First Draft: Sibling Rivalry

An occasional foray into thinking-through possible future stories

The other day came this news item, Hindi kaya ng konsensya ko': Imee Marcos refuses to lead RCEP hearing:

Despite being chairperson of the Senate committee on foreign affairs, Senator Imee Marcos refuses to shepherd the possible ratification of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, a free trade agreement opposed by various agriculture groups.

"Merong kung anong pwersa na nag-uudyok na madaliin ang RCEP," Marcos said in a statement after the first committee hearing on it on Tuesday.

[Translation: There's a force urging the railroading of RCEP.]

"Bilang isang probinsiyana, anak ng agrikultura, hindi kaya ng aking konsensiya na tayuan ang RCEP kung padadapain nito ang ating mga kababayan," she added.

[Translation: As somebody from the province, a child of agriculture, my conscience can't support RCEP if it would cause the downfall of our fellow Filipinos.]

She said this is why she proposed the creation of a subcommittee on RCEP, led by Senate President Pro Tempore Loren Legarda, to take on the task.

Marcos echoed concerns of local industries battered by smuggling, hoarding, and sabotage, saying the Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Customs, and the Department of Trade and Industry all failed to address the issues.

In response, Senate President Juan "Miguel" Zubiri said the problems of the agriculture sector "will never end." He noted that President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, Jr., the senator's brother, still concurrently serves as Agriculture Secretary.

"I think they should have a long talk together, the two of them," Zubiri told reporters.

This was her response to Marcos reiterates push for RCEP ratification, on February 10:

Before he took office, Marcos expressed reservations about the RCEP, saying he wanted to look at how it would impact the country’s agriculture sector.

However, in his Philippine Business Opportunities Forum address, Marcos said that his “administration is pushing for the Congressional ratification – which I am promised will be coming soon - of the Philippines’ participation in the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP.”

So sibling rivalry makes it to the news, but it’s been a story on slow burn for months now. Is just all politics being local? That may be part of it.

From people who knew them, my understanding is that President Marcos adored his eldest daughter, Imee; he lavished preference on his son as his heir, though much has been made about how he was at times critical of his son in his diary. For his part, Ferdinand Jr. is said to have always been close to younger sister Irene, but not close to his elder sister who enjoyed a warmer relationship with his father.

I always return to this marvelous clip because it reveals the dynamics of the Ruling Family at the height of their powers. This clip from September 23, 1977 (the fifth anniversary of martial law) portrays the Great Dictator arriving to announce yet another plebiscite before an adoring audience of the Kabataang Barangay: the head of what can be called the Marcos Youth being no less than the President’s eldest daughter.

The semiotics is revealing because Imee Marcos here is the active, accomplished politician: the Junior Leader. But already she is shadowed by He Whom She Can Never Become: the Crown Prince, her younger brother, Ferdinand Jr. Here then, is the dilemma of Imee Marcos: by all accounts and any measure, she is the more natural and accomplished politician; but she will always be a supporting act to the brother who is now patriarch.

Randy David who is old enough to be a contemporary of both Imee and Ferdinand Jr., has compared and contrasted the two. In his Bongbong and Imee he wrote,

While President Marcos Jr. is trying hard to become the president of all Filipinos, his elder sister Sen. Imee Marcos seems bent on being this administration’s antagonist-in-chief, whose role is to continue taunting and mocking their family’s perceived political enemies. Is this a coordinated good cop/bad cop maneuver designed to maximize the returns of a double-pronged approach to complete political rehabilitation? Or is it a mere case of sibling rivalry?

My hunch is that, though they are meant to serve the same purpose, the two siblings’ political styles are reflective of their differential orientation to mass media, and ultimately of their contrasting personalities. Bongbong appears more attuned to the demands of traditional or mainstream media, whereas Imee is clearly more at home in the unstable vocabulary and polarizing propensity of the new social media.

