Son rise: the Philippines’ next President Marcos

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. Today from London, I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. The Scottish National Party exists really for one reason, to advocate for Scotland to leave the rest of the United Kingdom. Its leader wants another referendum, which will probably fail, but that doesn't mean the issue won't affect British politics. And both sides of the war in Ukraine seem to be using a haphazard and outdated technique to fire missiles from the air, climbing steeply and releasing a pile of them willy nilly. We ask why. But first, Today marks another milestone in an astonishing turnaround for a famously political family. Back in May, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Who's known as Bong Bong, handily won the Philippines presidential election.

Ferdinand Romualdes Marcos Jr. The duly elected President of the Republic of the Philippines.

The profane tough guy, incumbent Rodrigo Duterte, has served out his one allowed six year term, having led a brutal crackdown on drug users. Today, his daughter Sarah became vice president and Bongbong became President Marcos, Or rather the next President Marcos. The last one was his father, defeated by a populist movement led by Corazon Aquino in 1986.

What is it that has brought this nation to its knees? The answer is inescapably clear, Mr. Marcos.

The Marcos regime had become notorious for its brutality, for its corruption, and perhaps most of all, for its extravagance. Even those who knew little of Philippine politics knew that the president's wife, Imelda, had a staggering number of posh shoes when Marcos Sr. Was deposed, ending up in exile, few would have guessed that there would be another Marcos leading the country. But a lot can change in 36 years.

At noon today, Ferdinand Bongbong Marcos Jr became president of the Philippines.

Leo Morani is the Economist's Asia editor.

The election was back in May on the 9th, and Mr. Marcos attracted an enormous amount of support. He won 59% of the vote in a single round election, and his nearest rival only managed to muster 28% of the vote. That gives him the strongest electoral mandate of any president since his father, Ferdinand Marcos, who, apart from winning elections, also imposed martial law and was a kleptocratic, brutal dictator.

So given his father's record, why do you think he was able to win this end with such a clear majority?

There are several reasons for that. Start with the sort of whitewashing of his father's reign. So for the past several years, and especially in the run up to this election, the Marcos campaign has been running a social media campaign aimed at sort of rewriting history and painting his father's reign as this golden era, a time of prosperity and stability. Another reason is that the majority of the electorate is either too young to remember the dictatorship or had not been born yet. The third reason is that the Philippine school curriculum does not much focus on the era of the dictatorship.

So that's it then. It's just a matter of having a slickly run social media campaign to smudge through history.

That's a big part of it, but it's not all of it. An interesting thing is that the Marcos legacy started to be reconsidered as early as a decade after the revolution. So by late 1995, which is less than 10 years after he was deposed, people had already started changing their minds. I'll give you an example. In May 1986, which is a few months after the revolution, 41% of people surveyed by respected pollster thought that Ferdinand Marcos had been true to the duties of a patriotic president. By October 95, that number had jumped to 57%. More striking yet, in 86, 44% of people agreed that he was a severe, brutal or oppressive president. And the same proportion disagreed. A decade later, just 38% agreed that he was a severe, brutal or oppressive president, and 60% disagreed. Confronted with these results, the polls tried to draw a conclusion. They said, and I quote, not many of us would care to hold a grudge against someone long dead, not even someone like Ferdinand Marcos.

But why do you think that was the case? That merely a decade later, people had begun to forget, or at least not to mind.

So the story goes back to 1991, when the Marcos family was allowed to return to the Philippines. The dictator had died in exile in 1989, but the rest of the family was allowed to come back, ostensibly to face charges of corruption instead. By 1992, Imelda Marcos, that's Ferdinand's wife, had launched a presidential campaign. She lost in the end, but Bong Bong Marcus son became congressman and indeed for most of the next 30 years, he stayed in some position or the other, whether as a congressman or a governor or a senator. Other members of the family have been in various positions of power. So the process of rehabilitating the family name did not just start in the run up to this election. It started ages and ages ago. It started 30 years ago.

So now at last he's risen to the presidency. What do you think we can expect?

