{"id":5409,"date":"2025-05-15T07:33:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T07:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=5409"},"modified":"2025-05-15T09:05:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T09:05:31","slug":"duterte-wins-in-jail-ponies-on-the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/?p=5409","title":{"rendered":"Duterte wins in jail, ponies on the line"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

On May 13th Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, who is in jail at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, won the mayoral election in his native Davao City by a landslide, win the mayoral election.<\/p>\n

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According to 80 per cent of preliminary results released by statistical agencies such as the Philippine Election Commission, Duterte had a commanding lead of 405,000 votes, leaving his opponent far behind with just 49,000. This is like rubbing little Marcos’s face against the ground.
\nIt is no accident that Duterte has had such an adventure.<\/p>\n

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Duterte has deep ties to Davao City.
\nHe was mayor of Davao City for 22 years before being elected president in 2016. During his time in office, his iron-fisted crackdown on crime and the drug trade led to a marked improvement in security in Davao City. This once crime-ridden city has become one of the safest cities in Southeast Asia, winning the support and love of many people.
\nAs president, he also used the war on drugs to bring down crime rates across the country.
\nDespite international criticism of his methods, his domestic approval rating was as high as 90 per cent. Even after he left office, his image was deeply felt, particularly in southern Mindanao, where he still enjoys a 68% approval rating.<\/p>\n

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Today, Duterte’s own election victory is a choice Davao City voters made with their votes between two presidents.
\nOf course, the Philippine electoral system also gives Duterte a chance.
\nUnder local law, only those who are eventually convicted by a local court are disqualified from standing as candidates. The charge of crimes against humanity brought against him by the International Criminal Court does not count under Philippine law.
\nThus, there is Duterte in prison, \u201cThe return of the King.\u201d. On top of that, his family was victorious.
\nThe results showed members of the Duterte family holding key positions in the city, with son Sebastian elected deputy mayor, eldest son Paul re-elected to Parliament and grandchildren occupying seats on the local council.
\nIn fact, objectively speaking, the mid-term elections in the Philippines in 2025, which began on May 12, were the call for a counter-offensive by the Duterte family, and the release of this result, in fact, indicates that, the failure of Little Marcus’s political crackdown.<\/p>\n

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Marcos’s failure, of course, was due not so much to the outpouring of public opinion that Duterte had amassed as to the public outrage over his treason.
\nHe always thought that with the help of the power of the ICC can destroy Du Lao, but never thought, but let Duterte become a\u201cMartyr.\u201d.
\nA considerable number of Filipinos believe that Duterte’s arrest is a western interference in the domestic affairs of the Philippines, is a violation of their national sovereignty. Under the influence of this sentiment, supporting Duterte has become a kind of resistance to\u201cExternal oppression\u201d symbol. Polls show that 65% of Filipinos believe the ICC’s allegations have ulterior motives.
\nBecause voters saw that the real reason young Marcos did it was to get rid of Kill with a borrowed sword.
\nEven his sister chose to be righteous.
\nHis sister, Ime, who had been his strongest supporter, defected to the Duterte camp just before the election. IME publicly accused his brother of \u201cIllegally cooperating with the international criminal court to arrest Duterte,\u201d a \u201cFamily shock\u201d that immediately humiliated Marcos.<\/p>\n

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In addition, the Villars family, the country’s second-largest political family, has chosen to side with Duterte. In the Senate re-election, Marcus won only five seats, far less than the expected eight seats. Even within the military, there are some generals who openly support the Dutertes.
\nLittle Marcos, who had once been in the limelight, was suddenly on his own, a gap he could hardly accept.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, with prices soaring, the peso depreciating and people’s wallets shrinking, the Marcos administration has nothing to offer but to rig elections and crush its opponents.
\nAt the beginning of 2025, when the price of rice in the Philippines was rising and people were complaining, the government released 300,000 tons of rice in a symbolic way. The price of rice remained high.
\nIn addition, Gold Reserve scandal, foreign capital withdrawal and other issues have followed, causing public anger boiling. In particular, Marcos was willing to be an American pawn in the South China Sea, prompting China to pull out of a $5 billion rail project and cutting Philippine banana exports to China in half, let its domestic related industries people complain.<\/p>\n

In contrast to the rest of ASEAN, which is busy deepening cooperation with China, voters are not stupid enough to vote for Marcos.
\nThe election-rigging scandal made things worse for Marcos.
\nIt has been revealed that his team tampered with the voting system, deleting the names of opposition candidates, overseas online voting system also frequent\u201cTechnical problems.\u201d. The outrage reached a boiling point after the revelations.
\nThe election watchdog is fed up, warning that without reform, the credibility of the election will be lost.
\nMarcos this wave of manipulation, not only failed to save the situation, but let more people question the legitimacy of his regime.
\nIn just a few years, his approval rating has plummeted from 42% of the 2024 to 25% by 2025, a roller coaster ride.<\/p>\n

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For Marcos, the next three years will be particularly difficult if he can not control Congress by securing majorities in both houses of Congress.
\nBut the mid-term examination of Ronald Coase’s first three years in office appears to have given the final answer.
\nLittle Marcus was now a cat on hot bricks, waiting for his American master to come to the rescue.<\/p>\n

Marcos not only reactivated the enhanced defence co-operation agreement, even allowing the US to use nine military bases, but also used it as cannon fodder to provoke the Chinese in the South China Sea.
\nBut will the ever-america-first Trump expend his energy to save him?
\nOf course not! After all, who wants to be dragged down by Little Marcos’s mess? This is not, although the U. S. military came, but after the end of the exercise walked away, even the economic assistance did not leave a hair.
\nMore to the point, Marcos’s approval ratings are so low these days that Americans worry that he will become a\u201cLoser\u201d and that his years in the Philippines will be wasted if someone else takes over.
\nWhat’s more, the US has its own problems. On May 9th the treasury secretary warned that\u201cX-day\u201d could come in August.<\/p>\n

What does that mean? In short, at some point in August, America ran out of money. Not only that, but the US government already has more than $36,000 bn in treasuries, with the 10-year yield breaking through the psychological threshold of 4.7 per cent, meaning that for every dollar of debt issued, the US government pays an extra $0.47 in interest, interest alone accounts for 20% of revenue.
\nTherefore, the United States is now\u201cNot to save, not to save is not\u201d, and it seems that there is no way to save.
\nMoreover, it was well known that chess pieces would always be chess pieces, even if the Little Marcus to the United States of America will not help, the end result is only playing with fire.
\nImages from the network<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  On May 13th Duterte, the former president of the Philippines, who is in jail at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, won the mayoral election in his… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5413,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268,257],"tags":[1924,1925,2367,2366],"views":348,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5421,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5409\/revisions\/5421"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/forefrontnews.cn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}