Duterte harks back to bad old Marcos days in the Philippines, leaving investors on edge

William Pesek says the progress made under Benigno Aquino to erase the legacy of the Marcos dictatorship and promote investment has been largely undone by Duterte’s hardline anit-crime campaign and warm gestures to the Marcos family

Reading Time:4 minutes

Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte speaks during the 23rd anniversary of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, in Taguig city, on August 30. For some, Duterte’s hardline approach to drug crime brings up memories of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Photo: EPA

Published: 4:37pm, 7 Sep 2017Updated: 4:37pm, 7 Sep 2017

As president from 2010 to 2016, Benigno Aquino had his eyes on a big, but elusive, prize: ridding the Philippines of the Marcos family for good.

The goal was partly personal, of course. In 1983, Aquino’s father was assassinated trying to oust the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. His mother, Corazon, helped lead the People Power Revolution that drove Marcos from office (she replaced him in 1986). But it was also smart economics. The kleptocracy Marcos created over 20 years concentrated wealth among a handful of tycoons. Smashing that system is the key to eradicating poverty and increasing global competitiveness.

By the time Aquino turned that task over to Rodrigo Duterte in June 2016, the Philippines was enjoying a renaissance: its first-ever investment-ratings, tidal waves of foreign capital and growth rates rivalling China. Why in the world, then, would Duterte drag the nation back to the bad old Marcos days?

It’s not just his authoritarian flourishes, affection for martial law, efforts to silence the press or a brutal drug war that’s filled more body bags (at least 7,000) than even Marcos. It’s Duterte’s bizarre Marcos revisionism that boggles the mind and speaks to why foreign investors who’d just rediscovered the Philippines are selling peso assets. This Marcos-rehabilitation push suggests investors are right to worry.

In the 1960s, the resource-rich Philippines was destined to be the Japan of Southeast Asia. Marcos ran the economy into the ground and raided the treasury. For decades, the family claimed it hadn’t fled to Hawaii with upwards of US$10 billion. After Ferdinand died in exile in 1989, his widow Imelda returned to the Philippines with the children, feigning poverty. Gone, she pretended, was her notoriously opulent lifestyle – the shoes, the jewels, the jet-setting.

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