Dan Steinbock, writing in the Manila Times per the link above, offers an excellent analysis of where the opposition stands for the May 2022 election.
Joe Biden’s win in 2020 over Trump had the Democrats taking back the White House and Congress, by the slimmest of majority’s in the Senate; one vote. Their margin in the House of Representative isn’t overwhelming either, with only eight votes separating the Democrats from Republicans.
Filipinos are well aware that the opposition Liberal Party is aligned with the Democrats which give them more confidence of winning since they have Uncle Sam back on their side with the Biden Presidency.
Trump was for the US adopting a non-interventionist policy in the affairs of other countries, be it allies or enemies, except for those which the US had scores to settle with before the became President.
The Democrats have always been interventionist, the only notable exception being John Kennedy, who opposed US involvement in Vietnam, which many believe was the cause of his assassination and that of his brother, Robert.
The Philippines is a key piece in the geopolitical chess game the US and China are playing. We all know the background of the South China Sea disputes, which the country was a central party to, during the Aquino administration. Duterte’s win in 2016 changed all of these as the surprise winner declared he would pursue a foreign policy not aligned with the US. Instead, he went on a policy of rapproachment with China and renewed Philippine ties with Russia, both of which, are staunch rivals of the US.
The opposition has made Duterte’s warm relations with China an issue after his election as President when he made his first order of business obtaining China’s permission for Filipino fishermen to enter Scarborough Shoal. This maritime territory was lost to the Chinese in 2012, during the Scarborough standoff, which was famously mishandled by then President Aquino, his Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario and Sen. Antonio Trillanes, whom Aquino designated as a back channel negotiator with the Chinese despite Del Rosario’s formal representations with the Chinese Foreign Minister and the US State Department.
Duterte has been adept at running a tight balancing act between the US and China, which wasn’t expected from a lowly Mayor of a local government unit, whom the Liberals believed to have stumbled on to the Presidency.
Steinbock writes “The goal of the once-dominant pro-US liberals is to tie Manila with the US-led Indo-Pacific front and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue — before the democratic vote.
Liberal veterans support Robredo as the head of the anti-Duterte “unified opposition.” The “pro-democracy” group is led by ex-Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio, the proponent of the “West Philippine Sea,” and ex-foreign secretary Albert del Rosario, millionaire businessman and key player in the liberal pro-US coalition.
In contrast, Bongbong Marcos and Sara Duterte seek to strengthen the economy after the severe pandemic recession. In foreign policy, they would likely try to balance between Chinese development and US military goals. They stress Philippine interests in the South China Sea but also the Asean talks with China as the bilateral regional Code of Conduct (COC) is to be completed in 2022.
Hence, the frantic efforts by del Rosario and his troops to undermine the Marcos-Duterte ticket and to lock Manila into the Indo-Pacific anti-China front, via increasing friction, possibly an open conflict with China in the South China Sea. The goals are fostered by del Rosario’s “think-tank” ADRi, which is joined with its parent Stratbase that’s linked with the Washington-based Bower Group Asia and connections with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading US think-tank.
In October, ADRi pledged it would “make China the issue of 2022.” Hence, del Rosario’s call on the Filipinos to “unite against Manchurian candidates,” such as Marcos and Duterte. The evidence for the Cold War paranoia? Marcos had met the Chinese ambassador. By this logic, whoever meets foreign ambassadors is a traitor.
The Liberals’ anti-China hyperbole fuels anti-Chinese Sinophobia in which distinctions between China, Taiwan and the Chinese is purposefully conflated. The more Robredo has trailed in the polls, the more she has seized anti-China rhetoric. Domagoso has embraced populism and racist street slang targeting ethnic Chinese and China. To raise his profile, Pacquiao has accused Duterte of giving in to the Chinese. To avoid falling behind the pack, Lacson pledges deeper US military ties.”
Recall that the Philippines only regained its credibility with the ASEAN 5 after Duterte assumed the Presidency and the country hosted the 50th ASEAN Summit. Before Duterte, the Philippines was largely shrugged off as the US puppet in the region. This was why there was no ASEAN support to be had over the Scarborough standoff, even if the Aquino administration chose to “internationalize” the issue during the 2012 ASEAN Summit.
President Duterte has voiced his misgivings about the AUKUS pact between the US, the UK and Australia, which allows the latter to build nuclear-powered submarines for use of the Royal Australian Navy. ASEAN hasn’t adopted a formal stand on the QUAD alliance between the US, India, Australia and Japan so as not to offend China but the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea, which is a bilateral effort between ASEAN and China, could be derailed, if any ASEAN member country opts to join the QUAD unilaterally. This would undoubtedly be on the agenda, if Robredo or Moreno, wins the Presidency in 2022.
Steinbock is wary of US intervention in the polls given the company which will be auditing the source code for the 2022 election is one which doens’t exactly have a sterling reputation in past US elections. He goes on to describe the probable scenario down the homestretch going into May 2022.
“Sara Duterte-Carpio expected consolidated unity after Go’s withdrawal. Having expressed some reservations about Marcos’ candidacy, President Duterte and his party (Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan) may still adopt another standard-bearer for the 2022 elections.
Moreover, due to their superior lead, Marcos and Duterte will be attacked hard in public, covertly and otherwise. The prelude includes polls funded by pro-Liberal Party (LP) interests in which Domagoso, Robredo and even Pacquiao have been promoted as likely or potential future winners.
The epilogue might feature 2022 election, due to the Comelec’s reliance on Smartmatic technology, which has been linked with a set of international political controversies and US-based Pro V&V Inc. holding the “source code review” of software to be used in the 2022 elections.
Pro V&V is accredited by the US Election Assistance Commission (EAC), which itself has been criticized for succumbing to political pressure in the Bush era and the Trump years, when critics thought the troubled EAC “could undermine the effort to safeguard the 2020 presidential contest from foreign meddling.””
As the world learns to live with Covid, the Philippines economic prospects have improved but there is much work to be done in terms of structural reforms needed to attract foreign direct investment. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio is still within the manageable limit but the government can’t keep on borrowing to plug the budget deficit. Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez is waiting for Congress to finally pass amendments to the Public Services Act and Retail Trade Liberalization Law. The Duterte administration’s economic managers have set the goal of providing for a smooth transition to the next administration.
Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile issued a cryptic warning just as Marcos Jr. announced his candidacy for President.
It’s obvious that the warning is about those power blocs who will do anything to stop Marcos from winning the Presidency in 2022. Filipinos should be cautious of such moves to undermine the election and thwart their collective will again. What Enrile is saying is once the genie is let out of the bottle, it cannot be put back in again.
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