalition. [Source: Library of Congress *]

Aquino is a deeply religious woman who has opened cabinet meetings with prayers and sought spiritual guidance in troubled times. Although there were reports that the Vatican in late 1986 had instructed Cardinal Sin to reduce his involvement in politics, Aquino continued to depend on him. The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines issued a pastoral letter urging people to vote yes in the 1987 constitutional plebiscite. In March 1987, Sin announced that he was bowing out of politics, but two months later he broadcast his support for ten Aquino-backed candidates for the Senate and recommended that voters shun candidates of the left. In 1990 Sin defined his attitude toward the government as one of "critical solidarity." *

The church was very pleased with provisions of the 1987 Constitution that ban abortion and restore a limited role for religion in public education. The Constitution is essentially silent on the matter of family planning. The church used its very substantial influence to hinder government family-planning programs. Despite the fact that the population grew by 100,000 people per month in the late 1980s, Cardinal Sin believed that the Marcos government had gone too far in promoting contraception. He urged Aquino to "repeal, or at least revise" government family-planning programs. In August 1988, the bishops conference denounced contraception as "dehumanizing and ethically objectionable." For churchmen, this was an issue not to be taken lightly. One bishop called for the church to "protect our people from the contraceptive onslaught" and the bishops conference labelled rapid population growth a "nonproblem." In 1989 the United States Department of Commerce projected the Philippine population at 130 million by the year 2020 — in a country the size of California. *

Catholic Leaders and Politics in the Philippines

The Catholic church is one of the strongest institutions in the Philippines and major player in Philippine politics. Support of the Catholic church, and the military, are key to political survival and success in the Philippines. The Catholic is very involved in fighting poverty and in some cases some of its members have been involved in supporting poor tenant farmers in their battles against their rich landlords.

Priests and bishops and other religious leaders are powerful figures in the Philippines. Local priest and ministers are so highly respected that requests from them take on the power of mandates. A family considers having a son or daughter with a religious career as a high honor. Personal friendships with priests, ministers, and nuns are prized. Clerics take an active role in the secular world. An example is Brother Andrew Gonzales, the current secretary of DECS. [Source: everyculture.com]

The Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, the Protestant churches engaged in a variety of community welfare efforts. These efforts went beyond giving relief and involved attempts to alter the economic position of the poor. Increasingly in the 1970s, these attempts led the armed forces of President Marcos to suspect that church agencies were aiding the communist guerrillas. In spite of reconciliation efforts, the estrangement between the churches and Marcos grew; it culminated in the call by Cardinal Jaime Sin for the people to go to the streets to block efforts of Marcos to remain in office after the questionable election of 1986. The resulting nonviolent uprising was known variously as People's Power and as the EDSA Revolution. [Source: Library of Congress, 1991 *]

The good feeling that initially existed between the church and the government of President Aquino lasted only a short time after her inauguration. Deep-seated divisions over the need for revolutionary changes again led to tension between the government and some elements in the churches. *

Catholics fall into three general groups: conservatives who are suspicious of social action and hold that Christian love could best be expressed through existing structures; moderates, probably the largest group, in favor of social action but inclined to cooperate with government programs; and progressives, who do not trust the government programs, are critical both of Philippine business and of American influence, and feel that drastic change is needed. In the past, progressives were especially disturbed at atrocities accompanying the use of vigilantes. They denied that they were communists, but some of their leaders supported communist fronts, and a few priests actually joined armed guerrilla bands. There appeared to be more progressives among religious-order priests than among diocesan priests. *

Cardinal Sin

Cardinal Jaime L. Sin was the top Catholic figure in the Philippines for decades until his death in 2005. Arguably one of the most powerful men in the Philippines and one of the most powerful Catholic clerics in the world, he was mentioned as a possible successor to Pope John Paul II. The son of Chinese immigrants, Cardinal Sin is well-known for his sense of humor, his name and his jokes about his name. When asked what his chances are of becoming the Pope, he says, "First of all, my name is bad." He often greets guest to his residence with "Welcome to the House of Sin" and is notorious for his bawdy comments.

