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Although MI6’s BBC give good summaries here and here of the state of play in the recent midterm elections in the Philippines, they ignore the elephants in the room or, to rephrase that, the American and Chinese navies, which both threaten what remains of the sovereignty of that archipelago.

Broadly speaking, the Marcos mob rule in the far north and the rival Duterte clan rule in the far south, with a series of other families and unprincipled Chinese oligarchs occupying the political landscape in between them.

Throw in the Catholic Church, which broadly supports the powerful Aquino clan and you get a better picture of this very intricate mosaic, where a handful of families and amoral Chinese oligarchs have divided up the country between them and where the people have had no real say since the failed February 1986 People Power Revolution, occasioned by the Marcos button men murdering Ninoy Aquino, which caused the USMC to evacuate the Marcos mob to Hawaii, and Corazon Aquino, Ninoy’s widow, to assume the office of President.

Although we can belatedly praise the People Power Revolution, its core problem was that all the rats, who abandoned the Marcos ship, clambered aboard it and, in the words of the late Cardinal Sin, though the Philippines had rid itself of Ali Baba, it was still stuck with the 40 thieves or, in its case, the 40 families and associated Chinese oligarchs, who own it. Though the Philippines kicked the Yanks out of Clark air base and their navy out of Subic Bay, the Philippines remained a basket case where remittances from relatives working overseas reached a record US$40 bn in 2024, thereby putting its inflow only behind India (USD $129 billion), Mexico (USD $68 billion), and China (USD $48 billion), but ahead of Pakistan (USD $33 billion) and underlining the point that emigration and emigrants’ remittances are integral parts of the economic model of the mobsters, who rule the Philippines.

Of course, emigrants’ remittances are not the only game in town. Far more crucial to the outside world is the pivotal role the Philippines is playing in NATO attempts to contain China, whose navy continues to grab yet more islands close to the Philippines it has no right to claim. Because the Marcos mob have always been in the pocket of the Yanks, they are quite happy to see their country turned into an armed encampment and, no doubt, they are making plenty of coin out of it, both directly by leasing land and indirectly by taking their cut off the sex services that are a staple of overseas American bases.

Rodrigo Duterte, for all his brashness, is sitting in a prison cell in the Hague because he supported dialogue with China, rather than turning the Philippines into a shooting range for Chinese, Japanese and American hi-tech ordnance. Although the BBC and other Western intelligence outlets rabbit on that Sara Duterte, Rodrigo’s daughter who is currently the vice President of the Philippines, threatened to have Bongbong Marcos, the current President of the Philippines, whacked, that, to me, is hot air. Certainly, Rodrigo was better known for whacking his enemies, rather than threatening to whack them.

And, regarding the charge against him that he had some low level drug dealers whacked, only someone, who snorts the levels of cocaine Zelensky’s mates put up their snouts, should believe that charge from NATO’s utterly discredited International Criminal Court has any more legitimacy than that overpaid circus of NATO clowns has. If killing a few thousand Asian innocents make Duterte a war criminal, then surely the same should apply to the Biden, Obama and Clinton organised crime families as well as to their tens of thousands of cronies, who should be locked up in the Hague, along with Genocide Joe and NATO Inc’s other psychos.

As for Rodrigo Duterte, he secured 405,221 votes for Davao’s mayor as against 49,000 for his rival. Vice Mayor Baste Duterte is now acting Mayor in the absence of his daddy, Rodrigo Duterte II — the former president’s namesake and grandson — has been proclaimed as the top councilor in Davao City’s first district and the Duterte Youth candidates secured 1,871,546, putting them in second place ranking after Akbayan. Although the people of Mindanao have spoken in the Dutertes’ favour, NATO does not want to hear.

So, what should be done with the Philippines? The first thing is that People Power should be given a fighting chance and that the Aquinos should team up with the Dutertes and the Catholic Church to make that happen. As regards Rodrigo, he should, of course, be returned to Mindanao as a hero and should not suffer the belly-of-lead fate the Marcos mob dished out to Ninoy Aquino as soon as his plane touched down at Manila airport. The 96 year old Imelda Marcos should, along with her disruptive family, go back to Hawaii if she is up to it and, though there should be a law debarring any of the Marcos mob from holding office, that would be as impractical as trying to bar the Bhutto family in Pakistan or the Gandhi-Nehru family in India, the world’s largest democracy (LOL).

Although none of that would get the twin millstones of the Chinese and NATO military off the backs of the long-suffering Filipinos, it would begin the process of giving them a real voice that they can weaponise against one or other or both of those bullies.

Although my proposals, modest though they are, will not cause political tsunamis in the Philippines, they do help to balance the scale against NATO, which has its so-called Global Investigative Journalism Network rabbiting on in pieces like this about Duterte’s vast disinformation networks. Duterte, unlike NATO, has no such networks. What he does have is a network of allies, some nice, some not so nice who feel, not without the justification adumbrated above, he has been hard done by and who are powerful enough not to let the matter rest, and good on every last one of them for that.