So basically, it's a feud between the Marcos family, the most powerful family in Luzon and the family of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, against the Dutertes, the most powerful family in Mindanao.
Bongbong Marcos has spent his term in office trying to rebuild ties with the United States that were torn down by his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, as well as trying to bring the Philippines out of a stubborn recession.
During his time as president, Duterte openly insulted the United States and embraced China and Russia. He was also the president who advocated a vigilante war against suspected drug users that is estimated to have resulted in the extrajudicial killings of at least 30,000 people. His daughter, Sara Duterte, is the VP , and is a likely candidate for the 2028 Philippine presidential elections against Martin Romualdez, the Filipino Speaker of the House, who also happens to be a cousin of Bongbong Marcos. She has a long history of making violent threats against political opponents. She claims to have hired an assassin to kill Bongbong, his wife, and Romualdez if she herself is killed. She probably knows plenty of them through her dad.
Further inflaming the situation, Rodrigo Duterte recently advocated that the Marcos-Duterte feud should be settled by the military.
Also making things more difficult is the fact that Bongbong spent a great deal of his term building up a relationship with the Biden administration. Now that Trump is coming back, Marcos is likely to lose his support thanks to a combination of Trump's isolationist foreign policies and Trump's intense hatred of anybody who had a good relationship with Biden, Harris, or Obama. Trump had a friendship with Duterte.
Last edited by SanAndreasX - on 10 December 2024