Hrvoje Hranjski of Associated Press wrote: Cardinal Sin “shaped the role of the church during the country's darkest hours after dictator Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law starting in 1972 by championing the cause of civil advocacy, human rights and freedoms. Sin's action mirrored that of his strong backer, Pope John Paul II, who himself challenged communist rulers in Eastern Europe. Three years after Benigno Aquino Sr., a senator opposing Marcos, was gunned down on the Manila airport tarmac in 1983, Sin persuaded Aquino's widow, Corazon, to run for president. When massive election cheating by Marcos was exposed, Sin went on Catholic-run Radio Veritas in February 1986 to summon millions of people to support military defectors and the Aquino-led opposition. Marcos fled and Aquino, a deeply religious woman, was sworn in as president. Democracy was restored, but the country remained chaotic. [Source: Hrvoje Hranjski, Associated Press, January 3, 2013 ]

Cardinal Sin influence goes back to the Marcos era. Once when he sitting between Marcos and his wife Imelda in the back seat of the presidential limousine, Marcos asked him why he was so quiet. "Because," he said, "I feel like I am being crucified between two thieves." Marcos reportedly thought comment was funny but Imelda wouldn't speak to the cardinal for three months after that.

Michelle O'Donnell wrote in the New York Times, “Cardinal Jaime L. Sin, the powerful Roman Catholic archbishop of Manila, used his influence to champion the rights of the poor and rally the widespread popular resistance that brought down the presidencies of Ferdinand E. Marcos and Joseph Estrada Cardinal Sin led the nearly 40 million Catholics in the Philippines for almost three decades, through political upheaval that brought martial law, repressive dictatorship and democratic rule. A round-faced, bespectacled man, he was known for his sense of humor that included poking fun of his own name. But it was through his withering and unwavering public criticism of the Marcos regime in the 1980's that Cardinal Sin became an international figure. [Source: Michelle O'Donnell, New York Times, June 21, 2005 +++]

“At a time when reform-minded clergy in other developing countries were targets of assassination, Cardinal Sin tirelessly used his pulpit first as bishop, then archbishop, to attack Mr. Marcos' martial law, corruption and policies that oppressed the poor. Yet unlike Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, a contemporary who also worked to empower the poor and was fatally shot as he delivered a homily in 1980, Cardinal Sin seemed insulated from personal harm. "If you compare him to Romero, he spoke out as much as Romero did," said the Rev. Paul L. Locatelli, the president of Santa Clara University. "He saw justice as making sure that the poor had a voice." But he was not witho Under the cardinal's tenure, the church was shaken by accusations of sexual misconduct by some of its priests, according to The Associated Press. Two years ago, Catholic bishops apologized for grave cases of sexual misconduct by priests and pledged to act on complaints. +++

During his long career, the cardinal was not without his critics. He staunchly opposed artificial means of birth control, which some critics said left the country overpopulated and mired in poverty. Under the cardinal's tenure, the church was shaken by accusations of sexual misconduct by some of its priests, according to The Associated Press. Two years ago, Catholic bishops apologized for grave cases of sexual misconduct by priests and pledged to act on complaints. +++

See Religion

Protests and Demonstrations in the Philippines

Describing a Manila protest against President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2006, Nicola Menzie of CBS wrote: “Riot police used water cannons and truncheons to break up a rally by more than 1,500 protesters as they demanded President Arroyo be removed from office. The protesters appeared emboldened by the success of similar protests in Thailand that led to Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra's resignation from office. The demonstrators reported several injuries as a result of police using wooden sticks, fiberglass shields and water cannon spray in order to force them away from a bridge leading to the presidential palace. Rallies have been banned in the area, which has been the scene of recent clashes between police and demonstrators. Leftist groups have vowed to continue protests and are calling for Arroyo's ouster over corruption and vote-rigging allegations. [Source: Nicola Menzie, CBS, April 6, 2006]

The next day, Fight Back! News reported: “Riot police in the Philippines attacked and broke up a demonstration by human rights activists marching near an international parliamentarians' conference. The protesters were gathering at the Malate Church in Manila en route to the Philippine International Convention Center. The police injured various people, including Catholic priests from the organization Promotion for Church People’s Response (PCPR). Baton-wielding police charged into the protesters near the conference site for the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) assembly where about 1,400 lawmakers from 145 countries were meeting. Human rights activists led by several priests and nuns marched on the conference to protest widespread human rights violations in the Philippines under the Arroyo government, including a number of recent killings of political activists. [Source: Fight Back! News, April 12, 2005]

