Philippine Civil War

In the past week, there's been a lot of news about the Philippines on Korean YouTube.

This is due to the shooting incident involving a senator.

Here's the background of the incident.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) attempted to arrest Dela Rosa, who served as the police chief during the Duterte administration and led the war on drugs, on charges of "crimes against humanity."

To evade arrest, he stayed inside the Senate building,

and pro-Duterte lawmakers essentially protected him.

Then, during the attempted arrest, gunshots were heard from within the Senate, aimed at assassinating him.

The reason this incident escalated is not just the shooting itself:

It's a political war between the Duterte faction and the Marcos faction.

Sara Duterte, who was Bongbong Marcos's running mate, has now become his biggest political rival. She has posted a video testament on social media stating that if she is killed, her security team is ordered to immediately kill the President, the First Lady, and the Speaker of the House.

In Philippine politics, political parties are meaningless; only money and family name matter. That's why over 100 current ruling party members of the House of Representatives defected and joined Duterte when he became president.

The reason for this is that by joining the ruling party, they can secure government budgets, which allows them to embezzle funds and run in the next election.

In a country of over 100 million people, it's impossible for an honest and poor, unknown candidate to win a national election.

Sara Duterte, the daughter of the former president, has the nickname "Puncher" because when she was mayor, she assaulted a court officer who was legally executing an eviction order with full-force punches.

She landed five strong punches on a public official legally carrying out a warrant. This was captured on camera during news filming, so video evidence still exists.

Of course, she was not punished, and the officer reportedly still salutes her whenever he sees her. In Manila, if someone provokes her, she's the type to "kill with her mouth," and the news outlets report her words as significant.

As a lawyer, she never backs down in arguments, and she's a fiery woman whose fists fly when things get heated.

There are three major families that dominate the Philippines: the Marcos family, the king of the North who controls the northern region; the Arroyo family, the queen of Pampanga; and the Duterte family, the ruler of the southern Philippines.

These families have held power in five out of the last seven presidential elections.

Pampanga, where Angeles City is located, is likely included because it has a very high number of tourists and thus a lot of cash flow. Their method of making money is "pork barrel." Even though Arroyo became president, she is currently the Speaker of the House, siding with Marcos.

Pork barrel roughly works like this:

To explain it...

This is how it works. What's the problem with this?

For example, a mayor of a district gets their son elected as mayor. This mayor son inflates the budget for a 500 million peso city hall parking lot construction to 1.5 billion pesos, pocketing 1 billion pesos. This was the case with Vice President Jejomar Binay. There is no oversight or economic sense in this.

Next, there's an illegal lottery called "jueteng" in local communities. Operating this jueteng generates enormous profits. Since jueteng is mostly played by the poor, it's like squeezing every last peso out of them.

Finally, they supply drugs.

The profits from this drug, "shabu," are immense and destroy the souls of the community.

This is a general overview of corruption in the Philippines.

Duterte focused his attack on "shabu" among these issues.

Currently, the pork barrel budget is continuously decreasing. This signifies a decline or stagnation in tax revenue, or an increase in government spending or national debt. It's likely due to COVID-19 and then Trump. This means there's less room for the vested interests to skim off money, and it's time for the existing power structures to make a choice.

Duterte is good in many ways, but he's trying to set a red line, a boundary that absolutely must not be crossed, rather than trying to solve the problem of corruption in the Philippines. If he were to address the fundamental issues, assassination might await him. And now, that fight (the shooting incident involving the senator + the impeachment motion against Sara Duterte) has begun.

Depending on who wins, it will determine whether the Philippines returns to the past where drugs were openly sold cheaply on the streets, or whether drugs become very difficult to obtain and their prices skyrocket.