A Family Feud in the Philippines Has Beijing and Washington on Edge

When Rodrigo Duterte left the Philippine presidency and returned to private life in 2022, public life seemed suddenly quiet. Duterte’s brash statements, late-night rants, and off-the-cuff threats directed at his enemies were replaced with the caution of his successor—and then ally—the mild-mannered President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

The two remained uneasy political allies, however, until a rally in January during which Duterte called Marcos a “drug addict” and suggested the idea of a military coup to unseat the president. The next week, Duterte called for the independence of his home region of Mindanao through a signature-gathering campaign.

Marcos has responded with relative calm. He quipped that Duterte’s drug accusations could result from a dependence on fentanyl, which the former president admitted in 2016 to using after a motorcycle accident. Marcos’s national security advisor, meanwhile, has said that any attempt at secession by Mindanao—an idea widely dismissed as unrealistic bluster—would be met with force.

It was a spectacular break that surprised many in the Philippines. Marcos ran in 2022 on a joint ticket with Duterte’s daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, and won in a landslide; Duterte-Carpio is now the vice president. Both president and vice president have said they remain aligned. But the elder Duterte has publicly lamented that his daughter didn’t run for the presidency, and he called Marcos “weak” and a “spoiled child” prior to his inauguration.

Marcos has also reoriented Manila away from Duterte’s policy of seeking closer ties with Beijing, instead reaffirming the deep alliance with Washington that solidified during the rule of his father, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

The split between Marcos and Duterte also reverberated in Washington and Beijing, both of which “are watching the developments closely,” said Jeffrey Ordaniel, an assistant professor of international security studies at Tokyo International University and the director for maritime security at Pacific Forum International. “The different approaches and convictions of [Marcos and Duterte] have a real impact on their own foreign policy agenda.”

The family feud is, on the surface, rooted in Marcos’s attempts to change the Philippine Constitution, which was ratified in 1987 after his father was removed from power. Marcos has said that he wants to ease constitutional restrictions on foreign investment.

But Duterte has accused the president of a gambit to consolidate power. Marcos and his allies want to switch the country from a presidential to a parliamentary system, where a prime minister is chosen by the congressional majority. This could scuttle plans for Duterte-Carpio to run for president in 2028, when Marcos will be term-limited from running.

Duterte-Carpio’s popularity stems largely from that of her father, who broke a dynastic cycle by winning the presidency as an outsider in 2016. The elder Duterte, who is also term-limited and cannot run again in 2028, now seeks to leave behind his own familial legacy. While Duterte-Carpio appears loyal to her father, she has also forged her own political identity, purging loyalists to her father when she served as the mayor of Davao and allying closely with Imee Marcos, the current president’s sister.

Duterte also fears an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into his deadly “war on drugs,” which rights groups say has killed up to 30,000 people since 2016. In recent months, Marcos has wavered on whether Manila will cooperate with investigators or protect Duterte, should the ICC issue an arrest warrant.

“It is [in] Duterte’s personal interest to evade any form of accountability that is driving the feud,” Ordaniel said. “The policy disagreements he has with the current government are secondary considerations.”

The Philippines is not a member of the ICC since Duterte withdrew the country in 2019. But while Marcos recently said his government would not “lift a finger” to help the ICC, he also said its investigators are welcome to enter the Philippines “as ordinary people,” and a former senator claimed that the ICC has already visited and conducted an “initial investigation.”

The feud has kept the looming ICC probe in the public consciousness, and Marcos and his allies “have not done much to de-emphasize” it, said Herman Kraft, an assistant professor of political science at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

“It’s a very passive-aggressive approach to dealing with Duterte,” Kraft added.

This has been largely effective in keeping the former leader on the back foot. His allies have seized on simmering rumors—spread mostly by retired military generals as well as Duterte himself—of dissent among Duterte loyalists within the military.

But it’s unclear how much support Duterte really has within the military, which remained loyal to the United States even during his presidency and frequently expressed ire at his Beijing-friendly policies. Marcos’s pivot toward Washington “is clearly a positive point with the military,” Kraft said, while Duterte’s “more outlandish proclamations”—floating coup attempts and the secession of Mindanao—“have struck a wrong chord.”

As president, Duterte pulled the Philippines out of a long-standing defense pact with the United States in 2020, only to reverse his decision a year later. He also pursued trade and investment deals with China, but these policies landed with a thud among a public angry with Beijing’s repeated incursions into Philippine waters in the disputed South China Sea.

The Duterte administration was “really giving China the benefit of the doubt” on the South China Sea dispute, giving officials “opportunities to compromise and adhere to international law without losing face,” Ordaniel said, adding, “Unfortunately, China never really showed any willingness to compromise.” Many investment pledges, such as a China-funded railway in Mindanao, also stalled.

Washington, meanwhile, has expanded joint training exercises and weapons transfers to the Philippine military, and it has repeatedly stated its support for Philippine claims in maritime disputes with China.

“Ultimately, I think the Americans are presenting a more attractive proposition,” Ordaniel said.

China could still use a Duterte-Marcos feud for its own purposes. In the northern Philippine province of Cagayan—where the United States has an agreement to use two military bases, both in close proximity to the Taiwan Strait—it has sent delegations to meet the governor, a Duterte ally, and has hosted him in China twice in the past nine months.

“The U.S. has more of an advantage with government institutions that deal with security and foreign policy,” Kraft said. “But China’s economic reach gives it influence over institutions in economic areas and, more strategically, in local government units.”

Domestically, the feud has eroded the already limited presence of the political opposition, such as the Liberal Party of former Vice President Leni Robredo and former Sen. Leila de Lima, a Duterte critic who was jailed for six years on drug charges widely seen as frivolous. Marcos has abandoned Duterte’s relentless attacks on opposition figures such as de Lima and Rappler CEO Maria Ressa, but he hasn’t made strident efforts to undo the popular aspects of Duterte’s legacy—for instance, by prosecuting perpetrators of Duterte’s drug war.

Instead, the country has calcified into two camps—Duterte and Marcos—leaving progressive and liberal Filipinos struggling to know where to turn. Some have become disengaged. Others, however, would like to see a final blow dealt to the Dutertes, eliminating their violent illiberalism and their friendliness to China from the political stage.

“It’s a no-brainer” to support Marcos, said Tony La Viña, the associate director of climate policy and international relations for Manila Observatory. A Duterte takeover would alienate the country and its military from the United States, he said, while also empowering the Dutertes to enact revenge.

“We can’t afford to let Duterte win, because he doesn’t care about human rights,” he said. “If he wins against Marcos, he will then go after the opposition.”