The initial signs based on his appointments to the cabinet in nearly two months since he was elected are fairly encouraging, actually. I mean, he seems so far like he's shaping up to be a fairly middle of the road standard president. His predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who's best known for his foul mouth and his drug wars, actually appointed a bunch of technocrats to run the economy. Bongbong appears to be doing the same. He's picked Benjamin Jockno, who used to run the central bank, to head his economic team. His defense chief is a former army general and chief of staff. His pick for transport used to be the boss of the national airline. So those signs are fairly encouraging. And in fact, the business crowd is delighted with the shape of the cabinet so far. I should point out that his vice president is Sarah Duterte, who is the daughter of the outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte. And Rodrigo Duterte remains enormously popular and Sarah is extremely popular as well. So there's a continuity here between these two administrations.

And so no immediate reason to believe then that he has designs on grabbing the reins as firmly as his father did.

Perhaps not grabbing the reins as firmly as his father did. But what is worrying is that there are already some signs of the space for criticism being constricted. On June 23, the telecoms regulator clamped down on the sale of big chunks of airtime by television and radio broadcasters. This is a fairly common practice in the Philippines and those chunks are often used by political actors. So that's one example. Another is a prominent columnist who's no fan of Bongbong was let go by her newspaper on the grounds that she sits on the board of Rappler, which is a rabble rousing news website. But she sat on the board of Rappler for ages and this was well known, including to her employers. Rappler, for its part, on June 29 again received an order from the country's Security and Exchange Commission to shut down for violating foreign ownership rules. So there are already worrying signs.

And putting aside those concerns for the moment, what do you think it means for the Philippines today that Mr. Marcos should have become president?

Much like France, the Philippines is on its fifth republic. This republic was founded after Marcos was deposed and was founded on the basis of ideals of democracy and fairness, and also to ensure that no Marcos like figure ever becomes president again. The very fact that Filipinos have chosen to elect the dictator's son suggests that the Philippines is entering a new era. There are others who argue that this new era started with the election of Rodrigo Duterte. So no matter which direction this presidency goes in, the one thing that is clear is that the era defined by the 1986 revolution has come to an end.

Leo, thanks very much for joining us.

My pleasure, Jason.

In 2014, Scotland held its first independence referendum, a triumph for the Scottish National Party and its then leader, Alex Salmond.

What do we want? How are we going to vote yes?

At the time, Nicola Sturgeon, who now leads the party, called it a once in a lifetime chance.

We don't know that we'll ever get another opportunity to decide to become an independent country. It's the only guaranteed opportunity we will ever get.

In the end, Scottish voters opted to stay in the Union, with the nays beating the yeas 55% to 45%. That might have put an end to the cause of Scottish independence. But Britain's vote two years later to leave the European Union, a move that the majority of Scots opposed, has put the issue back on the table.

My determination is to secure a process that allows the people of Scotland to, whether yes, no or yet to be decided, to express their views in a legal constitutional referendum so that the majority view can be established fairly and democratic.

Maybe, just maybe, it's a twice in a lifetime chance.

Nicola Sturgeon has said Scotland will head for another referendum on independence. That's going to take place, she says, on 19 October 2023.

Matthew Hullhouse is the Economist's British political correspondent.

There is a hitch. The British government contends that the meaning of the UK constitution is that only it can decide whether there will be a referendum. So you're heading for another stalemate.

So the irony here is that Scotland cannot independently hold an independence referendum. It has to get permission from Westminster. How likely is that?

Under this prime Minister, it is phenomenally unlikely that Boris Johnson would agree to a second independence referendum. He does not see the constitutional case for it. He does not see the political case for it. He is under no pressure from his own voters, his own MPs, members of the Conservative Party to do it. And he has no desire to be the Prime Minister who sees the breakup of the United Kingdom. And he said as much this week. I think the important point to make is that we think the number one priority for the country is the economic pressures, the spikes in the cost of energy. Our plan for a stronger economy certainly means that we think that we're stronger working together, but we have good relations with the Scottish government. We'll see what she has to say.

And so is it case closed? Is there any way for Scotland to push forward with this referendum without the consent of the British government?

