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The prospects for the Philippines under newly elected president  have as much to do with a murky past as they do with modern challenges. Electing the son of  may make no sense to many on the outside, or to the many liberals inside the country who are now doing some deep reflection. But further cold hard truths lie ahead for the Philippines.

The crimes of members of the Marcos clan’s own very recent past still haven’t been fully accounted for. Ferdinand Marcos Snr fled the country following years of a dictatorship that  (£8 billion) of public funds.

There is also a question mark over the Marcos family’s unsettled estate tax liabilities. A  of the supreme court had ordered the Marcoses to pay 23 billion pesos (£350 million) in . Asked about the issue in the run-up to the election, Marcos Jnr dismissed this issue as “fake news”. “Let’s leave it to the lawyers to discuss it.”

But this is only the latest unresolved case against the Marcos clan. The family matriarch Imelda, Marcos Jnr’s mother, still has more than  pending against her after being found guilty of . But nobody should seriously hope that these will come to any resolution or that Imelda will be held accountable for  of the country’s wealth under her husband’s reign, something the family vehemently denies.

The shamelessness of the Marcos clan towards this reported plunder in a country that wrestles with crippling levels of poverty has been well covered recently in the media. Imelda was pictured at home with , despite it being one of many objects targeted for seizure by anti-corruption measures in 2014. An excellent investigative  published a week before the election laid bare the brazen way Marcos Jnr could prevent any further recoveries from the family.

The Philippines’ bloated and archaic legal system desperately needs reform, but no president is incentivised to do so when they can govern using it. Without true separation of the government from the judiciary, presidents – especially those with landslide victories – can rule and flout the rules. Under Marcos Jnr there is little to suggest any reform is incoming.

Sadly, the cronyism extends well beyond the justice system and into an economy in desperate need of revival following  under former president Rodrigo Duterte. The Philippines regularly ranks as one of the worst countries in the world for , meaning it relies on a transactional relationship between government and powerful oligarchs who own and control much of the country’s economy. These are the same oligarchs that Duterte railed against and vowed to .

Economic issues

Marcos Jnr also inherits a series of problems. For one thing, the nation’s economy relies too heavily on its army of overseas workers around the world sending back their remittances to support those at home.

In 2018, it was estimated that these remittances constituted 11% of the . Nurses, sailors, domestic workers and construction labourers, estimated to be around  worldwide, provide vital income to a nation falling behind others in the region.

Tourism has been massively hit as a result of the pandemic, and given the  by the outgoing Duterte administration, there is much to do to improve the state of domestic healthcare before international tourism can be rebuilt.

If that all wasn’t enough, the country still lacks critical infrastructure to be able to respond to the massive natural disasters that regularly besiege the country. Volcanic eruptions, super typhoons, landslides, earthquakes – all devastating in their own right – have all left behind a need for temporary housing, spiralling the country further into a  it cannot climb out of.

Some  that the corruption endemic in the politics of the Philippines is built on the country’s geographical challenges and mishandling of the response.

Perhaps most troubling is the prospect for a continuation of  normalised under Duterte. Marcos Jnr and his vice president – Duterte’s daughter Sara – are set to continue, if not build upon, the security state that enables attacks on  and leaves extrajudicial  uninvestigated.

Unabashed  under Duterte is seemingly Marcos Jnr and Sara Duterte’s principal policy issue. They plan to make  for all adults and make the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps mandatory in college programmes, for which they face opposition from student .

While  and  insurgencies continue to threaten the country, further militarisation, building on Duterte’s war on drugs and use of the military in various , is risky.

These long-running insurgencies stem from deep social and political grievances – many legitimate – with the state. And increased violence at the hands of an expanded military is unlikely to deal with the root causes of the conflict. Duterte’s military demolished the city of Marawi in 2017 when it was drawn into a siege by local clans claiming to be , and have not bothered to rebuild it – leaving thousands .

Marcos Jnr has much to reform and rebuild. The electorate will support him for six to 12 months as they do all their new leaders. Capitalising on this wave of support with bold new measures to rebuild sorely needed robust infrastructure and trust in institutions will be needed for the next Marcos to take the throne in another 35 years.

Dr Tom Smith is a Principal Lecturer at 1024�˹��� Business School in the Faculty of Business and Law.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons Licence. .