Imee is at her best when she’s not trying to be serious, such as when she says something that hints at the truth in a teasing manner or with a smirk, as though to indicate that the meaning can only be discerned by those in the know. She loses her bite when she drops her cynical air and demands to be taken at her word. A good example is when she could not say anything after former finance secretary Sonny Dominguez, in a Senate hearing, flatly contradicted her assertion that Marcos Sr.’s “Masagana 99” program had been a success.

In contrast, Bongbong seems totally absorbed in recreating his father’s image, studiously evoking his gestures, high-minded thoughts, and powerful voice, though he may be, in reality, a very different person — soft-spoken, less ponderous, and perhaps less consumed by power. Trying to fit himself into the mold of a father he obviously admires must be frustrating for him. This shows in the way he stammers and gropes for the right words during the Q&A portion of press briefings. It is as though, with every question, he’s still asking himself, how would the old man have answered this?

Bongbong appears to feel the full weight of the responsibility that has been thrust upon him. He imagines himself as someone who cannot fail, must not fail — first of all, in his father’s eyes. Even as he asks to be judged for what he is and what he can do, rather than as the scion of Marcos Sr., he is undoubtedly hobbled by the ideal he carries in his mind. For him, the best way to serve his father’s memory is to perform better as president and to prove his detractors wrong.

Imee, in contrast, is hopelessly stuck in the taunting mode of a resentful victim of political misfortune — even long after she has recovered her place on the political stage. Irony befits her because she thinks herself too bright to believe there is anything permanent about status in a highly contingent world. She cannot rest. But now that a member of the family is back in Malacañang, in the highest seat of power, the cynical and jeering tone she has mastered sounds misplaced and anachronistic.

Randy David zeroes in on what Imee is adept at in contrast to her brother: so-called “New Media” or social media. I won’t go into the three-decades-long Marcos Restoration Project here, but you can see a summary of my thoughts in this 2021 presentation:

MediaNation 17: From FM to BBM

It’s my belief that it was Imee Marcos who was the architect of the rehabilitation propaganda of the family, a multi-decade, multi-media campaign; and that she, personally, showed a certain amount of grit and determination that may have convinced her she is smarter and tougher than any of her siblings. A useful case in point was how she faced down a direct challenge from Rudy Fariñas.

She famously brought in her mother and Juan Ponce Enrile to face down Fariñas who ended up blinking.

There is an assertion often made by those who claim to know them, that the senior Marcos ladies —the former First Lady and her senator-daughter— never approved of, and were always hostile to, Ferdinand Jr.’s wife, and that she, in turn, pointedly excluded both the former First Lady and her senator-sister-in-law from the inner sanctum of the Marcos Jr. 2022 campaign.

At the President’s inaugural there were scene-stealer stunts from the senator-sister, from her wearing deliberately eye-catching colors…

To what can only be called a not-so-subtle effort to remind everyone that she was the one who was genuinely closest to and possibly most beloved by, her father.

Back on June 2, 2022, I Tweeted that “Someone should start a satirical Twitter focused solely on Imee Marcos’ trying communicate with the President-elect by press release and going before all available media to insist she’s in the loop and matters. Like a cry for help from the auntie everyone’s starting to avoid.” This was in reaction to a news item that stated, “Just like Sen. Bong Go to President Duterte, Sen. Imee Marcos said she would be the self-appointed ‘SAP’ or ‘Super Ate ng Pangulo’ to president-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr.”

Two postings you can find on her Facebook also suggests that what Imee enjoys and her brother does not, is a warm relationship with the Duterte heir, nationally, the Vice-President. See November 21, 2022:

And see November 27, 2022, at what could be considered a jab at the administration of her brother:

So what still remains to be explored further is the extent to which the siblings aren’t just not talking to each other, but whether they are acting at cross-purposes by now.

A good example of the breezy, easy way Sen. Marcos communicates (but is always on point) is this, her tour of the Senate Museum which becomes an opportunity to personalize her history and underline her closeness with her dear old dad: