In the Philippines,
the most important election in a generation is about to take place.
The namesake son of dictator Ferdinand Marcos
is poised to be president.
(CHEERING)
Marcos Jr's rise has divided the nation
and become a referendum on fact vs fiction.
Fuelling it all is a social media machine that's rewriting history.
How is social media influencing this election?
It will determine who wins.
I mean, how crazy is that, right?
WOMAN: The young ones, they don't know that this happened,
and they believe that the Marcoses had a good government.
All of these lies against the Marcos are all propaganda.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
In Tarlac City, two hours north of Manila,
the streets hum with a familiar cry.
BBM!
Presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr is in town
and thousands of local fans have come to support him.
BBM, BBM!
(HORN HONKS)
Known as Bongbong, or BBM,
his initials are more than a catchy slogan.
They're part of an elaborate effort to distance the Marcos family
from their brutal history.
BBM!
OK! OK!
OK! OK.
WOMAN: Marcos have done some things that people would disagree,
but there are still a lot of positives.
So, for me, that's the reason why I'm still supporting Bongbong.
Why not give it a try, right?
(CHEERING AND SHOUTING)
Thousands of people have been turning up here since dawn
just to catch a glimpse of the man
that they hope will be the next president of the Philippines.
BBM! BBM!
The excitement here is incredible,
when you think this family was run out of the Philippines
a few decades ago.
But the Marcoses never went away,
and they've been masterful at using social media
to attract a new generation of supporters
who don't know - or remember -
the dark reality of the Marcos Sr dictatorship.
(CHEERING)
Marcos Jr avoids journalists,
preferring vloggers like Ruben Gelio,
who livestream, comment and post only positive messages about him.
Do you think you're more powerful
than the mainstream media following the campaign?
Um...
I think so.
Because some of the media is so biased about Marcos
and they never show anything that Bongbong Marcos...
..a good...a good deed.
And as vloggers, we show the other side of the coin to the people.
So, this is the real Marcos, not the...
..not the one that mainstream said.
(CHEERING)
Marcos Jr has got more than 10 million followers
across Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter.
His campaign is turbocharged by his own social media team,
who produce hours of videos reframing the Marcos story.
If there is one thing that I think
clearly sets my father apart,
it's that he had a very clear vision for our country.
He viewed his work as president as one of nation-building -
of building up our country to make it better.
(CHEERING)
Leading polls with 56% support,
Marcos Jr seems unstoppable.
BBM! BBM!
One of the Marcos campaign's staunchest allies
is this man.
Attorney Larry Gadon!
Vying for a Senate seat in these elections,
Larry Gadon is a fixture at Marcos rallies.
The suspended lawyer is notorious
for his crude, violent and sexist language.
But the Marcos Jr campaign says he's been loyal.
How did you feel when Ferdinand Marcos Sr was removed from power?
I...I was crying for a whole week.
I did not... I wasn't able to go out of the house.
I was really hurt by what happened to President Marcos.
So, do you feel that this is a comeback of sorts?
Yes. Bongbong Marcos is a comeback for the Marcoses.
I think, uh, people get tired of,
uh, the mudslinging against the Marcoses,
and, uh, the people now realise
that the best president and the best administration we had,
uh, was President Marcos.
(BOTH SING IN LOCAL LANGUAGE)
For two decades, Ferdinand Marcos Sr and his wife, Imelda,
ruled like King and Queen.
Although he was elected in 1965
and again in '69,
the charismatic couple were a package deal.
Initially, the economy grew under Marcos
and the President spent big on infrastructure.
But cracks appeared.
NEWS REPORTER: He has proclaimed himself President, Prime Minister,
chief of the armed forces,
and one-man government, all in one.
In 1972, toward the end of his final term in office,
Marcos Sr declared martial law.
NEWS REPORTER: Elections have been cancelled.
Criticism of his actions and his regime has been outlawed.
His political opponents have been jailed.
(SHOUTING)
Thousands were murdered, tortured or disappeared,
while Ferdinand and Imelda blew millions
on property, fine art and jewellery.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
By 1986, the Philippines could take no more...
NEWS REPORTER: The economy is in ruins.
The country has been bitterly divided,
emotionally and politically.
..a popular uprising driving the Marcoses into exile,
where Marcos Sr later died.
(DOG YAPS)
WOMAN: So, what are the updates about the case you filed?
Of course, we suspect that it's going to come out
in favour of Marcos.
Tina Bawagan and Etta Rosales are sisters.
Both were arrested and tortured during martial law
and both have devoted their lives
to holding the Marcos dictatorship to account.
So, we're going to file to appeal this to the Supreme Court.
Because if you don't, you know, you're stupid.
The sisters come from a military family.
