The Manchurian candidate: why China’s interest in the Philippine election is under scrutiny as Duterte prepares to leave office

Politicians being manipulated by foreign powers are a real-world concern in the Philippines, and talk has now turned to the possibility of a ‘Manchurian candidate’ in the 2022 polls

The CIA once steered the pro-American ‘Amboy’ Ramon Magsaysay into office, but analysts believe China will wield influence now, and the dictator’s son Ferdinand Marcos Jnr may be its pick

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Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jnr, son of the late Philippine dictator, is running for the presidency. Photo: AFP

Published: 9:00am, 20 Nov 2021Updated: 4:13pm, 20 Nov 2021

As the last year of President Rodrigo Duterte’s term winds down, the list of candidates to replace him after next May’s election poses a troubling question for the Philippines: might one of them be a “Manchurian candidate”?

That term, for a politician used as a puppet by a foreign or hostile power, was made famous by a 1959 fictional Cold War thriller in which the son of an American political family returns from service in the Korean war having been brainwashed by Chinese and Russian communists.

But in the Philippines, where the CIA once steered former president Ramon Magsaysay into power as a pro-American “Amboy” and the current President Rodrigo Duterte has raised suspicions over his allegiances with a “pivot to China”, concerns about Manchurian candidates are very much rooted in the real world.

Now more than ever, as the country is a strategic focus for both the United States and China, which are locked in a growing contest for influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The Philippines is a long-time treaty ally of the US but also has military and economic ties with Beijing that will no doubt be shaped by whoever is sitting in the presidential palace.

Ramon Casiple, co-founder of the Manila-based think tank Novo Trends PH, said “the big framework in this election that people should look at is: which candidates would each superpower prefer not to win”?

“The US cannot afford to lose the Philippines. So this election will be a serious battle, going beyond the simple ambitions of each candidate,” he said. “A lot is at stake.”