--:-- Noelle King: The last time a man named Ferdinand Marcos won a presidential election in the Philippines in 1986, there was overwhelming evidence that election was rigged. Filipinos were furious, they went out into the streets, and booted Marcos, who fled to Hawaii. 36 years later, Marcos redux. Unofficial results suggest Ferdinand Marcos Jr., widely known as Bongbong, will receive more than double the votes of his main rival, the outgoing vice president.
--:-- Noelle King: Bongbong's father ran the Philippines as a dictator, rewriting laws, vanishing and torturing his opponents, stealing, among other things. Bongbong's running mate, Sara Duterte Carpio, is the daughter of the current president, the volatile and some say unhinged Rodrigo Duterte.
--:-- [Music continues in the background]
--:-- Noelle King: Coming up on Today Explained, how did these two win? agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most. I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at ServiceNow.com.
--:-- Noelle King: Support for this show comes from Macy's. Layering is an art form. All it takes is a bit of intention, style, and of course, the perfect cold weather staples. So find the perfect look for you with the help of Macy's Fall Fashion Guide, your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves curated by their experts.
--:-- Noelle King: From leather to denim to cozy knits, find everything you need to piece together your new fall look. Explore the Macy's Fall Guide for yourself and shop in-store or online at Macy's.com. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Good morning. It's May 9, election day here in the Philippines. Voting begins in an hour for more than 65 million registered voters. Everything from Senate seats, mayoral seats, and of course, the highest office in the land, the president. And 10 people were running for president.
--:-- Noelle King: Ashley Westerman, freelance reporter in the Philippines, you were covering that very big election this week. Who were the candidates that voters in the Philippines were choosing among?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So, Noelle, it was actually a gigantic election. Good morning. It's May 9, election day here in the Philippines. Voting begins in an hour for more than 65 million registered voters. Everything from Senate seats, mayoral seats, and of course, the highest office in the land, the president. And 10 people were running for president.
--:-- Noelle King: That's a lot of candidates. What were some of the notable ones?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: It was quite a star-studded roster, included an actor, a world-renowned boxer, and even, you know, a former Philippines police chief. But the two main frontrunners were current Vice President Lenny Robredo, commonly referred to as the opposition leader. Her party has not been in power over the last six years. And she has spent her time over the last administration constantly clashing with the current Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte.
--:-- Noelle King: And who was the other main frontrunner?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Her frontrunner competition was Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who's also known by his childhood nickname Bong Bong. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is the son of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who was a dictator of the Philippines.
--:-- Noelle King: What is his father's legacy in that country?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Yeah, so it depends on who you ask, which is a new thing here in the Philippines. So Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was elected president in 1965, and he actually stayed president for over 20 years until he was ousted by the People Power Revolution in 1986.
--:-- Noelle King: How did he manage to stay president for so long?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Well, in 1972, Marcos actually declared martial law. I have received hundreds and hundreds of telegrams from all corners of the Philippines congratulating you and incidentally me for the proclamation of martial law, for the sudden cessation of anarchy. And that extended his rule beyond the at-the-time constitutional to-term limit.
--:-- Noelle King: And what was the impact of martial law on the country?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And this martial law was in place for years. And during the Marcos regime, you know, it's well documented that he abused his powers. He did things like detain political opponents and other dissidents. He curtailed and censored the press. Another sort of part of his legacy during this time was the economy. This mostly agrarian nation is nearly bankrupt, losing not only money, but also its most valuable asset, its people.
--:-- Noelle King: Where are you going tonight?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Moan, Dubai. Kuwait. You're going to Kuwait?
--:-- Noelle King: Yeah. Saudi Arabia. Why can't you work here in Manila?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: What's the first purpose of going there to earn money, of course?
--:-- Noelle King: And, you know, during this time, Marcos just racked up incredible debt. He was putting into place all these economic development projects, trying to pretend like he was, you know, doing something. And the debt totaled like 30 billion U.S. dollars. And they're still paying it off today.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So like more than 30 years later, it's crazy. Also, the family is accused of stealing as well from the Philippine people, 10 billion U.S. dollars. And so far, only about half of that has been recovered.
--:-- Noelle King: In the end, Marcos was ousted on February 25th, 1986, which is a national holiday here. And that marks the day when millions, millions of Filipinos took to the street. And what is known as the People Power Revolution, like I said, or the Yellow Revolution, overthrew the family and they went into exile.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Ashley, did you talk to people during your reporting who remember the Marcos dictatorship?
--:-- Noelle King: Yes, I did. I even have people in my own family who remember that time.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Someone I did speak with, she's a political scientist at University of Philippines Dilliman. Her name is Maria Ella Atienza. She was actually born the year martial law was declared. And she grew up in this province outside of Metro Manila called Batangas.
