A vote on whether to impeach the Philippines vice president and the question of who will emerge as the possible successor to the president. These are a couple of issues that Matthew Ordonez of De La Salle University in Manila says are at stake in the Southeast Asian country's latest elections.
00:00This election comes during a polarized time in Philippine politics, as an alliance between the president's family, the Marcoses, and the vice president's family, the Dutertes, falls apart.
00:10Now, each family has its own backers and supporters. What can you tell us about the support base for each?
00:15These are groups defined by speaking different languages in the Philippines.
00:19So besides, of course, the Tagalog, which is the one in the capital, there are two north, which is the Marcos faction, largely composing of Ilocano speakers that supported the president's father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., and then those at the south, which speak largely Visaya.
00:38That's usually parts of Visayas and Mindanao.
00:42So these are very hard, well, very solid social groups. They're very loyal to each other.
00:49The election also comes as a sensitive time because Vice President Sarah Duterte is facing impeachment, and the senators that are elected will be the ones who decide her fate.
00:59Can you lay out the stakes for both sides in this election?
01:01Actually, the stakes for Sarah is very high because in a lot of surveys regarding the hypothetical 2028 elections, like she can run for president,
01:11In most surveys, she has higher chances of becoming president than any other candidate.
01:17So if she were to survive impeachment, it's almost a foregone conclusion she will be the next president after Bom Bom Marcos.
01:28In contrast, Bom Bom Marcos does not have a clear successor.
01:32He has all institutional advantages.
01:34He's president right now, but after his term ends, he doesn't have a clear successor.
01:39But what he does is, if he's able to impeach Sarah Duterte right now, it opens the field to all the other possible contenders in that everyone has a chance now to become president.
01:52Now, this political feud between the Marcoses and the Dutertes seems to have stolen a lot of the international limelight.
01:58But what other impacts does this election have on Philippine politics, would you say?
02:02This actually has taken a lot of attention away from bread and butter issues, which has remained very important to a lot of Filipino voters.
02:11You have, besides, of course, the Marcos and Duterte factions, there are quite a few candidates that campaigned on these bread and butter issues,
02:19you know, like Bam Makino, who has a platform in education.
02:25And right now we have an education crisis in that there are about one out of five Filipinos are functionally illiterate.
02:33So I think besides this, you know, the incoming Senate right now has to solve these bread and butter issues on improving employment, education, food security.
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