Filipinos Grow Disillusioned with People Power Protests

The Philippine middle-class, instrumental in the overthrow of presidents Marcos and Estrada, is fed up with political turbulence and wants stability, political analysts say. In 2005, Alan Sipress wrote in the Washington Post, “Jennifer Santos's eyes gleamed as she recalled her days as a young housewife staring down government tanks ordered to the streets by longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos. For the better part of a week in 1986, she and tens of thousands of other Filipinos, carrying flowers and rosary beads, camped along the capital's gritty Edsa Boulevard until Marcos fell. She remembered with less enthusiasm returning to the boulevard four years ago when another graft-tainted leader, Joseph Estrada, left office after a single night of protests. "By the next morning," Santos recounted, "I was in Starbucks drinking coffee, and we had a new president." [Source: Alan Sipress, Washington Post, July 10, 2005 ^/^]

“Now, that president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, is facing a crescendo of calls to step down due to allegations she cheated in national elections last year. But like the vast majority of other Edsa veterans, Santos, 44, is not very interested in joining the few protesters on the streets. "I got tired. It happens over and over again," Santos said. "Our political system never changes." Across Manila, disappointment in Arroyo is surpassed only by a weary recognition that the Philippines' celebrated protest movement known as "people power" has run its course, and that no new political savior is at hand to rally the masses. ^/^

“Only several thousand flag-waving demonstrators joined the main anti-Arroyo rally in Manila's business district. Local office workers appeared almost oblivious to the event. The six-lane Edsa Boulevard was clogged with traffic. Not a protester was in sight and the adjacent plaza at the heroic People Power monument was empty. ^/^

“Luzviminda A. Santos, 52, a compact woman with intense brown eyes and shoulder-length black hair streaked with gray, was invited by several friends to join a small anti-Arroyo demonstration Saturday morning outside the local Santo Domingo church. She told them she would try to make it, but instead stayed home drinking coffee and watching the dizzying political developments on television. "I said to myself, 'What for?' " Four years ago, Santos said, she was among the first to reach Edsa Boulevard and demand Estrada's ouster. But this time there was little idealism, and the ascension of Arroyo, a product of the wealthy landed classes, was an immediate letdown. "Everyone is fatigued now with people power. It can't snowball to people power again," she said. But now, she said her family is less interested in the current political showdown than the basketball game Sunday between the country's two premier universities. She predicted the Manila sports coliseum would attract more people this weekend than any demonstration. "Are there people in Edsa now?" she asked. "Is anything happening now? I don't even care." ^/^

Image Sources:

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Philippines Department of Tourism, Compton’s Encyclopedia, The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, AFP, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Foreign Policy, Wikipedia, BBC, CNN, and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated June 2015

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President Rodrigo Roa Duterte's Political Speeches: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Politics is a struggle for power in order to put specific political, economic and social ideas into practice that is crucially played by language.The general purpose of this qualitative study employing critical discourse analysis was to examine the political speeches in terms of linguistic features, rhetorical strategies and uncovering the issues behind these discourses of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte.The corpora comprised of thirty political speeches that were retrieved in an online archive and hard copies that were furnished in the office of the President. Findings revealed that the linguistic features are personal pronouns that show inclusivity and exclusivity. Passivity, transitivity and the dominating verb tenses and aspects are also evident. The use of loaded, dramatic, and stereotyping adjectives, adverbs and nouns are central to the construction of an event, the use of non-hedged adverbs position a contention as being incontrovertible " fact " , presupposition, rhetorical questions, ellipsis and Intertextuality were also utilized. The recurring issues in his political speeches are centered on socioeconomic , legal and political but War on Drugs, Criminality, Graft and Corruption are highlighted. The President who is the highest official of the land is expected to lead the country in a crusade to alleviate the condition of the constituents and to provide fast solution to these prevailing issues and problems.

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Politics In The Philippines Essay

Politics is defined as the theory and practice of government, the interrelation between people who exercise and resist power, and the use of tactics and strategy to gain power in a certain number of people. However, a lot of deeper definitions have been correlated with the term “politics”, both in a positive and negative way. It is now said that politics is a gamble, dirty and decisive, that it already lost its noble meaning. It is once said that politics may be considered as the noblest profession, if only it is created for the service of the people.

Essay Example on About Politics In The Philippines

Ladies and gentlemen, politics covers a very comprehensive area, covering the physical, economical, social and moral aspect of a nation. And I would like to make the simplest yet profound presentation of this topic based on our very own. This is the anatomy of the Philippine Politics. The political system and the economical status are two inseparable factors on the growth of every country, and from there, we can say that we have no stable economic status because we have no stable government.

