Let’s start with some basics. The country is basically divided into three parts, Luzon is the big island in the north, Mindanao is the big island in the south, and Visayas is all the little islands between.
The Philippines and its entire political system is owned and operated by a small number of families, most of which are based in Luzon and overwhelmingly around the Metro Manila area.
Many countries have a situation where power, wealth and investment are disproportionately positioned around the capital, but in the Philippines this situation is stronger than usual because those ruling families are more interested in their own wealth than in the good of the nation, so they would fight tooth-and-nail by fair means and foul to prevent change.
This is why Duterte wants to move towards a federal system, he and his political dynasty are based in Mindanao where the problems faced by the populace are many and the power to do anything about them minute; it’s also why he would pretty-much have to seize control in some form of dictatorship to make it happen, so in this respect, the words that his enemies use to try to talk him down are not just propaganda.
There is a lot about the Philippines in which I disagree with Duterte, but his motives here are fairly sound - the country suffers from immense poverty with more than 10% of the population (estimated around 12 million) people living in “extreme poverty”, and what Duterte wants is to share what wealth the nation does have more evenly throughout the Philippines.
The population of Metro Manila is around 12 million (the similarity with the number of extreme poor being just a coincidence). Spreading the load of national investment could alleviate provincial poverty to some degree, and could also stop people from the provinces flocking to the slums and ghettos of the capital in the search of some of that supposed wealth.
However, whilst it is true that the bulk of the nation’s wealth and investment are in Luzon and particular the capital region, that wealth is not benefiting many of those living there - it’s still those small number of ‘ruling’ families that have their hands on the national cash register. The real problem is the corruption that holds those rich minorities in their positions of privilege, that’s the tower that needs to be knocked down for significant progress to be made in the Philippines. Even if there was a federal system with the national budget being divided between regions which had the power to spend their funding as they chose, the endemic corruption would still ensure that the ordinary Filipino saw little benefit; and unfortunately, every new president that promises to deal with corruption only shifts the balance of the corruption in their own favour.
The country is locked in a stalemate with itself.
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