Marcos-Duterte War Phase II

In the two days after the new year, two noteworthy developments happened in the ongoing conflict between the Marcoses and the Dutertes. While not really earthshaking, they have significant implications. First is the removal/deletion of Vice President Sara and former president Duterte as members of the National Security Council (NSC). The other is the impending filing of the fourth impeachment complaint against VP Sara in the House of Representatives which may have the endorsement of the congressmen allies of BBM and Speaker Romualdez.

While the NSC has not had a significant role in the Duterte administration and BBM had called an NSC meeting only once in the last two years, it is an integral part the Philippines national security structure and provides the necessary inputs for executive decision making. Until revised, it was composed of 28 members which is chaired by the president and included the vice president, the Senate president, the House speaker, some chairman of committees in the upper and lower house involved in national security, and most Cabinet members headed by the executive secretary.

The two previous presidents are also included, as their views and previous policies are deemed relevant/important in national security. At the option of the chairman, the heads of the different armed forces, the PNP, the NBI and other agencies including the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, are asked to attend some meetings.

The NSC, as composed, is quite a large unwieldy group, that the real strategic planning and discussions are really done in the smaller executive committee of the NSC, composed of not more than 11 people plus the resource persons needed. The large NSC meetings are used for initial inputs and definition of parameters prior to the ex-com meetings, and as validation and transmission points of the decisions of the NSC executive committee.

The official reason for dropping VP Sara and former president Duterte from the NSC are justified due to the VP’s actions or non-actions on China’s incursion on Philippine territorial waters, and her threats against the life of the president, the first lady and Speaker Romualdez. Former president Duterte’ position on geopolitical matters including his concessions to China contradicts BBM’s security agenda for the Philippines, so he has also to be excluded from NSC.

There are, however, unstated reasons why they have to be excluded from the NSC which are political and relevant to their conflict. Primarily, they have to be restricted from access to information that are useful to them and detrimental to the Marcoses. In fact all information from the government that will give ammunition to further attack and destabilize should be deprived from opponents. The other unstated reason is to signal to all political persons and groups that in this phase of the conflict, counting and strengthening of the Marcos/Romualdez alliance are in order and all are expected to toe the line.

The BBM administration is facing a number of headwinds and headaches which have already eroded/reduced his poll ratings. Among them the 2025 budget controversies, the PhilHealth issues, the remaining POGOs, rice prices, rising fuel prices, SSS contribution increase, corruption, and others. A number of these issues are exploitable by the anti-BBM forces, so it is a must to have a formidable political alliance going into the mid-term May 2025 election. It is also a must that the BBM party has a dominant majority in Congress and in the Senate or he will have a big problem in the presidential election in 2028 with a vengeful Duterte candidacy.

In this Phase II of this Marcos-Duterte conflict, the time to keep your enemies closer than your friends has passed. It is time for offensive plus defensive maneuvers. The endorsement of BBM administration congressmen of the fourth impeachment complaint and endorsement to the Senate will be the start of Phase III.