The economical status is displayed because there is the government that is supposed to manage and regulate the functions of the economy. Therefore, it is the government that plays a big part. The goal of the government MUST be to sustain its people the standard of living that every individual really deserves. But here in the Philippines, many Filipinos live in the upper class, more on the middle class, and MOST on the lowest class, just on or under the poverty line.

Proficient in: Asia

“ Very organized ,I enjoyed and Loved every bit of our professional interaction ”

Why is this so? Is everything the government’s fault? Of is it the masses? Let’s dissect each of these two.

The government is supposed to be composed of the government officials only, since it is called the government. But the fact that a lot of Filipinos do not see is that aside from the gluttonous government officials who fights for power, there is also some of the elite class, the greedy businessmen who have hidden agendas as they make deeper coordination with the government transactions and processes. They both hypocritically reach their left hands to the “ordinary citizens” while their right hands are mischievously getting money from the funds of the people.

A very good example of “multi-tasking” isn’t it? But while they are too busy tricking the people, there is the police, the armed forces, and the courts that had grown inefficient to restore peace and order in the country. There are the once blue seas now black. There are the little children who go to school barefoot with rotten books in their broken bags. There is the usual Filipino family with a dozen children eating once a day under a leaking roof. You see? As the fortunate ruling class is pacifying themselves with power and luxury, the poor ones are suffering.

Now, are the masses blameless? NO. The ordinary citizens were rightfully given the bill of rights and granted with full democracy. But that doesn’t mean that they have to react violently and dogmatically. They were living with genuine sovereignty, free to speak themselves and do whatever pleases them. But that was often the misconception about freedom. They keep on exercising their own independence without even thinking and considering the rights of the other person. Just days ago, the president of the SGC of the University of the Philippines kept on barking about the inept governance of

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In the Philippines, a Flourishing Ecosystem for Political Lies

Supporters of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. are using live video to spread misinformation on social media. Voters have become inured to the situation, researchers fear.

By Camille Elemia

CAVITE, Philippines — Arnel Agravante, a YouTuber in the Philippines, told his followers last October that he knew how Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the presidential front-runner and his candidate of choice, had become wealthy.

The story, he said, was simple: Mr. Marcos’s dictator father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., did not steal money from the government, as has been widely reported. Rather, he was given tons of gold by a secretive royal family in the Philippines. “That’s what they call ‘ill-gotten wealth,’” Mr. Agravante said, ridiculing Mr. Marcos’s critics.

The gold story has been debunked by multiple fact checkers as well as by Mr. Marcos himself, but that has not stopped Mr. Agravante from repeating it. The way he sees it, he is part of the “alternative media” countering a mainstream press “spreading stupid and wrong information about our history” before next week’s election.

The Philippines was once described by a Facebook executive as “patient zero” in the global disinformation epidemic , but over the years, the government has done little to stop the deluge. Voices like Mr. Agravante’s have flourished as more people have flocked online for news. And now researchers fear voters have become inured to the problem, readily seeking what they think is the truth from TikTok and other social media sites.

“The Philippines is paying the price for not having regulatory oversight and not making sure that the general population has a necessary cognitive resilience against these kinds of brazen and blatant lies,” said Richard Heydarian, a political analyst at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.

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FULL TEXT: Grace Poe: Ipaglalaban ko ang mga may hugot

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This is AI generated summarization, which may have errors. For context, always refer to the full article.

FULL TEXT: Grace Poe: Ipaglalaban ko ang mga may hugot

MANILA, Philippines – Independent presidential candidate Grace Poe opened the official campaign period with a rally Tuesday afternoon, February 9, in Plaza Miranda, Manila.

It was the same venue in 2004, when her father Fernando Poe Jr was himself running for president, his supporters rallied at the same venue at the height of attempts to disqualify him.

In her speech – delivered in flawless Filipino – Poe borrowed a line from one of her father’s blockbuster movies: “puno na ang salop,” a Tagalog figure of speech for having had enough.

“Puno na ang salop ng kahirapan, puno na ang salop ng katiwalian. Dapat na itong kalusin,” she said.

In her speech, Poe also went back to her “dramatic” life story as a foundling and how this is being used against her now. She stressed that, like many voters who experience hurt and discrimination, she had her own “hugot” – a popular expression among young people that means deep sentiment.

