The Philippines’ presidential election heats up with boxer Manny Pacquiao and the former dictator’s son among 5 surprising candidates duking it out for control

• The Philippines’ presidential election is set for May, and all candidates have filed for the race.
• The candidates include boxer Manny Pacquiao, the son of a reviled dictator, and a former teen actor.
• President Rodrigo Duterte has already stirred the pot, saying one of the front-runners uses cocaine.

With the deadline for candidacy elapsing on November 15, we compiled a list of the front-runners who have emerged in the lead-up to the Philippines’ May presidential election.

Perhaps the most notable among them are the son of a former dictator, a teen actor turned senator, the senator and champion boxer Manny Pacquiao, and an ex-police general once on Interpol’s most-wanted list.

Campaigning isn’t set to start until February, but the theatrics have already begun. President Rodrigo Duterte has joined in, saying in a recent speech that a candidate “who might win hands down” used cocaine. When reporters asked him whom he was referring to, he demurred.

The country’s constitution blocks Duterte from running for president again. As his six-year term — characterized by his hardhanded style and controversial war on drugs — comes to an end next year, the nation is watching keenly for who will replace him.

The Philippines has long struggled with political corruption and instability in the wake of a 1986 revolution that deposed the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It ranked 115th out of 180 countries in the 2020 Corruption Perception Index run by Transparency International and has for decades consistently charted well below the World Bank’s median for political stability.

And unlike in the US, Philippine political parties are generally weak, and politicians can switch sides with little consequence, experts told Insider.

Here are five notable and leading candidates for the May election in the Philippines.

The dictator’s son: Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr.

Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is the son of the dictator Marcos Sr., who ruled the Philippines for 25 years until he was ousted by an uprising in 1986. After years of torturing, killing, and displacing thousands of Filipinos under martial law, Marcos Sr. went into exile in Hawaii with his family, where he died three years later.

After his father died, Marcos was permitted to return to the Philippines, where he later served as a governor and a senator. He ran for vice president in 2016 — endorsed by his mother, Imelda — but was beaten by the lawyer Leni Robredo, who’s also running for president in the upcoming election.

“His family has spent quite a lot in rehabilitating their image and promoting revisionist versions of Philippine history and the legacy of the late dictator,” professor Maria Ela Atienza, the chair of the department of political science at the University of the Philippines, told Insider.

He commands a cultlike following in the Philippines, especially among younger voters who may not have had as much direct contact with his father’s government, professor Jorge Tigno, who also teaches political science at the University of the Philippines, said.

Tigno considers him one of the race’s strongest candidates.

“He may not get a majority, but he can, at least, at this point, get a plurality to win,” the professor said.

Marcos has benefited from one of the biggest twists so far in the race: Sara Duterte-Carpio, the current president’s daughter, who was thought to be a powerhouse candidate for the presidency, announced on November 16 that she would be Marcos’ running mate as vice president.

The vice president and president are elected separately in the Philippines, but the alliance allows both sides to tap each other’s voter bases — Marcos is popular in the northern part of the country, while the Dutertes are favored in the south.

Human-rights groups decried Marcos’ candidacy and filed a petition to stop him from running, but there has been no result. 

As to how he got his nickname, Atienza said: “Bongbong” is a common name given to people named after their fathers.

The boxing champion: Manny ‘PacMan’ Pacquiao

In September, the world-champion boxer Pacquiao put down his gloves for good, announcing his retirement in a YouTube video that transitions into a hip-hop music video.

Pacquiao lived on the streets and worked construction as a young teenager but is now worth $26 million, according to Forbes. His rag-to-riches story has earned him folk-hero status among Filipinos, but Tigno said he lacked a serious political network and largely relied on giving out cash to sway voters.

“I don’t even think his own supporters are that serious in making sure he wins,” he said. “They just want a slice of his boxing winnings.”

And Pacquiao has a poor political track record. He was the most absent member of the Senate.

“Beyond populist promises like jailing corrupt officials, he lacks concrete programs and policies,” Atienza said. 

Duterte once saw Pacquiao as a prospective successor and close friend, but the pair had a falling out after the latter criticized Duterte’s pandemic response and relationship with China. That led the president to publicly scold the boxing champ.

Overall, Tigno and Atienza said the boxing icon didn’t stand much of a chance at winning the election.

