The current Filipino president, Bongbong Marcos, is infinitely better than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte was, when his term ended in 2022, a pretty popular leader with the common people. So Marcos struck an alliance with Duterte, picking his daughter Sara Duterte as his running mate. Then, Marcos simply outmaneuvered Duterte by putting his rival’s daughter in charge of the department of education, rather than put her in charge of foreign policy or the military as she had wanted…
One by one, Marcos went after Duterte’s remaining allies for corruption. He fully reversed course on Duterte’s old foreign policy — Duterte was fiercely pro-China, and anti-America. Marcos, on the other hand, saw little to no use in continuing the failed foreign policy plans of the man before him. Duterte’s main talking point was “the Philippines is small and weak, China is big and strong so we must give in to anything they want”. Marcos, on the other hand, immediately invited back the Americans Duterte had tried to kick out. And allowed them to build another five military bases.[1]
Rodrigo Duterte was pro-Beijing. Bongbong Marcos is pro-Washington. Duterte’s idea of problem solving was “shoot all drug addicts and befriend a regional power that bullies us and ask them kindly not to bully us any more…” Whereas Marcos has set up rehabilitation projects for addicts, maintains international military alliances and is rightfully skeptical of China. He’s far smarter than Duterte, who was naive, being promised billions of dollars in Chinese infrastructure projects that Beijing never delivered on.
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