Below is the full text of her speech, followed by the English translation

Sa aking nanay at pamilya,

Kay VP Chiz at ang aming labing-dalawang mga senador,
Sa aking mga kaibigan at kapanalig at kakampi sa aming layunin,
Sa minamahal kong mga kababayan sa Luzon, Visayas at Mindanao

Magandang gabi po sa inyong lahat!

May nakapagsabi na dahil daw ako ay napulot lamang, ako daw ay hindi tunay na Pilipino…

Na dahil daw ako ay babae ay wala akong lakas at tapang para lumaban…

Na dahil daw ako ay bago at walang karanasan ay wala na akong kakayahan…

May nagsabi na sobra raw madrama ang buhay ko…

Marahil nga ay madrama ang buhay ko dahil, tulad ng karamihan sa ating mga kababayan, may pinagdaanan akong hirap at pait, pero bumangon at lumaban sa kabila ng mga unos at bagyo ng buhay at tadhana.

Drama nga siguro ang tawag nila dito subalit realidad at tunay na buhay ko ito… katotohanan ito na araw-araw pinagdadaanan ng marami sa ating mga kababayan.

Sa kabila ng lahat ng ito, ako ay nakatayo sa harap ninyo ngayon bilang isang Pilipino, bilang isang babae na nakikipaglaban sa mga mapang-abuso para sa ating bansa at mga kababayan na siiyang nagbibigay sa akin ng lakas upang kayo ay pagsilbihan ng malinis at wasto…

Mula sa aking pagkabata, minulat sa akin ng mga kinagisnan kong magulang na sina FPJ at aking ina ang mga katangian na taglay ko ngayon:

Masipag at magbanat ng buto
May magandang asal
Tapat at di mapagsamantala, matapang pero di mayabang
Matulungin, lalo na sa mga inaapi at mga bata

Gamit ang mga prinsipyo at katangiang ito, ako po ay tumatakbong Pangulo ng bansa upang tumayo at ipaglaban lahat kayo na madrama ang buhay… na may hugot at pinagdadaanan:

kayong pinanganak ng dukha at salat sa yaman,
kayong may kapansanan o karamdaman
kayong nagbabanat ng buto pero di sapat ang kinikita
kayong mga bata na, tulad ko, ay walang kinagisnang nanay kayong mga biktima ng krimen
kayong mga biktima ng krimen at diskriminasyon
kayong mga may mahal sa buhay na kinailangan mangimbangbansa tiisin ang init ng disyerto at lamig
kayong mga ginipit ng mga mapangabuso sa gobyerno

Nandito ako para sa inyo.

Nandito ako dahil parepareho tayong may pinaghuhugutan.

At pare pareho tayong hindi sumusuko at patuloy na na ngangarap at nag sisikap na mapabuti ang buhay ng ating pamilya ng ating bayan.

Mga kababayan:

Nagsimula po ang kuwento ng aking buhay sa isang simbahan. Kaya minarapat ko rin na sa tapat ng simbahan ilunsad ang susunod na kabanata ng aking buhay. Sabi nga ng aking ina: ano man ang gagawin ko ay tapatan ko ng dasal at pawis

Kaya dito sa makakasaysayang lugar na ito – sa harap ng bayan, sa mata ng Diyos at Poong Nazareno– iaalay o ang panatang ito: ako po si Grace Poe – ina, anak, Pilipino – buong puso at tapang na ipagtatanggol:

Ang programa ng gobyernong may puso na ating itatayo
Ang plano ko para sa pamilyang Pilipino
Ang mithiin ko para sa ating bansa at sa ating mga anak

At doon sa mga taong pilit dinudungisan ang aking pagkatao, handa ko rin ipagtanggol ang aking pagka-Pilipino, ngayon at dito.

Mga kababayan: parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na magpapalakas sa ekonomiya para makapagbigay ng trabaho sa lahat.

Sa mga Pilipinong ginagapang ang edukasyon ng kanilang anak, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na sisiguraduhin na sagana sa libro, classrooms, teachers, scholarships, kagamitan ang lahat ng paaralaan mula kinder hanggang kolehiyo.

Sa mga Pilipinong nagdarasal tuwing umaalis ng bahay na sana huwag sila maholdap o manakawan, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na dudurugin ang krimen, paparusahan ang may sala, ikakalat ang maraming pulis na matitino, upang ligtas tayo, saan man at kailan man.