--:-- Noelle King: I remember March where we did not have electricity. I also remember very poor roads at that time. And this is because the Marcos government was not doing anything for the people.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So it's probably no surprise that she thinks that the election of another Marcos is really, really bad for the country.
--:-- Noelle King: But there you know another take on the Marcos regime Ferdinand Loretta he a businessman in Metro Manila and he runs a popular pro Marcos Facebook group
--:-- Ashley Westerman: If you were already alive during the time of Marcos you agree that there was an abuse of authority or there was an abuse rule of Marcos
--:-- Noelle King: He spoke with my assistant, Bernard Couturio.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Marcos is pro-peace. I don't see him as like the Hitler or I know. So he wouldn't let blood shed, no?
--:-- Noelle King: What ends up happening then to Ferdinand Marcos Sr.?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Well, as I mentioned before, his family was overthrown in 1986. They fled to Hawaii. And you have to remember, Bong Bong, his son, was not a child at the time. He was actually 28.
--:-- Noelle King: The former dictator, the father, ultimately died in 1989 in Honolulu after nearly a year of being in the hospital.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: He had various complications. It was several hours after Ferdinand Marcos died of a cardiac arrest before Imelda Marcos, tears streaming from behind her sunglasses, left the hospital with her daughter Irene and son Bongbong.
--:-- Noelle King: His body was actually eventually flown back to the Philippines and he was buried in the Cemetery of Heroes here in Manila.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Bong Bong returned in the early 1990s and he actually got back into politics. He's elected as a congressman. He was elected as a governor again. And he later became a senator and he was a senator until he chose to run for vice president in the last election. So 2016.
--:-- Noelle King: And he actually lost that race to the one and only Lenny Robredo. So, so let's let's talk about how he redeems himself, if at all. Is he a different kind of politician than his father?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Yes, he is a very different type of politician from what I understand from the experts that I've spoke with.
--:-- Noelle King: When he came back to the Philippines after exile, there was, you know, I've heard there was like no arrogance in him. He was just a politician. He didn't make a lot of noise. He really couldn't because the family, you know, had just been through everything it had been through.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: But he was also, you know, Noel, not a very effective politician. He had no real major accomplishments during his time in Congress.
--:-- Noelle King: When he decides to run for president, what's his platform?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So when Bongbong declared his intention to run for president in October of 21, He said he wanted to unite the leadership to lift the country out of the economic slump caused by the pandemic.
--:-- Noelle King: I know that it is this manner of unifying leadership that can lead us through this crisis. Get our people safely back to work for all of us to begin to live our lives once again.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: But what is his platform? That's a really good question. And even though the election is over, Noel, we're still sort of asking that.
--:-- Noelle King: So he had this message of unity, but it had very, very few specifics.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: I've done a lot of research. I've talked to a lot of experts. I've talked to a lot of people. And, you know, there's just very few things that people can pinpoint that he actually like wanted to do, like a policy or a rule or a law or whatever.
--:-- Noelle King: But somehow this very amorphous message of unity played well with millions of disillusioned Filipinos.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: I think the best way to sort of compare this, Noel, is Trump's make America great again message, right? Like it was very amorphous. There weren't a lot of details in it. And people could just like make up whatever they thought would make America great again.
--:-- Noelle King: And I think that's exactly what happened here in the Philippines is there were no specifics to this unity message, right? And so people could just imagine what he could do to unite everybody and bring everyone together.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: What's been going wrong in the Philippines that would make a guy without a real platform, but with a vague message so appealing?
--:-- Noelle King: Yeah, so the last six years have been very, very divisive.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now, there is 3 million, there's 3 million drug addicts. President Rodrigo Duterte is a loose cannon. He's crass. I would kill all your a**, making the life of the Filipino miserable.
--:-- Noelle King: He made a bunch of policy changes that a lot of people were just not on board with. And it divided the country pretty badly.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: and I guess all Filipinos want is just to be united again and the whole idea with Bongbong Marcos and his his running mate Sarah Duterte who's the daughter of the current president is that you have a family from the north the Marcos's and a family from the south the Duterte's and they're going to unite the country right and we're all going to get along again and we're all going to get past COVID and get out of this economic slump because we can all come together again under the banner of these two political dynasties.
--:-- Noelle King: Along the way during his candidacy, did Bongbong Marcos ever just say, I'm sorry for what my father did?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: No, he's never offered an apology. And if anything, he and other members of the family say they're being accused of things unfairly.
--:-- Noelle King: There's no reason to answer these questions or address these accusations. Because they're based on things that happened in the past.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Noelle King: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
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--:-- Noelle King: Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job? Like, really happy?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that.
--:-- Noelle King: Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: But still, we stick it out, and we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse?
--:-- Noelle King: I've already put years into this place, and maybe the most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving.
