It is as if the national mindset of the Philippines, a country of warm and affectionate people, has been lobotomized.

But upon closer inspection, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s presidential victory on May 9 amid a sea of candidates, including famed boxer Manny Pacquiao, has been dogged by numerous controversies that are not necessarily related to his father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Not that Bongbong, now certifiably the president for the next six years, was affected by the hedonistic indulgences of the mother Imelda.

All that of course came to an abrupt halt on Feb. 25 1986, when then-president of the United States, Ronald Reagan, refused to further countenance the exuberant behavior of the former first couple in the Malacanang Palace. 

But this coup de grace of the Marcoses, which Bongbong has now overturned, was preceded by other events. Precisely because of the grave and serious manner with which his father lost his 20-year reign, nearly causing his entire family to be killed by a mob, Bongbong changed his tactics.

If the name Bongbong was not hilarious enough, he made it consciously so. Indeed, he took to leveraging Filipinos' considerable resources in facing all adversities, be they human-made or caused by the force of nature, with sardonic and self-deprecating humor, with more slapstick jokes and a penchant for fiesta and siesta.

There was no Cardinal Sin to impose any Catholic rigor. Besides, the Philippines was, and has (not have) been, the strongest US ally since the end of World War II in August 1945, if not longer.

But, in trying to understand the victory of Bongbong, it is key to understand that all nations must undergo what the late 19^th century political sociologist Ernest Renan called "forgetfulness".

In this context, there was a lot of it in the Philippines. This is why, when the world was still lamenting the tragic history of Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, the average Filipino, already feeling the crush of the pandemic and the escalating prices in food, decided to make the election a fun-loving and colorful event.

This conformed to what clinical psychologists call "empty empathy". Life was stretched to the breaking point, so they dabbled in public policy.

To be sure, this was not due to enforced amnesia from the top to the bottom by the presidency of the Philippines, let alone the Congress.

The society was running on an empty emotional and economic tank. What seemed like a danger from the past was but a passing event, which the future might well correct anyway, as democracy always goes wrong before it goes right.

Even the last-gasp albeit belated influence of the Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, the founder of The Rappler, to stop Bongbong and Duterte from winning as the presidential and vice presidential candidates, proved fruitless.

As usual, the West reacted too little too late to prevent the voters, who have always had the philosophy of live and let live, to vote en masse for Bongbong as the president and Duterte as the vice president of the Philippines, once and for all, to oversee the fate of Philippines for the next six years.

Writing in The Washington Post, top sociologist on the Philippines, Marcos Garrido at the University of Chicago, collected result after result from the field that the Filipinos were not abandoning democracy. Bongbong and Duterte's joint victory was without a Cathartic release.

The original sin of Ferdinand Marcos, for what it is worth, dated to the Aug. 21, 1983 assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr., which triggered widespread unrest and forced Reagan to cancel a planned visit to the Philippines -- this despite Reagan clearly liking Marcos and Imelda. The killing, blamed on Marcos and his loyalists by the opposition, was also a turning point for US policy. The US thought that by phasing out Marcos and the ever-so-indignant wife, the people of the Philippines would be in total gratitude to the US. Wrong!

With the rise of China, and a revisionist Russia, the Filipinos could cavort with anyone. The US has not watched the Philippines with the proverbial eye of the tiger, or even a bald eagle hawk.

Sara Duterte had been friendly with China for as long as her father, former president Roberto Duterte, 2016-2022.

Manila eased the travel restrictions on Chinese tourists to Mindanao, where Sara Duterte was the governor of Davao City. There are now commercial flights from Davao City to the Chinese cities of Beijing and Tianjin, and in 2018, XiamenAir established direct flights between Davao and Jianjiang.

Chinese tourists have taken advantage of these changes, making up over 37 percent of Davao's total foreign tourist visits in 2019. Chinese tourism is bound to go up again once China gets a grip on the pandemic.

Chinese tourists have also been integral to spurring businesses and local development in Davao. Some local estimates suggest that Chinese tourists spend an average of US$3,000 each over a typical five-day visit on food, accommodation and transport.

These interactions have resulted in even stronger relations between Davao City and China.

But strictly speaking, it was not only China betting on Bongbong and Duterte. Both candidates refused to join any presidential debates, spending more of their time with Tik Tok, Facebook and other such social media platforms that unwittingly allowed them to tap into the elan of the fun-loving Filipinos, irrespective of their background and age.

But the Filipinos, in due course, are likely to regret their electoral choices, just as they did with former president Roberto Duterte. Why?

The Philippines, not unlike the rest of the world, will confront the specter of five Fs. The prices of food, fuel, fertilizer, farmhands and baby formula will be ticking northward.

The cries of the babies, toddlers and their female partners are enough to make their male companions go ballistic. China can build infrastructure and even internet towers in god speed.

But China's preference for small families, even if the one-child-per-family policy has been removed, will not prepare them for the Philippines’ high fertility problem or the infamous Romeo and Juliet clause, where children as young as 12, upon parental consent and mutual agreement of the male and female children, are allowed to formally exchange the marriage vows. Mahal kita (I love you).

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The writer is the founding CEO of Strategic Pan Indo-Pacific Arena and an associate fellow at edX.org, a platform for education and learning pioneered by Harvard and MIT.