INSIGHTi

U.S.-Philippine Relations and Ferdinand
Marcos Jr.’s Election
June 13, 2022
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. won the Philippine Presidential election on May 9, 2022, earning a six-
year term. Marcos Jr., the son of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, won more than 31
million or 58% of the 55 million votes cast. The second place candidate, outgoing Vice-President Leni
Robredo, received 15 million votes. Under Philippine law, Presidents are limited to one, six-year term.
The Philippines elects Presidents and Vice-Presidents separately; Sara Duterte-Carpio, daughter of
outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, won the Vice-Presidency by a similar margin. Marcos and Duterte-
Carpio are to be inaugurated on June 30. Congress may monitor whether the newly elected Marcos will
change Duterte’s approaches to foreign policy and human rights.
U.S.-Philippine people-people ties are extensive, and the two nations have long shared a wide range of
strategic and economic interests. As a U.S. ally and key partner for U.S. efforts in maritime security and
counterterrorism in Southeast Asia, the Philippines plays an important role in the U.S. Indo-Pacific
Strategy. Under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, the United States and the Philippines, a former U.S.
colony, committed to help defend each other against external armed attack. The Philippines is the largest
recipient of U.S. military assistance and Development Assistance account funding in the East Asia-Pacific
region. The U.S.-Philippines Congressional Friendship Caucus was launched in 2021 in honor of the 75th
anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. In May 2022, the Philippines became one
of the initial members of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework launched by the Biden Administration.
For many democracy advocatess, Marcos Jr.’s election, after six years of democratic backsliding and
human rights abuses under President Duterte, raises questions about the state of human rights and
democracy in the Philippines. Although Marcos earned a clear electoral victory, civil society groups
express concern about the use of social media and other information outlets to misrepresent or downplay
his family’s role in human rights abuses and corruption during his father’s 21 years as President, many of
them spent under martial law.
The elder Marcos, first elected in 1965, was deposed in the face of “People Power” protests in 1986 and
fled to the United States, along with his wife Imelda and the rest of his family, including Marcos Jr. In the
years since the elder Marcos’s ouster, the Philippines has developed into a robust, albeit flawed
democracy, in which no president has sought to exceed the constitutionally mandated term. In the ensuing
Congressional Research Service
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IN11954
CRS INSIGHT
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three and half decades, the Philippines has attempted to recoup billions of dollars in government assets
that the Marcos family had appropriated and stashed overseas. Marcos Jr.’s election, many observers say,
will likely slow or halt efforts to recoup those assets.
Key Areas to Watch
A key question before Congress and for U.S. policymakers is how the newly elected Marcos will govern,
and whether there will be shifts in Philippine approaches to foreign policy and regional security. Outgoing
President Duterte regularly expressed his desire to reduce Philippine reliance on the United States,
including threatening to terminate the U.S.-Philippine Visiting Forces Agreement in 2018, before
reversing course several months later. Duterte hindered the United States’ efforts to push back on China’s
encroachments in the South China Sea (SCS). He downplayed a 2016 ruling by a United Nations
Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) tribunal, issued just as he took office, which held largely in
favor of a Philippine complaint against Chinese behavior in the SCS. He also initially suspended U.S.-
Philippine joint patrols before reversing course in 2017. Congress may observe how Marcos Jr. carries out
the objectives of the U.S.-Philippines Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA),
implementation of which was delayed under Duterte. EDCA, signed by the United States and the
Philippines in 2014, allows for increased rotational presence of U.S. military forces, ships, and aircraft in
the Philippines and greater U.S. access to Philippine military bases, including the ability to store U.S.
defense materials and equipment.
Public opinion polling suggests that attitudes toward China in the Philippines have been hurt by China’s
assertive behavior in the Philippines’ 200-nautical-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), limiting the
ability of any Philippine president to adopt stances that might be seen as a compromise of Philippine
sovereignty. Another factor lending ballast to U.S.-Philippine cooperation under Marcos is the deep
support of bilateral ties within the Philippines military, which many analysts claim upheld the U.S.-
Philippine security relationship under a skeptical President Duterte. President-elect Marcos initially spoke
of shifting Philippine-China ties to a “higher gear,” but later stated, “We will not allow a single square
millimeter of our maritime coastal ... rights to be trampled upon.”
Another key question is how Marcos will approach democracy and human rights. Outgoing President
Duterte’s counter-narcotics efforts, also known as the War on Drugs, resulted in nearly 30,000
extrajudicial killings according to human rights activists, sparking international concern. In 2017, the
Duterte administration detained Philippine Senator Leila De Lima, a critic of the drug war, on charges that
human rights groups assert were politically motivated. Other actions under Duterte that some observers
view as politically motivated include the 2020 conviction of journalist Maria Ressa, winner of the 2021
Nobel Peace Prize, for the crime of “cyber libel,” and the 2020 revocation of the broadcast license of
ABS-CBN, the country’s largest broadcasting network.
In response to the alleged abuses under Duterte’s War on Drugs, since 2016, the U.S. government has
suspended some counter-narcotics assistance to the Philippine National Police (See P.L. 117-103, Section
7043(g)). With Duterte no longer in office, Congress may consider whether to lift the restrictions.
Congress also may monitor Marcos’s actions toward political opponents, the press, and the judiciary, and
consider how U.S. security and foreign assistance may be used to influence his government’s approach to
human rights overall. Marcos has indicated that he would continue the drug war but that his tactics would
be somewhat different, focusing on drug lords instead of petty offenders and investing in rehabilitation
facilities.
For further information on the Philippines, see CRS Report R47055, The Philippines: Background and
U.S. Relations, The Philippines: Background and U.S. Relations.

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Author Information

Ben Dolven
Thomas Lum
Specialist in Asian Affairs
Specialist in Asian Affairs





Disclaimer
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