--:-- Noelle King: It's time to get unstuck. It's time for strawberry.me. They match you with a certified career coach who helps you go from where you are to where you actually want to be.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Your coach helps you get clear on your goals, create a plan, build your confidence, and keeps you accountable along the way.
--:-- Noelle King: So don't leave your career to chance. Take action and own your future with a professional coach in your corner. Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer. That's strawberry.me slash unstuck.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: All right, Ashley, you've laid out a situation in which there are some people who always supported the Marcos family, and there are some people who always remember the time of the dictatorship and would never, ever support the son of the dictator.
--:-- Noelle King: There are also people in the middle, people who are waiting to be convinced by a candidate. How does Bongbong Marcos go about convincing those people?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So it has been a decades-long effort for the Marcos family. They have been working on revamping their image ever since they were ousted.
--:-- Noelle King: And, you know, over time, Noelle, this effort has evolved. With technology and social media has helped them spread their message.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, they're all over it.
--:-- Noelle King: Marcos Jr. avoids journalists, preferring vloggers like Ruben Helio, who live stream, comment and post only positive messages about him.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Do you think you're more powerful than the mainstream media following the campaign?
--:-- Noelle King: I think so, because some of the media is so biased about Marcos.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And you have to remember that the internet in the Philippines is social media. It is Facebook. Everybody is on Facebook, period. It is their internet.
--:-- Noelle King: And giving the Marcoses such a platform to write, distort, justify, and even straight up deny well-documented claims against them really, really changed the game for them.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: You've been living in the Philippines. Can you tell me what you've seen as part of the rewriting of history?
--:-- Noelle King: There is a lot out there. Facebook posts, TikToks, YouTube videos. And what's crazy is that it's also written, created, and pushed by a lot of different people.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So I can't tell you exactly who is doing this for them. And to be clear, the family has never denied that they were trying to reshape their image.
--:-- Noelle King: But, you know, it's everyone from, you know, PR firms to freelance designers to Click Farms to people who are just like passionate Marcos supporters.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: The fact checkers rounded up the most shared disinformation and the results show that among the top disinformation narratives are about martial law.
--:-- Noelle King: Mainly that no critics were jailed during martial law.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: The details of martial law victims are nothing but rumors that Marcos ushered in the country to the modern world.
--:-- Noelle King: The ecosystem of this campaign is very piecemeal and very horizontal.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So you can't point your finger at one person and be like, stop doing that, because a lot of people are doing it.
--:-- Noelle King: Some of the posts, you know, seem believable.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: There's this image on Facebook that's gone around, and I found it in a group called Marcos Legacy.
--:-- Noelle King: It's an image of Ferdinand Marcos looking thoughtfully.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And the text says, if I stole money from the people, why the Philippines is richest country next to Japan during my, it says regimen, but it means regime.
--:-- Noelle King: So like, if you don't fact check that, you know, it could be believable.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: I'm looking at the picture. It's very compelling.
--:-- Noelle King: Right. But then it's like not really about whether the Philippines was as wealthy as Japan during his regime.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: That's not what it's about, right? It's about denial of stealing some $10 billion from the Philippine people.
--:-- Noelle King: And it's about misdirection.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And so you have stuff like that.
--:-- Noelle King: And then you have straight up conspiracy theories.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And one of the most popular ones that I have heard over and over and over again is Ferdinand Marcos Sr. did not steal $10 billion from the government, from the Filipino people.
--:-- Noelle King: But that Ferdinand Marcos was given tons of gold from some secretive royal family.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: The Philippines is the richest nation on earth. The wisest royal bloodlines on earth.
--:-- Noelle King: I've heard people in the street tell me this theory, which of course has been debunked by multiple experts and fact checkers.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: But the story exists out there. It's out there and people are repeating it and repeating it.
--:-- Noelle King: And then on the flip side, you know, you see lots of posts and videos slamming or peddling misinformation about Bong Bong's rival, Vice President Lenny Robredo.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: She's been red tagged as a communist and has, you know, virtually had her very real political record somehow erased in all of this.
--:-- Noelle King: Ashley, you mentioned that you have family in the Philippines and that you've talked to them about the election.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: I mean, this was only 35 years ago or so, the dictatorship.
--:-- Noelle King: Why is this misinformation working so well on a population that surely has some memory of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and the terrible things that he did?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: That is a question that journalists like me are still trying to answer.
--:-- Noelle King: One really interesting thing is that Marcos seems to be drawing supporters from both ends of the age spectrum.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So Marcos drew in a lot of young people and that was also showing in the polling before the election
--:-- Noelle King: And when I say young people I mean like 18 to 40
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So some of these people never went through martial law or his father's regime.
--:-- Noelle King: And the image that he portrays on social media is that he's, you know, he's a cool guy.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: He's like the cool dad who like doesn't get into politics because like how can you get into politics if you don't attend any presidential debates or do any media interviews?
