Hoist with his own petard

With his 31.63 million votes, or 58.77 percent of the ballots cast, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. began his term with significant political capital despite his family’s name being associated with a dark past.

He burst onto the presidency, as voters believed he would redeem his family’s honor through six years of integrity.  

Now, his term is embroiled in the same corruption crisis as his father’s, the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr., thereby squandering both his political capital and the supposed redemption.

PBBM tried to turn things around by telling legislators, “Have some shame,” and subsequently exposed the anomaly in the flood control projects, in which several contractors were linked to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Lately, Marcos’s name has been dragged into the scandal involving the primary “Floodgate” suspect, former Ako Bicol Representative Zaldy Co., who accused him of being among the recipients of kickbacks from P100 billion worth of projects inserted into the 2025 national budget.

Political scientist De La Salle University professor Julio Teehankee cited the irony of the son being accused of the same mistakes his father made, prompting Marcos’ critics to question the President’s credibility as an anti-corruption crusader.

“Former cronies who testified against Marcos Sr. in the trials (after the 1986 People Power revolt) called him Mr. 15-Percent because that was his commission or his cut from flood control projects funded by the Japanese from 1973 to 1977,” Teehankee said.

He said that PBBM vows to return the people’s money from the anomalous contracts, “but he and his family are also embroiled in tax evasion and plunder cases. So that’s another irony.”

Much of the anger is directed at the so-called nepo babies, not only in this country but who were also the subject of public outrage in Nepal, Indonesia and Malaysia.

“Let us not forget that the President himself was the original nepo child back in the day when PBBM was a student in England — he had a taste for Rolls-Royce with an umbrella back then,” the professor said.

After the 2022 elections, people said the victory of PBBM would be a continuation of the Duterte brand of strongman populism, but the President did not follow that. He became more like a reluctant democrat than a strongman authoritarian like his father or even like Rodrigo Duterte.

“What is the reason why he suddenly changed his narrative again?”

Teehankee said the shift in the narrative was prompted by the midterm election results, in which his political coalition underperformed and the Duterte forces and the liberal reformists won significantly, particularly in the Senate.

Right after, the allies of Marcos decided to impeach the Vice President and the Senate, dominated by those endorsed by Vice President Sara Duterte, would conduct the impeachment trial.

“But suddenly, the Supreme Court stated that the impeachment was unconstitutional. So the elections and the SC ruling constituted a back-to-back political setback for President Marcos.”

Taking the lid off the flood control project scandal should have been the moment of PBBM’s redemption, but it is triggering his own collapse.