The Philippines since c. 1990

The presidential election of May 1992, in which Aquino was not a candidate, was a seven-way race in which the winner, Fidel Ramos, received less than 24 percent of the overall vote. Ramos was a former army chief of staff and defense minister under Aquino; he was unpopular in some quarters because he had headed the agency charged with enforcing martial law under Marcos before turning against Marcos to give crucial support to Aquino in 1986. Some observers had wryly noted during the election that the winner might come to envy the losers, and indeed Ramos inherited the onus of having to deal with insurgencies from the right and the left, a severe energy crisis that produced daily electricity outages, an infrastructure in decay, a large foreign debt, and the troubles of a population half of whom lived in deep poverty.

The Ramos administration remedied the energy crisis and proceeded to create a hospitable environment for economic recovery. Peace was successfully negotiated with the military rebels and the MNLF; it proved to be more elusive with the NDF. A more open economy was created through a series of macroeconomic reforms. Consequently, by the time of the Asian financial crisis that swept the region in 1997, the Philippine economy was stable enough to escape serious damage. A proactive foreign and security policy prevented the deterioration of relations with China, one of several countries with which the Philippines disputed a claim to certain islands and islets in the South China Sea. Ramos’s foreign policy also earned positive diplomatic gains for the country abroad.

The election of Joseph Ejercito Estrada—former movie star, mayor of a small town in Metro Manila, senator, and vice president under Ramos—to the presidency in May 1998 brought a reversal of many of the economic, political, and diplomatic accomplishments of the Ramos administration. Although Estrada generally maintained economic growth and political stability in the first year of his administration, he subsequently came under fire largely because of his failure to fulfill promises to reduce poverty and to open the economy further to private enterprise. Estrada was impeached in November 2000, charged with bribery, graft and corruption, betrayal of the public trust, and culpable violation of the constitution. The refusal of Estrada’s senatorial allies to open an envelope that allegedly held evidence against him during the impeachment trial triggered a popular revolt; the uprisings ultimately led to Estrada’s ouster, subsequent arrest, detention, and trial before the Sandiganbayan, the country’s corruption court.

In January 2001 Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Estrada’s former vice president, was sworn in as the country’s 14th president. A daughter of former president Diosdado Macapagal with a doctorate in economics, Arroyo was faced with the challenges of leading a democracy that had remained dominated by the elite, stimulating the economy to grow faster than the country’s population, providing jobs for an abundance of the country’s large group of college graduates each year, and relieving poverty. Despite some reduction of poverty, as well as the curbing of corruption in certain arenas, Arroyo struggled with political instability and widespread crime, including the increasingly common kidnappings for ransom. She herself became implicated in corruption, which stirred disillusioned soldiers to attempt a coup in 2003. The coup failed, and Arroyo was reelected to the presidency in 2004. Later allegations of election fixing and an increasingly repressive approach to government, however, sparked a call for impeachment and another coup plot in 2006; once again the coup failed. Arroyo subsequently declared a “state of emergency” and banned all public demonstrations. Although the declaration was quickly lifted, the gesture was broadly perceived as emblematic of authoritarian rule. In September 2007 Estrada, who had been under house arrest outside of Manila since 2001, was convicted on additional graft charges and given a life sentence; however, Arroyo soon pardoned him of all charges.

Throughout the turmoil in the executive branch, political and economic issues continued to animate the Philippines in other realms. In the Muslim south, increasingly militant and widespread unrest was a growing concern. In the north, a concerted movement was under way to reformulate the country’s constitution. In the international arena, remittances from overseas Filipinos (which have become an important component of the economy) were jeopardized as neighbouring countries rewrote their laws regarding foreign employment and threatened to deport undocumented workers.

In 2009, underscoring the delicacy of the situation in the south, members of a powerful ruling clan in Mindanao were implicated in a November incident in which a political opponent of the clan and his entourage were massacred. Until then the Arroyo government had been allied with the clan as a means of counteracting Moro separatists. However, in early December Arroyo broke with the clan and declared martial law in a portion of Mindanao—the first time it had been imposed since the Marcos era—precipitating considerable domestic debate. The decree was lifted several days later, after the government declared it had thwarted a potential rebellion in Mindanao.

The 2010 presidential and parliamentary elections featured a number of candidates with familiar names. Benigno S. (“Noynoy”) Aquino III, son of Benigno and Corazon, defeated a field of presidential hopefuls led by Joseph Estrada. In addition, Arroyo, Imelda Marcos, and boxing star Manny Pacquiao each won seats in the House of Representatives. In October 2012 Aquino announced the conclusion of a peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that would grant a significant degree of autonomy to a Muslim-majority region on the southern island of Mindanao. The four-decade conflict had claimed roughly 120,000 lives and displaced some two million people.

In early November 2013, large portions of the central Philippines were devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan, a massive tropical cyclone that cut a broad swath some 500 miles (800 km) long across several islands before exiting into the South China Sea. Thousands of people were killed, and hundreds of thousands were made homeless. It was the most severe of several natural calamities to hit the country that year, including typhoons in August and October and a magnitude-7.1 earthquake, also in October.

Perhaps the most-pressing foreign policy issue for the Philippines in the 2010s was China’s increasingly assertive posture in the South China Sea. As the Philippines worked to shore up its weak military forces, in 2014 it filed a case with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. It sought a ruling under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea concerning a reef that was within Philippine territorial waters. China claimed ownership of waters close to the Philippines and in April 2015 began construction of an artificial island at Fiery Cross Reef, heightening tension in the region. In July 2016 the court concluded that there was no evidence of any historical Chinese claim to the waters, and it ruled that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights. In addition, it stated that China’s island-building program had caused serious environmental damage. Officials from the Philippines greeted the decision, but China dismissed the ruling, claiming that the court lacked both jurisdiction and any kind of enforcement mechanism.

On the domestic front, a crowded field in the 2016 presidential election was headed by Rodrigo Duterte, the longtime mayor of Davao City. Duterte rode to the top of the polls with incendiary populist rhetoric and a broad anticorruption platform, and he was elected president on May 9, 2016. Duterte had campaigned on a promise to execute 100,000 criminals, and upon his inauguration in June there was a dramatic spike in extrajudicial killings of suspected illegal drug dealers. Human rights groups protested Duterte’s draconian methods, and in 2018 the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into the more than 12,000 deaths associated with his “war on drugs.” Duterte responded by withdrawing the Philippines from the ICC and instructing police to shoot activists if they were seen “obstructing justice.” Independent journalists and political rivals were imprisoned on spurious charges, but Duterte retained significant popularity with the Filipino public. In May 2019 voters endorsed Duterte’s agenda in legislative elections, giving him majorities in both houses and removing the final obstacle to his consolidation of power.

The country’s next presidential election was held on May 9, 2022. Ten candidates stood for president, with Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. (byname Bongbong), son of the ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos, emerging as the front-runner during the campaign period. He emphasized the unity of the country, which some analysts viewed as an attempt to move past his family’s controversies. Bongbong won the election with 58.8 percent of the total vote; it was the highest margin of victory in the country since 1981. His nearest challenger was vice-president Leni Robredo, who won about 28 percent of the total vote. On June 30, 2022, Bongbong was sworn in as the 17th president of the Philippines, signifying the Marcos family’s successful political rehabilitation.