So this is effectively the plan that Nicola Sturgeon set out. She's very keen that any referendum is observed as legal and as properly constitutional. Her argument is that if you simply hold a referendum, the Scottish government organises itself and it's not recognised either by the UK government or those overseas, it doesn't actually get you to independence. You know, you've just had a big street party and not much more than that. So her plan is that she will test this question on the exact meaning of the Scotland act, which acts as the constitutional statute that sets out the parameters of devolution at the Supreme Court. Now, the Scottish government's argument seems to be that since referenda are sort of by definition advisory, they don't have any automatic legal effect. Then that might be within scope of the Scotland act, which simply says that the Union itself is reserved to Westminster. Now, it has to be said, most constitutional watchers are Fairly pessimistic about Mr. Sturgeon's chances, not least because we have seen, under the current presidency of the UK Supreme Court President is Lord Reid, a very sort of conservative understanding of the scope of the Scottish Parliament's powers and a real assertion of the primacy of the Westminster Parliament. So it's not looking likely that that's going to succeed, but, you know, you will just have to wait and see what unfolds in.

But with the odds stacked against her in this way, why is she pushing for this again?

Well, she's pushing for this again for a number of reasons. One is that the pursuit of Scottish independence is the raison d' etre of the snp. It simply wouldn't be a political force if it didn't believe that. Why now? Well, the short history is, in 2014 there was a referendum, the pro union side won by a 10 point margin, the Brexit referendum of 2016, in which Britain's voted to leave the EU, although a majority of Scots voted in favour of remaining in the eu, coupled with the advent of Boris Johnson's premiership, he's fantastically unpopular in Scotland, has really generated this sense in the nationalist movement that this is it, this is their window. It really is now or never. So Sturgeon is feeling this huge amount of pressure from her own members who are incredibly impatient to see this second referendum that she's been talking about now for six years to really come to fruition.

And given how difficult you say it could be, does she have a plan here, a strategy for getting what she wants?

So the first leg of her plan is to ask Boris Johnson. The second leg of her plan is to test the question in Supreme Court and see if they will create a legal avenue through which she can run. The third leg is to say that, failing both of those options, she will turn the next general election, which we expect to take place in 2024, it could be sooner, into a de facto referendum. So if more than 50% of voters vote in favor of independence through their choice of parties, and it's worth stating that the details of how this is going to work have not been laid out yet, she says that their choice of the ballot box will act as a de facto referendum and create a new mandate for independence. One way to interpret all this is about a leader who is under intense pressure from home members to spell out avenues to something which it is not apparent exists. And so she needs to set new deadlines, new targets, offer clues of new routes for forward in order to basically keep the show on the road. So the question is, who faces pressure from the question of Scottish independence? Is it Boris Johnson who is under pressure here, or is it Nicola Sturgeon? But if you look at the dynamics within their own parties, it really is Sturgeon who's facing the pressure to deliver an outcome on this, which is to.

Say that it's only she who's taking a risk that this won't have broader effects on British politics.

So all the risk is on her side. For this reason, SNP members and the broader Scottish nationalist movement are very, very keen to see a referendum. And it really sort of raises existential questions for them if there is not an avenue through which that can be delivered. On the Conservative Party side, Johnson's under no pressure at all to accede to a referendum. His position is that one shouldn't happen because there's no demand for it in Scotland and it's constitutionally proper for him to refuse it. Conservative Party MPs do not want a referendum Conservative Party members don't want one. Conservative Party voters don't want one either. There is no part of the Conservative Party's electoral coalition which relies on getting support from people who want Scottish independence. So he's intensely comfortable refusing again and again. Now, more than that, actually, the threat or the specter of a referendum is incredibly useful for him because it allows the Conservative Party to campaign as a unionist forstner in elections. And it allows Boris Johnson to say that if you vote Labour, you are risking a second referendum on Scottish independence because Labour will team up with the SNP and team up with the Lib Dems in a sort of big, unwieldy, gangly coalition that will let this happen. So he can go around England, he can go around Scotland and say, the only way to stop this, the only way to save the United States, United Kingdom, is to vote Conservative. Now, that's a pretty crude message. Lots of people don't like it. But it has proven quite effective in recent years. And Sturgeon's announcement yesterday would seem to me to only reanimate that message and to give it a fresh lease of life.

