The ruling system exposes its own rotten core with the ongoing reactionary elections. In the past months of campaigning for the Senate, Congress, and local government units, people have witnessed how elections in the Philippines are dominated by dynasties and parties that represent the interests of imperialist powers and of the few, rather than the majority of the people.

The 2025 elections are ruled by the most rotten cliques of the ruling class: the Marcoses and the Dutertes, both thoroughly immersed in corruption, repression, and oppression of the people, and in their subservience to the dictates of foreign imperialists. They are now competing to hold power with the aim of expanding their wealth and bureaucratic privileges, and to escape accountability for their crimes against the people.

The Marcos clique wants to dominate Congress, the Senate, and local government units (LGUs) to tighten their control over power and create conditions for extending their dynasty’s power beyond 2028. The imprisonment of Duterte in the International Criminal Court, where he is charged with crimes against humanity, was facilitated by Marcos in an attempt to derail his political rivals. The Marcos regime is staging various shows and gimmicks to gain broad support from the people. However, it fails to cover up the severe crisis of poverty caused by the endless rise in the prices of goods, low wages, and lack of employment.

The Dutertes are striving to place enough of their people in the Senate, primarily to block the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte, accused of anomalous spending of hundreds of millions of pesos from the government budget. To gain the people’s sympathy, they portray themselves as victims of Marcos’ political oppression. However, they cannot erase the fresh memories of the masses concerning the widespread violence and suffering endured under the previous regime, nor overshadow the people’s cry for justice for all victims of the fascist crimes of the tyrant Duterte.

The dominance of these two rotten cliques in the 2025 elections illustrates the repugnant elections under the semicolonial and semifeudal system in the Philippines. This is a competition among a few powerful individuals. There is no real space for the participation of the oppressed and exploited masses. The elections are made to appear as democratic, while in reality, they are only for bureaucratic capitalists, comprador bourgeoisie, and landlords.

In recent months, the participation of democratic, progressive, and nationalist candidates and parties in the elections for the Senate and Congress amplified the people’s voice. They brought to the campaign trail the calls for a living wage, genuine land reform, lowering the prices of goods, free healthcare and education, jobs, rights, freedom, and other demands of the people. Most of them come from the ranks of farmers and workers, urban poor, fisherfolk, drivers, and other oppressed sectors.

In contrast, reactionary politicians play deaf to the cries of the people. They may portray themselves as pro-people, but this posturing lasts only until the elections. Using their vast resources of wealth, they now dominate the party-list elections as well, leaving no space for parties that truly represent the poor sectors of society.

They spend hundreds of millions of pesos on radio and television advertisements, plastering walls and posts with their posters, and distributing shirts bearing their faces and names. Alongside this, surveys have sprung up like mushrooms to influence the minds of the people. This is accompanied by the use of paid influencers to push social media discourse favoring the interests of some politicians or parties. Hundreds of millions of pesos are sure to flood in as the election day approaches to buy votes.

There are numerous cases of killings and violence among rival politicians in various parts of the country. State violence is employed by agents of the military, police, and NTF-Elcac to suppress progressive candidates and parties, in the form of surveillance, filing of fabricated cases, arrests and imprisonment, and intimidation of their forces and supporters.

It is certain that those in power will again use the automated counting of votes to ensure that the election results favor them. Thus, the call for manual counting of votes is growing stronger, which would provide significant assurance that the votes are counted correctly. However, this continues to be ignored by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). A significant number of Filipino migrant workers are set to be disenfranchised due to the implementation of online voting.

Whichever of the Marcoses or the Dutertes prevail in the upcoming elections, it is certain that the reactionary state will continue to decay more rapidly in the face of the insoluble crisis of the ruling system. It will continue to implement programs and laws that favor the interests of US imperialism, large foreign companies, and the ruling classes, which will bring further suffering to the people. Corruption will undoubtedly worsen as bureaucratic capitalists recover the hundreds of millions they invested in the elections.

The solid organized ranks of the Filipino people must continue to be strengthened and must push forward along the militant path of struggle, especially in facing major challenges in upcoming months and years, including the start of the Senate impeachment trial of Sara Duterte and the trial of Rodrigo Duterte in the ICC, as well as against the intensifying US military intervention in the Philippines and war incitements against China, the subservience of the Marcos puppet regime, and its anti-people and oppressive policies, corruption, ineptitude, and the fascist repression and assault on the people.

In recent months, many have awakened to the rotten reactionary elections and the sham democracy under the ruling system. This shows the people that, indeed, revolutionary change is the true solution to the fundamental problems of the people. The National Democratic Front and all its affiliated organizations are continuously growing stronger and expanding, doing everything possible to help strengthen the New People’s Army and advance the armed struggle.

In the countryside, the New People’s Army (NPA) continues to persevere and strengthen itself despite the relentless and brutal suppression by the Marcos regime. The NPA is deepening and expanding its ties with the peasant masses to advance their anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and anti-feudal struggles, strengthen their mass organizations, and launch tactical offensives it is capable of winning. Under the guidance of the Party and the rectification movement, the people’s war is certain to forge ahead along the path of advance.