This Philippine Political Feud Will Determine the Fate of the South China Sea

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Accusations of drug use, not one, but two impeachment trials, a high-profile arrest at an airport, and even threats to hire a hitman to assassinate the current president. Welcome to the grudge match that's reshaping Philippine politics, and [music] with it, potentially the entire South China Sea.

[00:00:15]In May, the Philippine House of Representatives voted to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte for the second time in as many years. Duterte has been accused of skimming millions of dollars in government funds during her time as Secretary of Education, and then trying to cover it up. also being charged with betrayal of public trust in connection with a supposed plot to kill her former ally, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

[00:00:38]Sara Duterte is the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte. The impeachment is just the latest twist in a long and complicated political feud between Duterte's family and the powerful Marcos clan. Rodrigo Duterte himself has fallen victim. He is currently awaiting trial for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. This feud has monopolized the past two years of Philippine politics, and will play a defining role in the next presidential election in 2028. Sara Duterte has already declared her nomination for the presidency. Marcos, limited to one term in office, is expected to back a proxy to represent his family's interests.

[00:01:16]Today, the bad blood between the Marcos and Duterte clans is notorious, but just a few years ago, they were all smiles. A political alliance between the two dynasties ushered Marcos into the presidency in 2022, but the partnership was always built on political expediency, and it was quick to fall apart. The Duterte versus Marcos battle is much more than a domestic political matter. The Philippines is a security ally of the United States, and has a long history of maritime disputes with China in the South China Sea. Over the past decade, the Marcoses and the Dutertes have taken diametrically opposed stances toward Beijing and Washington. Their rivalry could affect the future foreign policy trajectory of a nation sitting on the front lines of China-US competition. Today, we'll trace the many twists and turns in the Duterte-Marcos blood feud and the very real implications for the Philippines' future at home and abroad. Here's noted Filipino political analyst Richard Heydarian. I think this this impeachment [music] is going to be the most consequential development in contemporary Philippine history because Sara Duterte has consistently been the frontrunner to be the next president of the Philippines.

[00:02:22]And my sense is if she returns to power, they're not going to give up power anymore. I think it will be regime change. So, this is going to be a game-changer.

[00:02:31]Let's meet the two players. First, we have Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the current president. He's the son of Ferdinand E.

[00:02:37]Marcos Sr., a dictator who was driven from office and out of the country by mass protests in 1986. Despite a period living in exile in Hawaii, the Marcos clan retained [music] their wealth and their influence in their stronghold on Luzon Island, and now they're back at the top. Squaring off against Marcos is Rodrigo Duterte, the patriarch of the political dynasty that rules Davao City in the Philippines' far south. Compared to the Marcoses, Duterte rose from relative obscurity, parlaying his family's long-time influence in Mindanao into the presidency. Duterte revels in his foul-mouth, tough-guy image and once compared himself and his bloody war on drugs to Hitler, intending the parallel [music] to be a positive. With Rodrigo in prison in the Netherlands, his daughter Sara is now the main face of Team Duterte back home. And [music] let's make one thing clear. The Marcoses and the Dutertes hate each other. Family feuds are nothing new in Philippine politics. There are around 100 regional political dynasties spread across the country's more than 2,000 inhabited islands. But rarely has one of these feuds dominated the Philippines' national politics [music] to such an extent. The other strange thing about the Marcos-Duterte feud is that the two politicians so recently viewed each other as allies. The early seeds of the alliance were planted [music] in 2016 when Duterte and Marcos informally supported each other in their races for the presidency and the vice presidency, which are elected separately in the Philippines. Duterte won the presidency and Marcos Jr. nearly lost the vice presidential race. Still, Duterte made good on his end of the political bargain by allowing Marcos Sr. a burial in the Philippines [music] cemetery of national heroes. It was a massively controversial honor for a man who ruled through martial law, torture, and extrajudicial executions. Marcos Sr. is also accused of stealing $10 billion from the country's [music] coffers, but now has national hero status thanks to Duterte.