Sa mga Pilipinong napawi na ang mga luha sa pamamalimos ng tulong para sa mahal sa buhay na may sakit, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na magmomodernisa sa mga ospital, na may sapat na doktor, gamot, at gamit.

Sa mga Pilipinong ilang kahig pero walang matuka, na tanging dalangin ay may laman ang kaldero, may kanin sa hapag, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na maglalagay ng abot-kayang pagkain sa inyong mesa, kasama na ang para sa mga bata sa eskwela.

Sa mga Pilipinong matagal ng pasan ang mabigat na krus na mataas na buwis, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso pagagaanin ang inyong paghihirap at susuklian pa ito ng maganda at tapat na serbisyo, sa ilalim ng isang gobyerong bawal ang tong, opisinang hindi nangongotong, at mga proyektong walang patong.

Sa mga Pilipinong tinitiis ang kalbaryo ng trapik, hindi lamang dito sa Metro Manila kundi sa buong Pilipinas, ang haba ng pila sa MRT na parating tumitirik, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na hindi pabaya, na ang tugon sa problema ng imprastraktura ay solusyon at hindi sisi.

Sa mga Pilipinong nasa kanayunan na luha na lang ang ipinandilig sa lupa dahit walang tubig, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na magbibigay sa inyo ng irigasyon, wawakasan ang tagtuyot sa suporta na gobyerno, na aayusin ang kalsada, at magaayuda ng pataba at kagamitan.

Sa mga Pilipinong kumakatok sa langit upang humingi ng katarungan sapagkat sarado ang pintuan ng hustisya dito, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na pantay ipapatupad ang batas, ipapakulong ang abusado mga opisyal man, ipagtatanggol ang inaapi, at ipaglalaban ang mga OFW saan man sila sa mundo.

Sa mga Pilipinong ang pananaw, relihiyon o estado sa buhay ay nasa minorya, silang mga biktima ng diskriminasyon, mga lumad at katutubo, mga LGBT, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na buong igagalang ang inyong mga karapatan.

Sa mga Pilipinong tila inaasa na lamang sa pagtaya sa lotto ang pagkakaroon ng sariling bahay, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na maglulunsad ng isang programang pabahay para sa lahat.

Sa mga Pilipinong sawa na sa bagal ng serbisyo sa pamahalaan, pagod na sa mahabang pila, pikon na sa tagal ng plaka at lisensya, o galit na sa bagal ng dating ng tulong kung may bagyo o sakuna, parating na ang Gobyernong may Puso na mabilis, maagap, at may malasakit; isang gobyernong bawal ang tamad at bawal ang makupad at magnanakaw.

Sabi nga ng aking ama: huwag mong sabihin marami kang salapi. Huwag mo rin sabihin na marami kang tauhan. Pare pareho lang tayo.

Dapat ang lahat ay maabot ang kanilang pangarap. Na ang bawat bata ay pwedeng mangarap maging teacher, maging artista, maging pulis, matagumpay na magsasaka, doktor, Supreme Court Justice, at maging pangulo man ng bansa, babae ka man, pulot, o dukha. Dapat pantay-pantay.

Puno na ang salop ng kahirapan, puno na ang salop ng katiwalian. Dapat na itong kalusin.

Ipaglaban natin na ang bawat isa ay may pagkain, may hanapbuhay, at may edukasyon.

Nakataga sa bato at nakaukit sa aking puso.

Hindi ko bibiguin ang tiwala ninyo at ng aking mga magulang

Ako po si Grace Poe, at sa gobyernong may puso, kayo na ang aking pamilya.

English translation

To my mother and family,

VP Chiz and our 12 senators,
Friends, supporters and allies in pursuing our goals for the country,
My dear fellow Filipinos…

A good evening to all of you!

Some have argued that, because I am a foundling, I can never be a true Filipino… That because I am a woman, I can never fight a man’s fight or do a man’s job… That because I lack experience, I also do not have competence…. There are even those who say that may life is just too full of drama…

Maybe my life is replete with drama because, like the majority of Filipinos, there are difficulties that I have to struggle with, I have been oppressed and belittled, but I rise to fight again after each battle, after the passing of each storm of my life and fate.

They may well call it drama, but this is my real life…. It is the reality that many Filipinos live every day.