So what you see in your crystal ball is that essentially this is a doomed effort, that it's only going to empower the very man that they dislike so much.

It is going to empower him. It will sustain Nicola Sturgeon perhaps at the top of her party and help further her dominance of Scottish electoral politics. Support Boris Johnson as he needs something to campaign on at the next general election. And truth be told, with the economy and the state it's in and with public services in the state therein, he really needs some ammunition for his electoral offensive. So they are the winners of this stalemate. The big loser is the Labour Party, which would rather the whole issue went away.

Thanks very much for joining us, Matthew.

Thank you, Jason.

Much of the weaponry being used in the war in Ukraine, be it tanks or guns, is decades old. But so too, it seems, are some of the techniques of battle.

We've been seeing some very unusual videos of aircraft attacks by aircraft and helicopters in the Ukraine war.

David Hambling writes about technology and defense for the Economist.

It's an approach that's known as lofting. We're seeing aircraft which are suddenly, from flying at low altitude, they are turning up steeply at a sharp angle, firing an entire pod of rockets in the direction of the enemy and then turning away. Normally, you see these rockets fired in pairs directly at a target. This approach of just firing them into the air towards the enemy is very unusual because it looks very clumsy and very inaccurate.

So how did this even develop as a technique?

Well, the technique of lofting or releasing weapons going upwards rather than downwards was actually developed by the US Navy during 1940s as a means of dropping atomic bombs. Back in the day, their big problem was they didn't want to be in the area when the bomb landed. And by ensuring that it was on an upward trajectory rather than going downward, that gave the aircraft much longer time to break away and get out of the area. So that was where it came from. Later on, the same technique was adopted as a way of increasing the range of a bomb to keep aircraft out of the way of air defences.

So that is to say it is still sometimes in use, it's not really.

Used in modern warfare these days where they want to do long range bombing, they use glide bombs or will bomb from high level to hit targets at long range.

So why is it then that we're seeing this being used in Ukraine?

It seems to be a matter of them developing a way of coping with the limitations of the weapons they have. What we're seeing Here are these S8 rockets. They're 80mm rockets which were developed in the 1970s and they were developed for direct attack. Basically the idea is you fire a pair of them at a time at an individual bunker or vehicle or building. Whereas what we're seeing now is they are using these lofting attacks, firing them upwards in the air as a way of increasing the range and that's a way of making sure that, that they are not targeted by particularly man portable surface to air missiles during the attack. It's a way of attacking so you don't actually have to get eyeball to eyeball with the enemy. And that makes it a lot safer in a conflict where we've seen increasing numbers of helicopters and aircraft shot down by small surface to air systems.

But in the end you said it's clumsy and more to the point, inaccurate.

It's distinctly inaccurate. These rockets are actually designed to hit the target so they can be aimed that accurately and normally they're fired in pairs. However, with the lofting technique, when you can't even see the target and when you're firing a lot of rockets in quick succession, clearly they're just going to land scattered over quite a wide area, so your chance of hitting a point target is pretty negligible. So it's a way of delivering munitions in the general direction of the enemy with very little chance of actually hitting anything, but with the advantage that you're not going to get hit yourself.

But given that balance of advantages and disadvantages, the inaccuracy but the safety, this is what the conflict seems to be stuck with.

Well, that's one way of doing it. The other approach is to say that using a modern high tech helicopter to deliver these low tech rockets is like using a Ferrari to deliver coal. So there's perhaps more suitable platforms, and particularly in Ukraine, we're actually seeing them now transferring some of their rocket pods to the back of pickup trucks and they have these improvised mobile rocket launchers with a joystick controller next to the driver so he can park up, work out where the enemy is and unleash a pod of rockets. And that might actually be significantly more accurate than firing from a helicopter because you've got a stationary platform at a known location with a known direction and location of the enemy. On both sides, though, this is very much a second best solution. What particularly the Ukrainians are asking for are modern precision long range weapons. And when they get those, they'll be in a much better position. But for now, they're just improvising with what they've got.

David, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. Drop us a line@podcastseconomist.com or leave us a rating wherever you listen. We'll see you back here tomorrow.