[00:04:30]The Marcos-Duterte alliance became an official partnership ahead of the 2022 election, which selected a leader to succeed President Rodrigo Duterte. The two clans formed a joint ticket. They called it the UniTeam. Because of term limits, Duterte himself couldn't run for office again. So, Marcos was selected as UniTeam's presidential candidate, with Sara Duterte as vice president. The [music] joint campaign pooled the resources and regional connections of both families, and it worked. On election day in May 2022, both Marcos and [music] Sara Duterte went on to score landslide victories and entered office with a wave of momentum at their backs. But from the very beginning, there were rumblings of discontent.

[00:05:10]>> Rodrigo Duterte himself did not seem to be interested in forming a coalition with the Marcoses. Perhaps he knew that deep inside the Marcoses would always treat them as a junior partner, or that they were even more Machiavellian than him. They were more OG.

[00:05:23]But, uh Sara Duterte, the daughter, who had her own presidential ambitions, was eventually convinced by Imee Marcos it will be a marriage in heaven. It will be a perfect coalition. And that's how the UniTeam came about, even if the former President Rodrigo Duterte actually not only did not bless it, on multiple occasion he questioned it. Sure enough, [music] the marriage of convenience didn't last long. Within 18 months, relations between the two clans had soured. Right from the start, Marcos made clear that he was not going to continue Duterte's pro-China tilt. This was not only a foreign policy decision, but a political power move. [music] In the eyes of the Duterte clan, Marcos was going back on a promise.

[00:06:03]>> As soon as Marcos became president-elect, he basically made it clear that his foreign policy would be different from the Dutertes. He'll be much more critical of China. So, that was already the first warning shot that this alliance is not going to last because the Duterte foreign policy, meaning China-friendly foreign policy, was one of the pillars of the unity.

[00:06:20]Then, Marcos refused to give Sara Duterte her desired cabinet position as Minister of Defense. Instead, he shunted her into a far less influential position as Education Secretary, a post for which she had no relevant experience or training. [music] Sara Duterte was set up to fail, and fail she did. Her disastrous tenure at the helm of the education ministry became the basis for her eventual impeachment. [music] By now, the Dutertes had realized the alliance wasn't unfolding the way they had planned. So, Sara Duterte, it looks like her calculation was she'll be the the power behind the throne. That Marcos Jr.

[00:06:53]would be more of a puppet president, and the Dutertes will still drive the agenda. As I warned, the Marcoses are not going to play junior partners to anyone, especially to their former junior partners, the Dutertes, right? By this time, you're talking about as early as June-July 2022, it should have been clear that it was just a matter of time before this thing fell apart. So, eventually, Sara Duterte basically uh saw the writing on the wall and resigned from her position. And from then, it was an open declaration of war. As Sara Duterte grew estranged [music] from her former running mate, her father began to intervene in his typical abrasive style.

[00:07:29]Rodrigo Duterte lobbed outrageous accusations of drug abuse against Marcos. "Marcos was high back then. Now that he's the president, he's still high," Duterte said in early 2024. "We We a drug addict for president." Marcos countered by suggesting Duterte might have been high on fentanyl when he made his comments. In June 2024, Sara Duterte announced her resignation from Marcos's cabinet, claiming that she felt used by the president and his allies. She immediately came under investigation in the House of Representatives, which was dominated by Marcos allies, for alleged misuse of government funds during her time as education secretary. This provided the backdrop to a remarkable outburst during a live stream in November, during which Duterte claims that her life was at risk. The vice president said that to protect herself, she had hired a hitman to assassinate the president, his wife, and his cousin, Martin Romualdez, the current House Speaker, in the event of her own murder.

[00:08:23]At around the same time, Rodrigo Duterte called for the Philippine military and police to intervene in the government to protect the Constitution. Many read it as a thinly veiled call for a coup.

[00:08:34]Marcos certainly saw it that way. The presidential office called Duterte selfish and evil, accusing him of calling for a sitting president to be overthrown so that your daughter can take over. In February 2025, Sara Duterte was impeached by the House for the first time, for violation of the Constitution, betrayal of public trust, graft and corruption, and other high crimes. Tensions ratcheted up further the following month, when Sara's father was arrested in Manila on a warrant from the ICC, the International Criminal Court.