Tina was in primary school when Marcos Sr became president.
You know, we had a pretty good life.
My mother used to campaign for Marcos
because she and my father knew him personally.
She soon learned of his corruption.
Tina was 27
and a member of the underground resistance to the Marcos regime
when she was detained by soldiers.
I was seated in a chair, handcuffed.
Then they started asking questions.
None of my answers satisfied him.
So, he slapped my face.
Then he'd slap me again. Slap, slap, slap.
And then they would put a sharp object over my chest.
And then they would fondle my breasts.
And then the worst of it was that they put an object inside my vagina.
And I shouted, but it was like no-one could hear.
The physical torture only stopped
when soldiers got word of her family's military connections.
But Tina remained in detention for a month.
You know, there are so many other stories,
a lot more horrible than mine.
I know of some women who were raped
but they cannot tell it because there is...there's a stigma.
It's important to tell it again and again and again,
because so many of our countrymen don't know it anymore.
The young ones, they don't know that this happened
and they believe that the Marcoses
had a good...Marcos had a good government,
a benevolent government -
that we were fine then.
We have to continue to tell the story
so that it doesn't happen again.
At a quiet shrine in the capital,
those who fought against the Marcos regime are remembered.
Despite many eyewitness accounts and official reports about the violence,
Larry Gadon dismisses it all.
LARRY GADON: That is all propaganda.
No-one was killed, disappeared or tortured?
Those are rebels.
They choose to fight the government,
then, if they die, that's their fault.
Don't tell me you will fight the government
and you will just receive a slap on your face.
They were fighting a dictatorship.
Those are propaganda. We are all free during that time.
The majority of the Filipino people
do not believe those lies, those propaganda,
of human rights violations.
Otherwise, they would not go to BBM's rallies.
(THUNDER RUMBLES)
WOMAN: (ON RADIO) Storm signals are now up
as Agaton intensifies into a tropical storm.
Expected gale force winds in Leyte.
On the island of Leyte, in the central Philippines,
people have a special place in their hearts for the Marcoses.
(DRUMMING)
Imelda Marcos grew up here, in Tacloban,
where her family dominates local politics.
(CHEERING)
Tonight's rally is a family affair.
Marcos Jr's three sons are beloved on social media
and, this time, he's brought his youngest, Vincent, along.
This is how dynasties are made.
If Marcos Jr pulls this election victory off,
the family will emerge as the most powerful political clan
in the country.
(CHEERING ON RECORDING)
Chemmy Rivas was born in Tacloban
and, like so many people I spoke to,
her loyalty to the Marcoses goes back generations.
She spends about five hours on social media a day
and it's reinforced her views about the Marcos family.
The platform is awash with videos like this,
which claim the Marcoses weren't corrupt.
(KIDS SHOUT PLAYFULLY)
WOMAN: 100% of Filipinos on the internet are on Facebook.
Facebook is our internet.
Journalist Maria Ressa is the founder of news outlet Rappler
and a fighter in the global war against disinformation.
There were definitely Marcos networks of disinformation.
A lot of them were taken down, but then they've regenerated,
and this will help pave the way for a win.
The elections in the Philippines on May 9th are emblematic
of everything that is wrong, right?
How does Ferdinand Marcos Jr,
the son of a dictator
who was ousted in a people power revolt 36 years earlier...
..how can history have been changed so drastically?
With the help of social media platforms.
For years, Maria Ressa and her team
have been mapping the spread of disinformation networks
in the Philippines.
MARIA RESSA: When we looked at this over time,
from 2016 all the way to 2022,
what we saw was that these networks began to take over
the centre of the information ecosystem
and slowly push out the traditional news groups.
And these news organisations that thought they had tremendous power
were essentially pushed to the side
and the centre of the information ecosystem
was taken over by disinformation networks.
And what...
In January, Twitter suspended more than 300 accounts and hashtags
promoting Marcos Jr's campaign.
The company found they breached its rules on spam and manipulation.
You cannot have integrity of elections
if you don't have integrity of facts.
And what social media has done is not only to make facts debatable,
but to actually spread lies faster and further than facts.
Ruben, tell me, what time is it in New York?
It's 7:25 in New York, PM.
Lawyer Ruben Carranza was a government investigator
charged with tracking down the billions of dollars stolen
by the Marcoses and their associates.
One estimate that the commission I served in continues to use
is somewhere between $5 billion to as much as $10 billion.
How did they get away with it?
They were able to hide the corruption they committed
by using political violence and repression.
At the same time, they were able to steal as much as they could
because they controlled all levers of power in the state.
This was also cruelty.
Children were dying of malnutrition.
The Marcoses went on shopping, stealing,
hoarding ill-gotten wealth.
