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‘The big lie of the Marcoses …’ For Filipino novelist Miguel Syjuco, reality is uncomfortably close to his satire about a Philippines presidential election

Novelist’s second book, I Was the President’s Mistress!! sends up a scandal-plagued government and a succession of corrupt Philippines statesmen in bawdy style

His satire is not without hope but he fears it comes too late to dissuade Filipinos from voting into power ‘inept’, ‘big-mouth liar’ Ferdinand Marcos Jnr

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A supporter holds pictures of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda Marcos at a Philippine presidential election campaign rally in Metro Manila. Photo: Getty Images

Published: 8:15am, 3 Apr 2022Updated: 1:35pm, 4 Apr 2022

I Was the President’s Mistress!! by Miguel Syjuco, pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux

“We’ve had the erosion of democratic checks and balances, of freedom of the press … deported foreigners critical of [the] administration, jailed opposition candidates. All of that.”

Sound familiar? “So, six years later, we are ever more susceptible to disinformation and more disempowered than ever,” continues Filipino novelist Miguel Syjuco in a searing assessment of his homeland under outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte.

“The Duterte campaign slogan was ‘change is coming’. Well, yes: people are less free, much more violent, we’re a poor country with a weaker economy and are consistently ranked last in the Covid resilience ratings. We’re a shambles; that’s the change that has come.”

Writer Miguel Syjuco. Photo: courtesy of Miguel Syjuco

The Philippines is the setting for Syjuco’s second novel, I Was the President’s Mistress!! Coming 14 years after its first draft and Syjuco’s Man Asian Literary Prize-winning debut, Ilustrado (honoured at a ritzy shindig at Hong Kong’s Peninsula hotel), on its most accessible level it is a bawdy gambol through the salacious recollections of Vita Nova – “singer, dancer, movie star, philanthropist, former paramour to the most powerful man in the realm”.