--:-- Noelle King: And so if you don't get into politics and you can't be blamed for anything.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Right. And it's sort of like set him up for this image that he's somehow like above it all.
--:-- Noelle King: And he's just like super cool.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Are you really the real Bong Bong Marcos? I don't know if this is you or your staff.
--:-- Noelle King: Somebody said, no, actually, I am Thor.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And that social media campaign to bring back the family's image that I spoke about.
--:-- Noelle King: It doesn't help young people understand what really happened during the dictatorship.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: It actually works against a real understanding of it.
--:-- Noelle King: Now, what is sort of like nobody has quite figured out is why older people seem to have changed their mind about what happened during the dictatorship.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: No one's really sure if it's just like cognitive dissidence or if they're just not using their personal experiences when filtering in all this information that they see on social media.
--:-- Noelle King: I mean, it is truly bizarre, and no one has quite figured out why that happened.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: But there is one other thing that is important here, Noel.
--:-- Noelle King: The Philippines is a very familial place.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Young people listen to their elders.
--:-- Noelle King: Families live together for a really long time.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: There are generational households here.
--:-- Noelle King: Family is very important to Filipinos.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And so when an older person says, oh, well, you know, the Marcos regime wasn't that bad, when they tell that to younger people, the young people are going to believe that.
--:-- Noelle King: And so it's like a perfect storm of all of these things that seems to have, you know, propelled Marcos to the presidency.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So crucially, the Philippines is a democracy.
--:-- Noelle King: Was this a democratic election?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So far, we have no reason to think that it was not a democratic election.
--:-- Noelle King: People are buying the results.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Obviously, the people who didn't want him to win are the ones making the most noise.
--:-- Noelle King: So, for example, there was a small rally near the Commission on Elections.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And, you know, people there were upset about, you know, various things, how much Marcos seemed to have beaten Lenny by, the thousands of votes that didn't get counted because of the malfunctioning voting machines.
--:-- Noelle King: And they were also, you know, upset about how quickly the votes came in because they were talking about how bad the internet is here in the Philippines.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: There were also other smaller protests around the country, but nothing major yet.
--:-- Noelle King: So again, it's a little bit too early to tell.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And, you know, the votes for president are still being officially counted, and they won't be certified by the Senate, at least until the end of the month.
--:-- Noelle King: Is there credible fear that he might take the country back to what it was under his father, where there was martial law, where the opponents could be imprisoned, detained, tortured.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: What's the real fear here?
--:-- Noelle King: Bongbong Marcos is a very, very different politician than his father.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: It's a different world.
--:-- Noelle King: The Philippines' democratic institutions, while comparatively young to a country like the United States, you know, they have been building and improving over the last 30 something years, right?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: So he's operating in like an entirely different world than his father.
--:-- Noelle King: And there are predictions about what Bong Bong Marcos will be like as a president.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Experts believe that there might be more corruption, there might be more nepotism.
--:-- Noelle King: A big fear is that he'll put all of his friends and cronies into high positions in the government and potentially get rid of all of the investigations into his family.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Because nobody has really been brought to justice yet when it comes to what happened during his father's regime, right?
--:-- Noelle King: People are also afraid that he is going to, and he has said that he said as much, he's going to continue President Duterte's controversial and deadly drug war.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: It's killed thousands of people.
--:-- Noelle King: I think really what's at the heart of this, you know, Noel, is why are people so afraid of Bong Bong Marcos whenever they've had six years of Duterte?
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And really the way that it's been explained to me is that Duterte had six years. Six years to roll back things here in the Philippines and six years to cause trouble.
--:-- Noelle King: The Marcoses had 20.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Their influence goes well beyond President Duterte's, and that scares people.
--:-- Noelle King: And if you think about the collaboration between those two political dynasties, you could potentially get something that we've never, never seen before.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And that's what people are very, very afraid of.
--:-- Noelle King: Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and Tori Dominguez.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: It was engineered by Paul Mounsey.
--:-- Noelle King: It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and edited by Matt Collette.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: The rest of our team includes Halima Shah, Hadi Mawagdi, Victoria Chamberlain, and Avishai Artsy.
--:-- Noelle King: Welcome, Avishai.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Also my co-host, Sean Ramos-Firm.
--:-- Noelle King: Our supervising producer is Amina El-Sadi.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Vox's vice president of audio is Liz Kelly Nelson.
--:-- Noelle King: We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: And we are distributed to public radio stations across the U.S. in partnership with WNYC.
--:-- Noelle King: I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Noelle King: We all have moments where we could have done better, like cutting your own hair.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Oh, yikes.
--:-- Noelle King: Or forgetting sunscreen, so now you look like a tomato.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Ouch.
--:-- Noelle King: Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Level up and invest smarter with Schwab.
--:-- Noelle King: Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it.
--:-- Ashley Westerman: Learn more at schwab.com.
