“Tactical victories mask strategic decline,” the center said. “A faction can win every battle, every vote count, every Senate maneuver, every media cycle, while the country loses the war against its own dysfunction.”
Crisis on every front
In the span of a single legislative week in May 2026, Vice President Sara Duterte was impeached for the second time in her career; her allies seized the Senate presidency in a leadership coup to block a trial; and former President Rodrigo Duterte stood before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague on charges of crimes against humanity.
The think tank described the situation as a constitutional crisis being “actively contested at every institutional level simultaneously.”
The rupture between the two political families began with Sara Duterte’s resignation from the Cabinet in June 2024 and had deepened steadily since following former President Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest by the ICC in March 2025, the first impeachment of the Vice President in February 2025, the Supreme Court intervention voiding that process, and now a second impeachment passed with 257 House votes.
The center traced the breakdown from what it described as a once functional political arrangement. When the Marcos and Duterte families formed their electoral coalition in 2022, it was said that the partnership reduced elite fragmentation, consolidated political authority, and projected an image of governability that provided wide reassurance to markets, local governments, and foreign partners.
“Whether one agreed with the coalition or not, it produced something the Philippines now acutely misses: a perception of governability and political predictability,” the analysis stated.
That arrangement collapsed, the center said, shifting the political environment into a “zero-sum” condition in which every policy instrument became a weapon, every appointment a factional signal, and every procedural move a target for political interrogation rather than governance.
In such an environment, moderation becomes a liability and escalation becomes the rational choice for every actor, it said.
The current negative-sum phase goes further still, as even political victors, the center argued, inherit a weakened state. Such a condition features a presidency commanding less authority, institutions with less credibility, and an economy with less resilience.
Economic costs visible
The analysis pointed to the GDP growth of 2.8 percent in the first quarter, the weakest since the pandemic, as direct evidence that the cost of political dysfunction is now measurable rather than theoretical. The figure was compounded, it said, by the multibillion-peso flood control corruption scandal that has continued to erode consumer confidence and public trust.
“Markets and investors are not sustained by electoral victories,” the center said. “They are sustained by confidence in continuity, predictability, and institutional resilience.”
It calls economic continuity a form of national security, arguing that the Philippines requires an economy capable of sustaining its population, funding the state, and signaling to the world that it remains a viable and stable partner.
The domestic crisis, the think tank said, is unfolding against a backdrop of external pressures that demand precisely the national coherence that prolonged political warfare destroys.
Among the vulnerabilities it cited are the intensifying geopolitical tensions in the West Philippine Sea, energy and food security risks, climate and disaster exposure, and what it described as growing cyber and cognitive warfare threats.
Domestic political fragmentation in this environment is not merely embarrassing but also aids the objectives of foreign adversaries.
“Foreign adversaries study internal divisions. Investors price political risk into their decisions. Allies calibrate their commitments to perceived stability,” the center said. “A nation that cannot govern itself coherently forfeits leverage in every arena that matters.”
Institutions must ‘hold the line’
The center directed its strongest prescription not at political families, but at what it described as the Philippines’ “stabilizing institutions” — the military, judiciary, civil service, business community, academe, religious groups, media and civil society.
It argued that neutrality in the face of systemic destabilization is “not a virtue, it is an abdication.”
The security sector bears the most consequential responsibility, the center said, warning that in deeply polarized environments, every faction eventually looks to the military and police not as constitutional guardians but as potential instruments of political advantage.
“An armed institution that is seen as factional is an institution that has already failed its foundational mission,” it stated.
Business leaders who choose strategic silence to avoid factional entanglement are “not staying neutral — they are withdrawing the stabilizing signal that markets and governance need most,” the center said.
It urged the private sector to speak out in support of institutional integrity and the rule of law, framing such action as a civic responsibility rather than political partisanship.
The academic and intellectual community was urged to “refuse the seductions of tribal analysis” and redirect the public discourse toward structural questions: what the long-term consequences of perpetual elite conflict are, how polarization weakens national resilience, and whether democratic competition can coexist with strategic continuity.
2028 factor
The center warned that the 2028 elections risk becoming “the singular gravitational force pulling the entire state apparatus into stasis” more than two years before the actual vote. When governance becomes permanently subordinated to electoral positioning, it said, long-term planning collapses, infrastructure projects stall, regulatory decisions are distorted by patronage calculations, and public services become instruments of campaign strategy.
It argued that the defining question facing the Philippines is no longer who will dominate in 2028 — but whether the country will remain sufficiently cohesive, institutionally credible, and economically resilient to hold a meaningful election at all.
“Once a political order fully descends into a negative-sum condition, rebuilding national trust, strategic coherence, and institutional legitimacy takes far longer, and costs far more than winning any election ever could,” the center said.
“The Philippines still has time. But the window is narrowing.”