The teen actor: Francisco Domagoso, aka Isko Moreno

Francisco Domagoso is serving his first term as the mayor of Manila, the Philippines’ capital. But Domagoso, who goes by the stage name Isko Moreno, was also a teen actor who came from humble beginnings, growing up in the slums like Pacquiao did. 

As a teen, Domagoso hosted the popular Filipino variety show “That’s Entertainment” and appeared in several films. During the 1990s, Domagoso starred in what Filipinos called “titillating films,” a “mature” genre popular at the time. He moved into politics in ’98 and got his start as a city councilor. He was elected as Manila’s mayor in 2019.

As mayor, he has focused on reviving Manila’s tourism industry and image, which has earned him the favor of the capital’s residents, Atienza said.

He’s been branded as a “Duterte-lite” figure because he employed the same campaign team as Duterte and is campaigning off his record as a mayor, while aligning with populist ideologies, she added.

But Tigno said he believed running may be a mistake. With only one mayoral term under his belt, Domagoso’s reputation isn’t as well-established as it could be.

“He could have run for another two terms and solidify his hold on the city, as well as on the national psyche, but he instead chose to run for a national position,” Tigno said.

He added: “His popularity at this time is simply no match to the cult status enjoyed by Marcos Jr. And while he may be able to command a significant portion of his Manila constituents, I don’t think it would be enough.”

The police general: Panfilo ‘Ping’ Lacson

Panfilo “Ping” Lacson has been serving on and off in the Philippines Senate since 2001. Before that, he served as the director general of the police from 1998 to 2001.

Hailed as an enforcer who spurned bribes and cracked down on corruption, Lacson gained a celebritylike status for his reforms, such as requiring cops to trim their waistlines to 86 centimeters and posting corrupt officers to dangerous areas with high levels of rebel presence.

A movie was even made about him in 2000, titled “Ping Lacson: Super Cop.” After he retired from police work and was elected to the Senate in 2001, Lacson was accused by the military-intelligence chief Victor Corpus of laundering $700 million for then-President Joseph Estrada. He has denied the allegations and since been outspoken for stricter laws against money laundering.

Lacson was also accused of involvement in the killings of 11 gang members in 1995, as well as the slaying of a well-known publicist and his driver, with the latter allegation putting him on Interpol’s “red-notice” wanted list in 2010.

But in 2013, the Supreme Court of the Philippines dismissed the gang-killing case against Lacson with finality. He was also taken off the red-notice list in 2011 after the Philippines dropped charges for the publicist’s killing because it found that the main witness against Lacson was “unreliable.”

Lacson, having one failed a presidential bid from 2004, now hopes to win the race with promises of curbing illegal drugs, criminality, and corruption, which mirrors Duterte’s 2016 campaign.

Once an outspoken proponent of bringing the death penalty back to the Philippines, he’s now changed his mind and wants to build a prison for criminals like the one on Alcatraz Island. He said that “prevention, rehabilitation, and correction” were a better route for combating criminal behavior, according to the local outlet Inquirer.net

Recent polls indicate Lacson hasn’t generated the popularity he needs to contest Marcos or other front-runners, said Tigno. 

The vice president and Duterte’s nemesis: Leni Robredo

Leni Robredo is the vice president of the Philippines, serving alongside Duterte. But she’s also been a fierce critic of his, regularly slamming his war on drugs and his pandemic response. In return, Duterte tried to exclude her from Cabinet meetings and pressured her to resign.

The daughter of a regional-court judge, Robredo passed the bar in 1997 and worked in the public attorney’s office before being elected to Congress in 2013. She supported antidiscrimination and anti-poverty movements and a Freedom of Information Act that increased public transparency of government funding and transactions.

The presidential hopeful has been the target of several fake-news campaigns by other politicians and social-media influencers.

One such incident was a doctored photo of politicians having dinner while appearing to laugh at her as she was on TV. Agence France-Presse has since debunked the image. And a fake viral video claimed she had been disqualified from the presidential race after she broke election rules.

“Robredo’s numbers at the moment are not that high, but they are rising,” Tigno said. “With a constant campaign movement behind her, she may end up matching, if not outrunning, Marcos Jr.”

Robredo has experience as a politician and vice president, but whether voters will appreciate those achievements is another thing altogether, he added.

“People want immediate positive results, and I don’t think Robredo is able to make that kind of promise to people,” he added. “She is too sincere with herself to allow herself to lie and twist the truth to people. That can be a problem for her in the end if she loses.

“But if she wins, it can mean a new lease on life for Philippine democracy.”