High stakes in Philippine midterm election as Sara Duterte faces impeachment, Marcos grapples with sinking approval

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - Philippines' Vice President Sara Duterte attends the election campaign rally of senatorial candidates under the party of former Philippines' President Rodrigo Duterte in Manila on May 8, 2025, ahead of the country's midterm elections. — AFP pic

MANILA, May 9 — The Philippines votes Monday in a ballot that will decide half the Senate’s seats, thousands of local posts, and quite possibly the political future of impeached Vice President Sara Duterte.

More than 160,000 national police have been deployed to secure polling stations, escort election officials and guard checkpoints in a country where hotly contested provincial postings are known to erupt in violence.

But it is the vice president’s feud with President Ferdinand Marcos that has dominated national politics heading into the mid-term election.

The rift between the two former allies came to a head in the wake of the vice president’s February impeachment and her father Rodrigo Duterte’s subsequent arrest and transfer to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face charges over his deadly drug war while he was president.

The 12 senators elected Monday, and 12 others already in office, will serve as jurors in an impeachment trial — tentatively set for July — that could see her permanently barred from public office.

Seven currently polling in the top 12 have been endorsed by Marcos while four — including the president’s independent-minded sister Imee Marcos — are publicly aligned with Duterte.

Among the front-runners are a TV host, a comedian and a former Duterte lieutenant who has publicly said he could be next on the ICC’s warrant list.

Former boxing champion Manny Pacquiao sits just outside the so-called Magic 12.

The threat the Dutertes face is an existential one, Cleve Arguelles, president and CEO of WR Numero Research, told AFP.

“If (Rodrigo) is cut off from power, if Sara is cut off from public office, then it’s not far from imagining that it might also threaten their control of Davao,” he said, referencing the capital of the family’s southern stronghold Mindanao.

Seeing the vice president removed from the 2028 presidential equation is in the interest of more than just Marcos, who is constitutionally limited to one term, Arguelles added.

“If she is out of the game, then it’s anybody’s ballgame,” he said.

Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. gestures to army officers as he delivers a speech during the 128th founding anniversary of the Philippine army at its headquarters in Manila March 22, 2025. — AFP pic

Sliding popularity

The Dutertes’ woes, however, have done little to boost Marcos’s popularity.

A survey released last month showed a dramatic dip in his approval rating from nearly 50 per cent to 25 per cent in barely three months.

“There’s a view that the mid-term elections serve as a referendum for the incumbent president,” said Dennis Coronacion of the University of Santo Tomas’ political science department.

Marcos, however, has no signature achievement he can point to, said Jean Franco, assistant chair of the University of the Philippines’ political science department.

“Since late 2023, his entire administration’s narrative seems to be about Sara Duterte,” she said. “I think Filipinos are souring on him.”

A bid to make the country’s clashes with Beijing in the disputed South China Sea central to the campaign has also largely fizzled with voters.

While surveys show Filipinos are broadly anti-China on the issue, it rates far behind bread-and-butter topics like inflation and jobs, said pollster Arguelles.

In this picture taken on May 4, 2025, overseas Filipino workers cast their votes online at the Philippine Consulate in Hong Kong. — AFP pic

History of violence

In Manila on Monday, many will queue to cast their ballots inside air-conditioned malls.

The spectre of violence, however, looms large the further you get from the capital.

In 2022, shortly after polls opened in the presidential election, a trio of security guards were shot dead at a polling station in the far south’s autonomous Muslim region in Mindanao.

Hours before that, nine were wounded in a grenade attack.

This year, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) has taken the rare step of temporarily removing top police officials in two southern municipalities, accusing them of “gross negligence” after they failed to provide security for an election official who was later murdered.

The body has officially recorded 81 acts of “politically related” violence between January 12 and May 7. Police told AFP that 16 of those have resulted in death.

A top Comelec official said last month that the numbers were “very low compared to the past”.

No matter the election’s outcome, Marcos’s influence is certain to wane over the next three years, said Alicor Panao, an associate political science professor at the University of the Philippines.

“The truth is, the... political capital of the president decreases in the second half of his term whatever happens... because he cannot promise anything anymore,” he said.

“The legislators and local officials will (start preparing) for the next presidential election. That’s the reality of our politics.” — AFP