The 2025 mid-term election was marked by massive electoral fraud via the automated electronic system, vote-buying and the systematic political repression of progressive candidates and partylist groups.
The May 2025 polls, from the campaign to the voting, have proven once again that reactionary elections are a tool to preserve the bankrupt ruling system. They are a means to recycle traditional politicians while providing the people a semblance of democratic participation.
The midterm election results show the gutter-level political system that exists. The senatorial election is dominated by representatives of those in the ruling order who have visibly made the government bureaucracy their family businesses. Even the partylist race is littered with representatives of political and opportunistic dynasties and personalities. Local elections have become a game of musical chairs for warlords, landlords and their minions.
Long before the campaign period started, the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) had already unleashed a vicious campaign of lies and harmful rhetoric against progressive candidates and partylist groups, focusing on red-tagging their targets in a deliberate attempt to prevent discourse on pressing national issues. It was a scheme to deceive the electorate and thwart the people from voting for candidates who would truly advance their interests.
As the elections neared, the NTF-ELCAC relied more heavily on terror tactics against the progressives and their supporters. Makeshift coffins referring to Makabayan and the progressive partylists were placed in public places, an act which clearly constituted a death threat, while last-minute operations were conducted to mislead voters that Bayan Muna had been disqualified from the partylist race. Numerous derogatory posters and leaflets were strewn, and the progressives were disallowed to campaign in some areas. Social media was again weaponized to spread lies against them, as they campaigned to demand for a living wage and lowered prices of basic commodities and services from the anti-people Marcos regime, the impeachment of Sara Duterte on her abuse of confidential funds, and the arrest and conviction of the butcher Rodrigo Duterte.
The May 2025 elections saw the announcement and implementation of the Marcos Jr. regime’s national action plan via Presidential Memorandum No. 83 to eradicate pro-people candidates and partylist groups because they are seen as “insurgency in electoral disguise.” This insidious action plan not only prevents progressives from winning seats. It will lead to an escalation in violations of human rights and international humanitarian law.
The Commission on Election’s (Comelec) much-vaunted Resolution No. 11116 which prohibited red-tagging, among other acts, proved to be inutile in the face of the massiveness of the NTF-ELCAC’s malignant campaign against the progressives. In the end, Resolution No. 11116 was just an added embellishment in a fraud-ridden election that reeked of hypocrisy. The Comelec, as an agency that oversees and lends credibility to the electoral circus, is itself a conduit of fraud, which is presumed to have been perpetrated electronically through pre-programmed and thus rigged counting machines.
Nonetheless, a number of progressive partylist groups ran through and survived the NTF-ELCAC’s gauntlet of red-tagging, disinformation, fraud and terror, while Makabayan’s 11-person slate has millions of votes, proving that grassroots-oriented politics has gained a foothold. Human rights groups will continue to work with them and those with rights-based perspectives in exposing the increasing violations on human rights and international humanitarian law, even as proposed laws on people’s rights are pursued.
The re-entry of opportunistic traditional politicians and their cronies to power and the inevitable horse-trading among winning candidates jockeying for advantageous positions will further expose the bankrupt politics of the ruling system. This bankruptcy will become more evident as the impeachment trial of Vice Pres. Sara Duterte looms and the hearings at the International Criminal Court on the crimes against humanity of Rodrigo Duterte continue. With the loyalties of reactionary politicians for sale to the highest bidder, the outcome of Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial at the Senate may become more a matter of political convenience and have less to do with the preponderance of evidence against her.
With the Filipino people growing more distrustful of reactionary elections as an avenue for meaningful change, they are determined to bring their fight to all possible arenas of struggle in order to build a truly democratic government and society where their voices are not stifled, but heard, where vigorous social discourse is encouraged and not feared, and where elections are exercises that genuinely reflect and advance the people’s mandate. KARAPATAN is in full solidarity with the people as they wage militant struggle so that such a society and government can come to fruition.