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This whole story is insane.
As president, Marcos will have power over executive agencies involved in recovering his family’s ill-gotten wealth, such as the Presidential Commission on Good Government and the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG). The PCGG was still trying to recover P125 billion more in stolen wealth.
Is there someone from the Philippines who can fill me in how this guy ever got so much support? Is he crazy charismatic and persuasive?
Is he crazy charismatic and persuasive?
No, he has had virtually no mainstream media presence. Absent in nearly all debates and presidential interviews. His campaign relies solely on his family's name and the propaganda and historical revisionism that the Marcoses have been relying on for decades. There were certain territories here that were always Marcos loyalists, particularly Ilocos Norte.
One of the biggest problem in this country has always been the amount of misinformation propagated on Facebook, Youtube and now TikTok. If you thought the situation in the US was bad, a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower confessed that the Philippines was the company's petri dish for testing new proxies. Pair that with piss poor public education, and that's how the son of a dictator wins.
Fucking hell man! Thanks for the incredibly disturbing info. Cambridge Analytica is right up their with Palantir and Blackwater for evil and destructive companies in my mind. There's actually so many of them nowadays on the private military and intelligence contractor side.
No real action will be done against companies like Cambridge, every side wants to keep the possibility of leveraging them open.
There is a quite common and toxic "strong man" myth in much of South East Asia, ultimately going back to (mostly falsely attributed) economic success stories of South Korea and Singapore that saw much of their initial growth under the rule of right-wing authoritarian leaders.
Corrupt dictators like Marcos and wanna-be dictators like Duterte have exploited this ever since for political gain.
I mean, it works... so long as the US gives a shit about your country at all. If not then the plan will fail miserably.