Carlos Conde: Philippine elections highlight political dynasties, high-jacking of party-list system
Women & Media podcast on the topic of Philippine elections with hosts Marivir Montebon, Cristina DC Pastor and guest Carlos Conde
By Marivir Montebon & Cristina DC Pastor
In this episode of Women and Media, guest Carlos Conde, senior researcher of Human Rights Watch Asia, examines the political fever in the Philippines following the arrest and detention of former President Rodrigo Duterte at The Hague.
Conde acknowledges the deep political loyalties of Filipinos based on ethnicity and patronage, blurring the values on human dignity and common good.
WAM is a social media platform where social issues are amplified for social clarity and action. It is streamed on Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
Marivir Montebon and Cristina DC Pastor with guest Carlos Conde on Philippine elections
This conversation on April 3, 2025, with Cristina DC Pastor and Marivir Montebon below:
Marivir Montebon: How are you feeling? Stressed out or are you just taking this as a part of our job as journalists?
Carlos Conde: I’ve been doing this for a long, long time so you tend to uh not manage stress but just to live with it in many ways. Of course, you manage it because if you don’t you get you know you’ll probably collapse mentally physically intellectually. You know even ordinary Filipinos are dealing with a lot of stress in the Philippines.
MM: I see you cooking online. Is that part of how you manage stress? Are you getting a lot of followers for your cooking show?
CC: No, I don’t have a cooking show. I just post things on my Instagram account called Angry Home Cook. I do that quite a bit, especially on weekends when I do commentaries about the state of affairs of our country.
Cristina Pastor: What are the positions up for grabs in the coming elections in May?
CC: We’re talking about the whole kaboodle except barangay, the president and vice president obviously and Sanggunian. But the Senate down to the municipalities and towns we’re going to be electing them, governors, mayors down to the cities and board members and counselors so you know it’s a fiesta as you can imagine.
I’m not even flippant about it but this is democracy in action. This has always been politics in the Philippines where the beauty about elections is the sheer rambunctiousness of it.
But on the other hand, there are certain things about these elections that may just unsettle me and should probably unsettle you as well and many others: political dynasties.
How this really concerns me very deeply is just how they have basically hijacked the party list
system so that now everyone can run for the party list positions in Congress and turn it around and make it part of the whole political circles that we’re seeing.
MM: There’s definitely a problem, Caloy, but that is also a reflection of our culture so how do you solve that problem when it is our way of thinking and our way of life looking at it from a cultural perspective?
CC: I think there are far deeper factors to consider here. Certainly, the conduct of the elections in the Philippines means part of it is culture. I mean I know the fiesta mentality that we have and this big gathering of Filipinos and their chance to meet up and have some facetime with their politician celebrities yeah, celebrities who are only willing to entertain people not so much to educate or tell them about their platforms or what needs to be done in this country but really just to keep their attention. So, you now see celebrities of all stripes running for office. So, there’s this relationship between celebrity and politics that has become much too intricate.
CP: I don’t see a movement that’s speaking out against political dynasties. Is there one?
CC: There’s always been some coming mostly from civil society and media. But from within the political sector itself it’s what you call a non-issue.
CP: I mean are they criticizing Vilma Santos for example? I haven’t heard any critical comments.
CC: Ordinary people and the political kind of community, oh no. In fact, they’re embracing that. I mean by the sheer number of them from the same family running for different positions so now you have Vilma Santos and her two sons, you also have the Tulfo family, Ramon Revilla. So you know these are just the more known ones. If you go to the obscure barangays or localities or municipalities, you’ll see there the same family names running for different offices.
So this movement against political dynasties, I don’t think it went off the ground to begin with. I mean it’s in the Constitution and legislators have been grappling with it to this day. Obviously, there’s a need to change the constitution if they’re not going to go that far in terms of suggesting changing the constitution because everything right now works for them.
MM: You know artists want to be in politics because it’s a sustainable income for them and people love to see celebrities. So, it’s just entertaining and nothing serious about our public life.
That’s why people are not mature. I don’t see an immediate solution to this problem, not even the legal part because the legislators are small barons and princes in their own localities.
CC: And there’s this argument that says you cannot really get rid of political dynasties. What you can do is try to finesse it in such a way you can select the better political dynasties.
This is the kind of perspective that we had with Aquinos for instance. A lot of people love them, like them because they seem to be better political dynasties. But you know studies have shown that political dynasticism does not redound to good governance or even an improved economy.
So again, this requires nothing short of a political revolution in many ways in trying to convince people not to fall for the same wrong and ethically and morally uh…dysfunction.
Conde: ‘What would happen if Duterte gets convicted or, God forbid, he dies while in detention…?’
CP: What do you mean by political revolution?
CC: It can be like the Leni (Robredo)-type revolution that we had in the 2022 election where a lot of people from the grassroots rose and supported Leni, that kind of thing.
CP: What do you see is the game plan of Imee Marcos?
CC: That’s a conundrum. The only thing that I can see is she’s trying to woo the Duterte votes, and that’s obvious in the way she’s conducting herself. I’m not sure if she would go as far as breaking her ties with her brother. Their mother would be really upset if that were to happen.
CP: Will Duterte’s arrest have an impact on the elections?
CC: Well, I think it will affect it in significant ways. Now keep in mind Sara Duterte is under fire in the Philippines for corruption. There’s an impeachment, and a trial is looming supposedly. I mean all sorts of seemingly credible allegations are up against and she’s out of moves I think except that her father was arrested. And so now she’s turning her father into a political slogan. More than that she is turning this into a kind of a rally for loyalty and support among their base.
Now some people are already speculating about what would happen if Duterte gets convicted or, God forbid, he dies while in detention because that would really be something to be honest you know that would really send a lot of Filipinos mad. Imagine what they would do to try to get back at the Marcoses because there will be blood. Make no mistake, there will be blood. Now of course the other part of this is whether the popularity of the Dutertes will be sustained.
This article is also published by The Filam.net https://thefilam.net/archives/43105
