CLASS D VOTE: Why The Poor Want Marcos Jr. To Succeed Duterte

Alexander Santos, a waiter at a local hotel in Iloilo, lost his job at the height of the coronavirus pandemic two years ago, but he never blamed President Duterte’s administration for his miseries.

Instead he pointed to elite politicians, represented by the opposition Liberal Party, for the country’s problems, cursing them and vowing to support former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. in the May elections.

In what is believed to be a “pink” country, one of the bailiwicks of Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo where she won big in the 2016 vice presidential elections, Iloilo City’s poor seaside village is an enigma.

Many residents are silently supporting the dictator’s only son and namesake, a silent and dangerous rive that could deeply divide the city.

Iloilo City’s poor dwellers mirror about 70 percent of the 65 to 67 million voters, who come from the class D and E economic classes nationwide, that will readily support Marcos Jr. on May 9.

Class D

Based on the March 17 to 21 Pulse Asia survey, Marcos Jr. obtained 56 percent voter preference while Robredo got 25 percent.

According to Pulse Asia executive director Ana Maria Tabunda, 78 percent of the voters belong to class D. Members of the class C and E comprise only eight and 14 percent of the voters, respectively.

Those from class D are self-employed – the market vendors, drivers – and not necessarily informal settlers. Most of them own the place that they live in or they rent.

Tabunda said members of classes A and B are secluded as they reside in gated subdivisions and refuse to take part in surveys. But the wealthier classes are so small that their absence in surveys does not affect the results at all.

They never left

People living outside the Philippines wonder why Marcos Jr. is so hugely popular in a country where a generation ago the people had chased his father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, out of power due to corruption and human rights abuses.

Many Filipinos, who are opposed to the dictator’s only son and namesake, also grappled with the logical explanation of the Marcos family’s return to power.

The Marcos family never left the country. The family held power in the periphery and persistently plotted a revenge.

After the dictator died in 1989 in exile in Hawaii, his widow Imelda, famous for her extravagance and 3,000 pairs of shoes, returned to the country and ran for president in 1992.

She lost but the results showed that the Marcoses still had a political base not only in north Luzon and in her native Leyte province but among public school teachers, police officers and slum dwellers in urban centers.

If she didn’t run for president, a close ally of her husband, business tycoon Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco, could have won the 1992 balloting.

Six years later, another Marcos political ally, Joseph Estrada, won in the elections on the strength of his mass appeal to poor voters. His “Erap para sa mahirap” slogan resonated with nearly 40 percent of voters who cast their ballots.

But Estrada was removed from power less than halfway through his term. For the poor, they lost a champion. They blamed the elite politicians, who conspired with some generals, big business, the Catholic Church and the middle class, to restore the status quo.

The poor were never concerned with Estrada’s corruption and ineptness, the main reasons why he was forced to resign from office in January 2001. They tried to install him later during EDSA 3 but were thwarted by the security forces.

A decade and a half later, they identified themselves closely with a populist Rodrigo Duterte who has allied with people against the Liberal Party, the so-called elites.

The poor voters wanted to continue Duterte’s legacy by helping Marcos Jr. win the elections because the former senator has chosen to identify himself with the president.

It also helped that Duterte’s daughter, Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio, ran as Marcos’ vice president. For many people, it was Duterte’s silent endorsement of Marcos Jr.

Opportunity

When the dictator was toppled in February 1986, the poor expected the governments that followed to improve their lives.

But Ronald Llamas, who served as political adviser of the late former president Benigno Aquino III, cited three basic reasons why the marginalized seemed to feel left behind after all these years.

First, Llamas said it was too difficult for the economy to recover as Marcos Sr. left the country saddled with debt.

Second was the apparent failure of the justice system. According to Llamas, the Marcoses were slapped with many cases but were never jailed.

The third was the non-inclusion of martial law in the school curriculum, thus the young people did not learn about the atrocities committed during those years.

Based on data, 54 percent or more than half of the voters are 40 years old and below and have no memory of the Marcos years – never mind if the news has not missed a step the past 36 years in reminding everyone of the evils of martial law and the virtues of the 1986 EDSA revolution.

The Marcoses also found opportunity in Duterte’s rise. Cojuangco and Estrada had failed but Duterte’s success gave them a chance to claw back to power.

Social media strategy

But the Marcos family did not rely entirely on Duterte, they had their own plans. They built a network of alliances with powerful provincial political families who had benefited from the dictator.

They also allegedly seeded social media with false narratives to freshen the dictator’s image, trumpeting martial law as the golden age of Philippine history.

There have also been reports that they used their fabulous wealth to hire social media influencers to discredit political enemies and soften their own image.

Since about 50 to 60 percent of Filipinos were born after 1986 and have no recollection of the martial law years, analysts said the Marcos propaganda and disinformation got to stick to the gullible population.

In a way, the coronavirus pandemic also contributed as millions lost their jobs and livelihoods, increasing poverty incidence and making the poor more susceptible to promises of financial support. That could explain why many have come to believe in Marcos Jr.’s supposed promise to share the “Tallano Gold” if he wins the presidency in May, which is proliferating on social media. Marcos Jr. has denied possession of gold bars even if he was quoted as saying in the past that he was the only who knew where these assets were being kept.

Confluence of events

For Llamas, the Marcoses’ social media strategy could not only be the reason why they appear to be succeeding in rehabilitating their name.

It’s a “confluence of events,” Llamas explained, and the shortcomings and weaknesses of the country’s system made it easier to negate the gains brought about by the fall of the dictatorship – such as the restoration of freedom of speech, of the press, and of expression.

Llamas pointed out that for majority of the Filipinos gut issues matters most, “walang pakialam…labas sa sikmura…pagkain.”

Rematch?

But like his father who was challenged by Corazon “Cory” Aquino in the 1986 snap elections, Marcos Jr. is also facing a woman as his biggest rival in this year’s polls.

Robredo is continuing the legacy of her late husband, Jesse Robredo, who died in a plane crash in 2012 while he was interior secretary. Jesse served as mayor of Naga City for a long time before becoming a national government official.

Cory was known as the “housewife” of Marcos’ archnemesis Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., who was assassinated in 1983 upon his return from self-exile in the United States. Both Cory and Ninoy have become known as democracy icons.

The good versus evil or saint versus sinner narrative is once again being played out.

Robredo beat Marcos Jr. in the vice presidential elections in 2016. She vowed to thwart a return of the Marcos family to Malacañang, saying they never recognized their sins against the country and the people.

If pre-election surveys were to be believed, this year could be the Marcoses’ chance to regain power and rehabilitate their image 36 years after a disgraceful exit. But as they say, it ain’t over till it’s over.