March 4, 2025
MANILA – The Philippine mid-term polls in May were supposed to be a race for the Senate and thousands of local posts. But a month into the campaign season, the toughest showdown is being waged not among the candidates, but by two very vocal figures.
The 2025 election has become a proxy battle between incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, 67, and his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, 79. The populist leaders have been exchanging attacks in speeches meant to endorse their respective senatorial slates.
At stake is the future of their dynastic clans.
Mr Duterte’s daughter, Ms Sara Duterte, was impeached as vice-president by Marcos-allied lawmakers less than a week before the Feb 11 start of the official campaign period for the polls, seen as a referendum on the Marcos presidency. Ms Duterte’s impeachment trial will start when a new Congress convenes in July.
Filipinos will vote for 12 out of 24 Senate seats in May, while the rest will be contested in the 2028 polls. There are also more than 300 congressmen and thousands of local officials in every province, city and town contesting the election.
Mr Marcos fired the opening salvo against the Dutertes at the campaign kick-off rally of the administration-backed senatorial bets in the northern Philippine city of Laoag in Ilocos Norte, his family’s stronghold.
Facing a 20,000-strong crowd in an arena filled with supporters clad in red shirts, Mr Marcos said that a vote for his anointed candidates is also a vote against the return of the “bloody, corrupt and pro-China” regime of Mr Duterte.
“No Filipino wants to go back to that kind of governance. That is why you can be sure that when our candidates are elected to the Senate… they will not participate in these kinds of policies that we have left behind and do not want to return to,” Mr Marcos said, in what is now a staple message in all his speeches on the campaign trail so far, while avoiding any mention of Ms Duterte’s impeachment.
The notoriously combative Mr Duterte came out swinging two days later during the campaign launch of the senatorial candidates of his Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-Laban).
That gathering was held at Club Filipino, a small but historic events hall in San Juan City, near the capital Manila. It was the same place where Philippine democracy icon Corazon Aquino took her oath as president at the height of the near-bloodless revolution that ended the dictatorship of Mr Marcos’ father, the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr, in 1986.
Mr Duterte once again accused his successor of being a drug addict, a charge the incumbent President has denied often.
“Marcos will turn crazy. Maybe with his constant use of heroin, he will reach 80 years old. But by then, he won’t be able to move. He will either just be standing in his room or sleeping,” Mr Duterte said, eliciting laughter from the standing-room crowd in a venue capacity of 300.
He went on to joke that he would kill incumbent senators through a bomb blast to help ensure his PDP-Laban bets would win, as Mr Duterte’s allies have been lagging in pre-election surveys so far. In contrast, most of the Marcos-endorsed candidates are dominating the surveys, including five incumbent senators seeking re-election.
When Mr Marcos’ slate took their campaign to Pasay City, near the capital, on Feb 18, he alluded to his rival’s remarks.
“Forgive me, but I am just counting my candidates here to make sure they are still complete and that none has been killed by a grenade,” Mr Marcos jested in turn.
Mr Duterte then upped the ante at a Feb 22 campaign rally in Cebu, the country’s most vote-rich province located in central Philippines with 3.7 million registered voters.
He accused Mr Marcos of harbouring plans to be a dictator with the intention to declare martial law like his father did. He then brought up his daughter’s impeachment for the first time, urging Filipinos to vote for all PDP-Laban candidates to help thwart Ms Duterte’s removal from office.
This prompted Mr Marcos’ office to release a statement the next day calling Mr Duterte a “one-man fake news factory”.
Under local rules, the winning senatorial candidates in May will be among the judges in Ms Duterte’s impeachment trial once the Senate convenes into a court to hear her case in July.
As ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute visiting senior fellow Aries Arugay told The Straits Times: “Mr Duterte is rallying the troops, telling them that we need to mobilise and show the senator-judges where the popular pulse is.”
He added: “For Duterte, the game is no longer just in the ballots in May. It is about the impeachment (of his daughter).”
Meanwhile, it is more strategic for Mr Marcos to not mention Ms Duterte’s impeachment in his speeches, as he could risk being accused of imposing undue influence over the proceedings, said senior research fellow Michael Yusingco of Manila-based think-tank Ateneo Policy Centre.
But the President cannot afford to leave the Dutertes’ attack against him unanswered, so he is focusing on his predecessor instead. “You can’t be silent for too long, especially when the attacks are getting stronger, more personal. You have to respond,” Mr Yusingco told ST.
He said Mr Marcos and Mr Duterte likely know that their war of words will not be a huge deciding factor for voters, as Filipinos traditionally choose their senators based on familiarity and popularity.
At any rate, the two men are expected to keep trading barbs on the campaign trail.
“If the (Marcos) administration wins big, the Duterte side will have no choice but to recede into the darkness. But if the administration doesn’t win big, if they just win by the skin of their teeth, the second half of the President’s term will be vitriolic,” Mr Yusingco said.
“Political discourse will be more intense than what we’re seeing now. The Marcos-Duterte fight is not really for the campaign but for what happens after.”
- Mara Cepeda is Philippines correspondent for The Straits Times.