[00:09:03]>> Duterte being handed over to the ICC was always one of the leverage points of Marcos in that alliance. And that was also always a legitimate source of worry for Rodrigo Duterte. Now, if the alliance was not about to last, it was just a matter of time before Marcos would warm up to the idea of cooperating with the ICC, working with the Interpol, and just handing over Duterte. This was completely historic. Rodrigo Duterte was arrested at Ninoy Aquino International Airport on his way back from Hong Kong.

[00:09:31]More than 300 police officers were sent to the airport for the operation. As Duterte's other daughter, Kitty, live streamed, Duterte was taken into custody on the spot and led away. Duterte was then swiftly extradited to The Hague to face charges of crimes against humanity.

[00:09:46]The case stemmed from the violent anti-drug campaign that then President Duterte launched in 2016, modeled on the approach he had taken during his two decades as mayor of Davao City. During the campaign, thousands of suspected drug dealers were shot dead by police.

[00:10:01]Many were little more than poor drug users or even complete innocents caught in the crossfire. Estimates of the number killed during the anti-narcotics campaign ranged from around 6,000, the official tally, to as many as 30,000.

[00:10:14]The ICC opened an investigation into the drug war back in 2021, but it seemed there was little chance Duterte would ever face trial. How would the court get its hands on him? In 2019, Duterte had pulled the Philippines out of the ICC, and he refused to cooperate with the court's investigators. After coming to office in 2022, Marcos had first called on the ICC to drop the case and said it had no jurisdiction over the Philippines. But as relations with the Dutertes deteriorated, his attitude shifted. His allies in the house initiated investigations of the drug war, hoping to neutralize a key political rival. When the ICC issued an arrest warrant in February 2025, Marcos authorized the police to execute it. But the removal of the elder Duterte failed to end the feud. Sara Duterte rallied her supporters, condemning the Marcos government for persecuting her family and likening her father's arrest to a kidnapping. Then, in July 2025, she earned a reprieve when the Supreme Court dismissed the first impeachment complaint against her. Judges argued that the complaint violated a constitutional ban on having multiple impeachment proceedings against one person in a single year. Seizing the initiative, Sara Duterte turned the corruption accusations against Marcos.

[00:11:26]In the second half of 2025, massive anti-corruption protests erupted across the Philippines after revelations of graft in the government's $9 billion flood control program. In September, [music] Finance Secretary Ralph Recto told a Senate hearing that up to $2 billion in funding for flood control may have been lost to corruption in the past 2 years. The scandal has since embroiled dozens of high-ranking lawmakers and officials who allegedly received millions in kickbacks to award contracts for projects that were either never built or were built to a low standard.

[00:11:56]While Marcos has promised accountability, the Dutertes opportunistically used the issue to attack the president and his supporters.

[00:12:03]A pro-Duterte lawyer even filed an impeachment complaint against the president. This accused him of drug use and involvement in corruption and said that his arrest and extradition of Rodrigo Duterte breached Philippine law.

[00:12:14]The complaint was dismissed by the House Committee on Justice in February 2026.

[00:12:19]Meanwhile, after the 1-year limit expired, pro-Marcos lawmakers filed a number of new impeachment complaints against Sara Duterte, one of which was approved by the House in May. A full impeachment requires a 2/3 vote in the Senate after a [music] trial. If successfully impeached, Duterte will be booted from office and banned from politics for life. In the midst of this mudslinging, Duterte officially announced her candidacy for the 2028 presidential election. She also filed perjury complaints against those accusing her of mishandling government funds while assembling her own evidence of corruption within the Marcos administration. Duterte might survive the impeachment bid. After all, many of the senators who would need to vote against her are friendly with the Dutertes, if not outright allies to the clan. But the trial itself prove hugely damaging to her political prospects.

[00:13:04]>> With this year's impeachment hearings, they took check her bank accounts. They did not do that last year. So, that's where that's why this year Sara got even more exposed. It was revealed that billions of pesos went through her accounts, and she has no reasonable explanation. So, for me, even if she's not convicted, I think if the Senate trial is even more probing and exposes even more anomalies, I think she'll be such a politically damaged candidate that either she will not run anymore or even if she runs, the aura of invincibility is gone. Either way, the Philippine political drama will drag on until the 2028 election, which will most likely [music] pit Sara Duterte against a Marcos ally. Even if Duterte is impeached and removed from office, her relatives remain angry, well-resourced, and determined to continue the fight.