Despite all these, I stand before you today as a Filipino, a woman who knows how to fight bullies and oppressors, a leader with a heart that loves our country and people. It is from the people that I draw strength so I may serve them truly and effectively…

From childhood, my parents – FPJ and my mother – have molded the qualities and values that I possess today

Diligence and hard work
Courtesy, kindness and consideration for others
Truthfulness and to not take advantage
To be helpful, especially to children and the disadvantaged

Armed with these qualities and values, I am running for the presidency of our country, so that I may stand and fight with all of you whose lives are full of drama… whose daily pain and struggles are drawn from long experience…

You who were born poor
You who suffer from disabilities and poor health
You who toil hard for wages that cannot cover your needs
You, children who never knew their mothers
You who have been victims of crime
You, whose loved ones have had to find work overseas, suffering the intense cold or the desert heat
You who have suffered in the hands of abusive people in government

I am here for you.

I am here because we all draw from the same pain.

And because, despite this, we have not given up, and will continue to dream and strive for a better life for our families.

My fellow Filipinos:

The story of my life started inside a church. It is fitting that I should launch the next chapter in front of a church.

As my father has told me: In whatever you do in your life, always fill your efforts with prayers.

Therefore, in this historic spot – before the people, before God – I offer this pledge: I am Grace Poe, mother, daughter, Filipino. With all my heart and strength, I will uphold and defend:

Programs of a compassionate government
Our aspirations for the Filipino family
Our hopes for the country and our children

And to those who have gone to great lengths to tarnish my good name, I am ready to defend my Filipino identity, here and now.

My fellow Filipinos, whose knees have been worn thin and bruised praying for a decent life, your Gobyernong may Puso will strengthen our economy to create jobs for all.

My fellow Filipinos, whose backs have been bent just to give your children an education, your Gobyernong may Puso will ensure that our schools, from kinder to college, will have books, classrooms, teachers, scholarships, and facilities.

My fellow Filipinos, who say a fervent prayer everytime you leave your home to be spared from thieves, your Gobyernong may Puso will crush crime and ensure that the police will be there to protect you and keep you safe, anytime and anywhere.

My fellow Filipinos, whose tears have dried up begging for help for your sick and infirm, your Gobyernong may Puso will modernize our hospitals, and ensure adequate doctors, medicine and medical equipment.

My fellow Filipinos, who toil endlessly for a measly income, whose only prayer is the small comfort of having food on the table, your Gobyernong may Puso will fill our cooking pots at home, and in schools for our children.

My fellow Filipinos, who carry the almost unbearable burden of high taxes, your Gobyernong may Puso will ease our load and repay you with effective service, under a government that doesn’t accept bribes or pad project costs.

My fellow Filipinos, who daily endure the city traffic, the long lines to the MRT, and unreliable public transportation, yourGobyernong may Puso will provide real solutions to our infrastructure problems, instead of laying blame.

My fellow Filipinos in the countryside, whose tears water our farms because of the lack of irrigation and support, yourGobyernong may Puso will end the drought in government assistance – ensuring irrigation and roads, and deliver fertilizers and farm implements.

My fellow Filipinos, who knock on the doors of heaven asking for justice, your Gobyernong may Puso will guarantee equal enforcement of the law, prosecute the corrupt, defend the oppressed and vulnerable, and fight for the rights of OFWs wherever you may be.

My fellow Filipinos, whose faith, sector, life status or views are among the minority, who are discriminated against, the Lumads, the LGBT, your Gobyernong may Puso will will respect, protect and defend your rights.

My fellow Filipinos, whose only hope to own a home is in a winning Lotto combination, your Gobyernong may Puso will launch a broad housing program for all.

My fellow Filipinos, who have resigned themselves to slow or absent government services, who are tired of waiting in long lines, who are frustrated waiting for their vehicular plates or driver’s licenses, who are angry at the slow pace of relief and assistance after a disaster, your Gobyernong may Puso will be prompt, efficient and compassionate.

As may father said: Don’t brag about having many people beneath you. Don’t brag about wealth. We are all the same.

Each of us should be able to realize our dreams. Every child should be able to dream of becoming a teacher, a policeman, a prosperous farmer, a lawyer, even a president of our country.

Puno na ang salop. Our tolerance for poverty, our tolerance for corruption, is at its end. Dapat na itong kalusin. We will beat it out of our system together.

We will fight for each one’s right to food, jobs, education and protection.

This is our promise. This is my heart’s mission.

I will never betray your trust; I will never turn my back on what my parents taught me.

I am Grace Poe, and in our Gobyernong may Puso, you are my family.

– Rappler.com

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