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Pariah to president: Marcos Jr returns family to Philippines supremacy
Marcos Jr, known by his nickname "Bongbong", won Monday's election in a landslide, following relentless whitewashing of the family's past and leveraging of powerful alliances with rival families that control large swathes of the country.
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This photo taken on April 24, 2022 shows presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr attending a campaign rally in Taguig, suburban Manila ahead of the presidential election on May 9. (Agence France-Presse/Jam Sta Rosa)
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erdinand Marcos Jr, whose dictator father and namesake plundered and brutalised the Philippines, has reached the endgame of a decades-long campaign to rehabilitate the family brand: the presidency.
Marcos Jr, known by his nickname "Bongbong", won Monday's election in a landslide, following relentless whitewashing of the family's past and leveraging of powerful alliances with rival families that control large swathes of the country.
In the 36 years since a popular uprising toppled the patriarch and chased the family into US exile, the Marcoses have been rebuilding their political fortunes.
Despite his own father's concerns about his "carefree and lazy" nature, Marcos Jr, 64, made it to the ultimate post.
After narrowly losing the vice presidential race to Leni Robredo in the 2016 election, he was determined their rematch in the presidential contest would end differently.
Vowing to unify the country, Marcos Jr made sweeping promises on the campaign trail to boost jobs and tackle rising prices in the lower middle-income country.
"Unity is my cause because of my firm belief that unity is the first step towards getting out of this crisis we are now in," Marcos Jr said in February -- without ever explaining further what the slogan meant.