[00:13:53]The feud between Marcos and Duterte is much more than a domestic political drama. It has major foreign policy implications. The two families have taken very different approaches to the intensifying strategic competition between China and the United States.

[00:14:06]Immediately after his 2016 swearing in, President Rodrigo Duterte engineered a pivot toward China and away from the Philippine security ally, the United States, seeking Chinese infrastructure funding. Duterte downplayed the disputes in the South China Sea, reversing the confrontational approach of the previous administration. He even discarded a favorable ruling from an arbitral tribunal in The Hague, which found that most of China's claims were invalid under international law. The changes were so great and so rapid that some started wondering if China had helped Duterte get elected in the first place.

[00:14:38]There are concerns that China has been engaged in aggressive sharp power operations [music] in the Philippines.

[00:14:45]In fact, there's still a running theory that Duterte's ability to become even a competitive presidential candidate back in 2016 would not have been possible if not for certain proxies of a certain superpower backing Duterte. And there's still a lot of mystery around why Duterte was so submissive to China considering that he was very popular and he had all the power and resources. Why?

[00:15:07]So, there's the Manchurian Candidate thesis that he was always a front for China's interest. But regardless of whether that's true or not, the fact of the matter is during Duterte's time, a huge section of the Philippine elite became invested in stronger relationship with China. During his first state visit to Beijing in October 2016, Duterte announced his separation from the US and told his Chinese hosts that he had re-aligned himself in their ideological flow. Later, he threatened to annul the Visiting Forces Agreement that governs the deployment of US forces on Philippine soil for military exercises and other training. While Duterte tilted back toward Washington during his last year in power, Marcos immediately restored the Philippines' traditional pro-US orientation. Under his presidency since 2022, the two allies have strengthened maritime security cooperation. Marcos expanded the US military's access to Philippine facilities, and the US has joined maritime patrols in the South China Sea.

[00:16:03]At the same time, relations with China have decayed. And the past 2 years has seen repeated confrontations between Chinese and Philippine vessels in Manila's claimed areas of the South China Sea. This difference in foreign policy has also fed into the ongoing feud. From retirement, Rodrigo Duterte sharply criticized Marcos for his confrontational stance on the South China Sea. He accused Marcos of creating a dangerous situation and engaging in extremism that risks war with China.

[00:16:30]Sara Duterte has leveled similar accusations and signaled an openness to friendlier ties with China should she be elected president. Meanwhile, Marcos accused Duterte of having a questionable secret agreement with Beijing on the South China [music] Sea that sold out Philippine interests. This is why a feud between competing Filipino political clans matters for the world. On the one hand, a new Duterte presidency could lead to a pause or a reversal in relations with Washington and a turn [music] back toward Beijing. This could frustrate American attempts to contain Chinese power. [music] In the worst-case scenario, it could allow China to consolidate de facto control over the South China Sea. On the other hand, a new pro-Marcos president would likely deepen cooperation with the US and harden the nation's position on its maritime disputes with China. This would further strain relations with Beijing, potentially placing the Philippines on the front line of a future conflict over Taiwan. As the political drama continues to unfold and Duterte moves toward her impeachment trial, leaders in foreign capitals will have to confront a sobering reality. The future of the Western Pacific could hinge on a feud between rival Philippine political dynasties. You cannot separate the foreign policy from domestic politics, and it goes both ways. The thing is the US-China element is directly linked to basically political economy of the country. And that's why you cannot understand the Philippine foreign policy just from one angle. It was really a dialectical outcome of what China thinks and does, what US thinks and does, and what the Filipino political elite competition, internal competition, and calculus was. Thanks for watching [music] The Diplomat Asia. The Philippines is not the only country where domestic politics and internal power struggles are shaping foreign policy. In Vietnam, too, the rise of To Lam is changing the implementation of Hanoi's famous bamboo diplomacy. Check out our video for more.