the philippines has elected its new president with ferdinand marcus jr set to take over from rodrigo
duterte in july and lead the country for the next six years he's a son of former president ferdinand
marcos who's deemed by many as a dictator according to unofficial results marcos jr
also known as bongbong earned a landslide victory defeating his main rival leni robredo he declared
victory on wednesday saying his electoral triumph is a boost to democracy and promised to seek
common ground across the political divide so what drove many filipino citizens to vote for marcus jr
and how could his term affect futures whole manila relations for this we're joined by joffrey madatu
kalima professor at the department of global business administration school of global studies
at kyeongsang university good evening professor thank you for joining us good evening thank you
for having me so professor let's start with the basics so for our viewers from across the globe
can you give us a background of who will be the next president of the philippines
well the presumptive president of the philippines is a son of a deposed dictator with a namesake of
his father ferdinand marcus and according to his father's diary the he described the younger marcus
as a spoiled brat child and the family exiled and fled the country in 1986 and came back in the
early 1990s since they returned the the present presumptive president bongbong in particular has
been active in politics going his way from being governor of the province in his province in ilocos
norte to become congressman and a senator in 2016 he lost to incumbent vice president leni robredo
and also he claimed to have obtained a degree from the university of oxford but the university
confirmed in 2015 that he has not finished a degree he also enrolled in the mba program of
wharton school of business in the united states but he had not finished either so to reach his
tuition and fees a monthly allowance of 10 000 us dollars and the state he lived in while studying
the us were paid partly by the intelligence funds and partly by swiss bank accounts um
apart from the disqualification cases related to tax issue the presumptive president also has 203
billion pesos estate tax obligation to pay to the government right well there are many conflicting
opinions about the presumptive president but you know many people who didn't vote for marcos have
expressed concern due to his family background can you also tell us more on who his father is and
what impact he had on the philippines during his ruling well to be fair the first years
of his father's term in office as president the philippines was relatively in good state
and this is one of the reasons why the asian development bank is headquartered in manila
uh the same is true with the um harvard model asian institute of management however in general
there was a massive corruption through uh cronuism uh nepotism and the likes uh clinging into power
then then president marcus became a dictator they what happened is that they twisted a construct
to support the declaration of martial law that perpetrated human rights violations that include
torture death disappearance silencing the media and there was no freedom of speech
and this had huge and negative impacts and all facets of the philippine society the economy
crashed leaving the country with gigantic debt um there was also a moral issue here where people
questioned the lavish lifestyle of the first family whereas many filipinos at the time are in
dire situation and in deep poverty there was no freedom no concept of truth only marcus was was
then the truth if you go against marcus you will be charged for subversive uh activities well let's
hope that doesn't happen again this time around but now let's turn to marco's policies previously
he said that he will follow some policies of the outgoing president duterte who focused on economic
growth now what do we know about his diplomatic policies how do they differ from duterte's
uh well um marcos was not present in many of the debates during the campaign period and therefore
i could not really identify which policies of the duterte administration will he continue
but one in in one of the interviews he had with a local media outlet in the philippines he mentioned
that he will continue the build build-build policy of outgoing administration and when it comes to
diplomatic policies uh how it differs with the duterte unfortunately as i've said as far as
this the diplomatic policies are concerned again his absence in the debates and public forums gave
us a a vague direction on his policies and this is simply because he has not laid any clear-cut
diplomatic policies and neither that he released an official statement on his stand on many issues
but on the issue of west philippine sea he is more pragmatic uh stressing the need to avoid
um confrontation he just mentioned that he will protect the territory of the country
and so i bet that we may just wait and see on what policies he would pursue
so we will have to wait and see now um professor so you mentioned about his policies
on uh and how how it's different from president duterte's policies but how would you evaluate
the presummed president's i mean i'll do it again sorry so how would he evaluate these south korea
philippine ties under the presidency of duterte oh well south korea and
the philippines there's no doubt they are that they're friends and they cooperate in many areas
with stable social cultural economic and military relations and under president
duterte the relationship of these two countries have been steady um i would say south korea is
the philippines eighth trade partner for export of goods and also received the most arrivals of
foreigners into the country moreover the the korea philippine trade volume is increasing
the the total investment of south korea to the philippines is also promising
and there were arms and defense deals signed the philippines have always been a supporter
of peace in the korean peninsula uh for the several times the philippines had was hit with
natural calamities and south korea has always been there to extend significant amounts of assistance
and i must emphasize too that south korea is also one of the most preferred destinations of overseas
filipino workers so the the relations of korea the philippines during the duterte administration is
very stable and ver very friendly right let's hope that could continue again with the new
administration speaking of the new administration south korea and the philippines both are welcoming
new presidencies so what can we expect from future interactions what more can be done
uh departing from former president moon jae-in new southern policy as we know that he really looked
into the importance of southeast asia departing from that and taking off with a new or improved
version with the administration of president yun sokul i look forward to the proposal of the
abcd strategy in approaching southeast asia the abcd strategy stands for a advanced human
capital uh b health or build health security c for connect cultures and d for digitalized asian
infrastructure there is an opportunity where both countries benefit and having said that i
would advise the philippine government to be more aggressive in making its investment environment
more appealing to south korean investors to take more of this share of korean investments
why because in terms of korea's investment in investment to asean member countries the
philippines only receive 107 million dollars that is in 2020 as compared to singapore and vietnam
with 3.8 billion dollars and 2.8 billion dollars respectively and furthermore the philippines is
competitive among the asean member countries when it comes to offering english language trainings
and i hope that the two countries can take advantage of these surveys where both can gain
in the long run right thank you so much for your suggestions let's hope more active engagement in
various sectors under the new leaders professor thank you again for joining us thank you