The commission has recovered about US$3.3 billion
and another $2.4 billion is under litigation.
Dozens of cases have been brought against the family.
Imelda Marcos was convicted of graft in 2018
but is out on bail and appealing the verdict.
She's has never gone to jail -
a fact which feeds the lie they never stole anything at all.
RUBEN CARRANZA: That's also the reason why Marcos Jr is running -
to make sure that his mother will continue to have the impunity
that they've had for decades.
In a sea of presidential aspirants,
only one has any chance of stopping a Marcos Jr victory.
MAN: Leni Robredo!
Leni Robredo beat Marcos Jr for the vice-presidency in 2016,
then spent years fighting his official protest of the result.
(CHEERING)
Before entering politics, Robredo was a human rights lawyer.
She's running for the presidency on an anti-corruption platform,
and a promise to reduce poverty.
But she's not cutting through.
Only 23% of voters support her.
Her running mate is Senator Kiko Pangilinan.
Why do you think so many people are voting for the Marcos campaign?
Unfortunately, we don't think
the Googles and the Facebooks and the Tiktoks are doing enough.
We feel they should be doing more.
A lot of voters have no time to really digest.
They're too busy trying to make a living.
They're just too busy trying to keep their heads above the water.
And, so, whatever is there that's repeated over and over again,
they tend to absorb that.
For this community in the capital, Manila, daily life is a struggle.
One in four Filipinos live in poverty...
..and disillusionment with politicians is high.
Jaja Fugoso has been working in this community for two years.
She's conducting voter education sessions ahead of polling day.
Phone data costs a dollar.
And if you run out of credit, the Facebook newsfeed is free.
Democracy is so vulnerable because people's minds and emotions
are so easy to manipulate.
The biggest problem that I see, globally,
is that news organisations lost our gate-keeping powers to tech,
and tech abdicated responsibility for protecting the public sphere.
Our requests for an interview with Marcos Jr
have been repeatedly stonewalled.
So, I decided to try putting some questions to his running mate,
vice-presidential candidate Sara Duterte.
She's the daughter of current president Rodrigo Duterte.
I wanted to know why these two political dynasties
have decided to join forces.
(MAN SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE ON LOUDSPEAKER)
MAN: (ON LOUDSPEAKER) Duterte!
Duterte!
We're soon surrounded by security.
It's not that she doesn't want to answer questions,
except that these people came out for her.
The reason why we're asking, "What's your questions?"
is because we need to relay the questions to Maam Sara
and then, um...
So that you can then vet the questions
and decide whether to provide an interview or not?
That's an obfuscation tactic by your campaign
to avoid hard questions.
Oh, no, no.
If we wanted to frustrate you, we wouldn't even approach you now.
Back off, back off.
Back off. Back off.
(HORN HONKS LOUDLY)
(BOTH SPEAK LOCAL LANGUAGE)
On the other side of the city,
vlogger Ruben Gelio is churning out more Marcos Jr content.
Ruben is the vlog's sole employee.
His boss is Jay Cho, who runs the page from his flat.
JAY CHO: The mainstream media in the Philippines
is a bit sketchy nowadays,
because they didn't like Bongbong Marcos,
and even the father of Bongbong Marcos.
A lot of people in the Philippines, or even abroad,
are depending on the vloggers
because they report non-edited news,
such as like what we're doing.
Facebook pages like yours have been accused of spreading misinformation.
Do you think you spread misinformation?
No, because I only spread support for Bongbong Marcos.
I didn't say, "Oh, this other politician,
"this other presidential aspirant,
"is this or that, this or that."
I only speak for the support of the Filipinos for Bongbong Marcos.
I didn't indulge in negative campaigning,
as Bongbong Marcos said.
They say the Marcos campaign doesn't pay them,
but the ad revenue they generate from Facebook
is enough to support them both.
Do you see yourself as a Marcos fan first or a businessman first?
Well, I look at myself as a supporter
and what I'm doing is... well, if I earn for what I'm doing,
it's just perks of it.
Number one will be BBM and Sara. Just keep up the good work.
Filipinos love BBM.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
Do you feel that you are partly responsible for why he's so popular?
Well, um...
..yeah, a little bit.
Yeah. Maybe.
How does that feel?
Well, it's my...it's called in Filipino, it's 'ambag'.
It's my way of, uh, giving back to the people.
CROWD: BBM! BBM! BBM!
LARRY GADON: People love him. You can see.
Bongbong Marcos will win.
BBM! BBM! BBM! BBM!
Did you ever think that you would see the Marcoses in power again?
Oh, no. Not at all.
Well, at least not in 1986.
We were so happy that they left and we thought they would never return.
Captions by Red Bee Media
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation