Mayhem in Washington, Fast Break in Manila
Everyone seems to be eagerly taking on a double helping of risk
Let me start with my column last January 22, Old rules no longer apply, which in retrospect, laid the predicate for what transpired this week: the impeachment of the Vice President. By this I mean that my column examined the lay of the land, in terms of public opinion, concerning the question of impeachment. Since all the players read from the same page, the surveys, the question becomes one of interpretation —who interprets best, in divining what public opinion’s telling us?
The story can be said to have begun a year ago: start with Declaring victory (February 24, 2024), Double jeopardy (March 5, 2024), Human shield (March 13, 2024), Under the surface (March 27, 2024), Stranger things (July 3, 2024), Failed bombardment (July 17, 2024), Round up the usual suspects! (July 24, 2024), A tale of two chambers (August 14, 2024), And then there were none (August 24, 2024), The 2025 plebiscite (September 25, 2024), The last charge of El Cid (October 9, 2024), Strong and weak (October 16, 2024), Peeling an onion (October 23, 2024), Home-court advantage (October 30, 2024), Supporting evidence (November 13, 2024), From meltdown to showdown (November 27, 2024), Plus two minutes (December 4, 2024), The party list mutation (January 8, 2025), Moderate your greed (January 15, 2025). If you have the patience to review the story that unfolded in my columns, you’ll see how the different elements came together when they did —see item III in this newsletter, my Asia Sentinel commentary on impeachment.
Items I and II in this newsletter, this week’s column and my commentary for Global Asia Forum, take a look at the fallout from the dismantling of USAID and the overall adjustment countries are making to the Trump Restoration. I’m mulling an article on how Elon Musk’s ongoing efforts should lead us to examining the thinking at the heart of such methods.
I. This week’s The Long View
The Long View
Not friends, not partners, not even allies
By: Manuel L. Quezon III – @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 04:30 AM February 05, 2025
The story goes something like this. When Roberto Romulo, who was a former IBM executive was secretary of Foreign Affairs, excited staffers presented an ambitious computerization plan during a departmental budget review. The famously peppery Romulo took one look at their presentation and asked, “But what about the typewriters? What do you do when there’s a brownout? This is the Philippines, you fools!”
True or not, I was reminded of that story as the world’s been both astounded and horrified by the dismantling of the United States government going on under the auspices of Elon Musk, who cleverly transformed an obscure office, the US Digital Service, into the United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Service, and subsequently sent agents to barge into government offices to seize control of their computer systems, putting payroll and human resources into the hands of an agency meant to do to bureaucrats what Musk has done to the private sector: slash and burn at warp speed. Beds were moved into the DOGE office so Musk’s team of young programmers can work 24/7, a frenetic, private sector pace bureaucracy, which clocks out at regular hours and doesn’t work weekends, can’t match.
It sure couldn’t happen here! But it’s happening in Washington.
The Guardian reports that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is the world’s biggest donor and provides 42 percent of the world’s humanitarian assistance (a staggering percentage). If you still suffer from the delusion that things on the internet last forever, the disappearance of data on the Philippines, such as Mindanao programs, should finally disabuse you of that notion. All that’s left of what USAID once upon a time used to do (to the tune of at least $100 million a year: Rappler reports us being “the second-largest recipient of USAID funding in the East Asia and Oceania region”), is the ghostly presence of cheerful press releases on the US Embassy website. (But for how long?) For once, our usually infinitely resourceful man in Washington, Babes Romualdez, seems at a loss. He’d been able to nimbly position the Philippines positively in terms of defense and the economy, but like everyone else, he seems blindsided by the sudden US decision to suspend foreign aid pending a review, which has now become a kind of deathwatch as people place bets on how much longer USAID has left to live.
Considering Americans are a giving culture, what accounts for this sudden revocation of the post-World War II donor policy of the US? In trying to describe Trump’s might makes right, go it alone unless there’s a transaction mindset, most analysts have described it as his being an isolationist. It’s not that, per se, writes Jennifer Mittelstadt who calls it Trump’s being a “sovereigntist,” instead. At the heart of such thinking, which dates back to opposition to Woodrow Wilson’s proposing American membership in the post-World War I League of Nations (itself the failed precursor of today’s United Nations), is a rejection of international organizations because they diminish national sovereignty (consider Brexit).
When Malaysia cut the umbilical cord of Moro rebels because continued conflict risked spreading to Sabah, USAID was instrumental in helping to build up civil society not just in Moro areas but in warlord-dominated Mindanao in general. Indeed, as civil society in general has withdrawn from active political involvement, it’s been the American umbilical cord that has kept NGOs viable. It helped ensure a steady investment in boring democracy- and economic-competency-building activities as our political class spent more and more of its time and energy in a kind of arms race with voters, who have become increasingly mercenary even as leaders have run out of ideas (but not appetite).
What now? Like the media, NGOs are going to discover that even if they die, no one, relatively speaking will miss them. There will be many celebrating their demise along with the evaporation of American soft power.
As former president Rodrigo Duterte used to say, with contempt, the American idea of official hospitality was coffee and a donut while—and here, his expression would become dreamy—the Chinese laid out lauriats for officials. Two decades ago, a Chinese Filipino civil society leader from Mindanao told me that when the US ambassador went to their part of Mindanao, it was like “a visit of a governor-general,” practically “an armed invasion,” while the Chinese ambassador, by way of (a very pleasing) contrast, would make a point of visiting Chinese business associations and give them gifts of motorcycles—without preaching.
In 1997, ironically during a journalist’s trip to Seoul, Washington, and Pearl Harbor cosponsored by the State and Defense departments, a senior Korean editor took me aside and advised me in a low voice, “Never trust the Americans.” It’s a fundamental lesson that non-Americans who like to believe they are “friends, partners, allies,” can once again be told by America’s enemies to take to heart.
II. My commentary in Global Asia Forum
Global Asia Forum
Our new blog for expert news, analysis
and debate on current affairs in Asia.
Manuel L. Quezon III
Manila Feels its Way in the Latest Age of Trump
07 Feb 2025
Manila is yet again engaging in a familiar and generations-old exercise of trying to divine the country’s perch in the pecking order of Washington’s priorities. It is an exercise that perennially shocks Filipinos when they’re reminded that they’re hardly ever top of mind for their former colonial ruler. This year, however, is a particularly fraught time.
Eighty years separates the end of World War Two in the Philippines – marked by the horrific Battle of Manila, which devastated the capital and cost 100,000 civilian lives – and the transition from Joe Biden to the second Donald Trump administration. In both cases, the Philippines has been seized with a kind of existential dread over the question of American interest and intent. In 1945, Filipinos, after years of enemy occupation and the crushing cost of liberation, wondered if veterans and civilians would receive the benefits and assistance pledged by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and be given American security support to uphold their promised independence in 1946. After all, there was a new president, Harry Truman, who had no deep ties to the Philippines. Similarly, after the embrace of the Philippine cause by Joe Biden, the return of Trump leads to a twofold concern: would security and the economy be helped or hindered?
Literally on the eve of the transition to a new administration, Vice President Kamala Harris called President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to assure him of continuing American support. A lame duck pledge won’t cut it, of course, but Marcos Jr. has the benefit of a cousin, Jose Manuel “Babes” Romualdez, who happens not only to be his ambassador to the Washington, but who spent decades as a kind of Philippine minder to a whole slew of American ambassadors to the Philippines. Romualdez is the most seasoned American hand to be ambassador since the legendary Carlos P. Romulo, and among other things, he was Philippine ambassador during the first Trump term.
Romualdez sent all the right signals after the election by making a beeline for Mar-a-Lago to play golf and pay a courtesy call on the president-elect; he later said that he reminded Trump that he had met President Marcos himself “in New York many years ago with his mother, former First lady Imelda Marcos.” Romualdez thus assured Marcos that he remained in the good graces of the president-elect.
What’s more, as a cognoscenti of Capitol Hill, Romualdez said there were clear signs of administration intent. He enumerated them in a recent column and concluded that Manila could rely on people in the administration understanding the importance of the Philippines and keeping up American support for military modernization and the government’s resistance to Chinese bullying in the South China Sea.
At the same time, it could be intuited that some signals would have to be given to show Trump that Manila was willing to pay its fair share, so to speak, for American protection. In what both capitals can say is a highly convenient coincidence, the American transition coincides with the Philippines’ budget season when the Armed Forces of the Philippines issued a whole slew of purchase requests, sending the message that Filipinos were fiscally fit and politically able to take on more responsibility for defense.
Romualdez also highlighted the benefits of the State Department being under Marco Rubio, whom the ambassador described as “sympathetic to the Philippines, visiting Tacloban City in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in January 2014 and vowing more aid for rehabilitation efforts.” And indeed, in his confirmation hearing, Rubio spoke warmly of the Philippines. Romualdez also noted he was aware of US domestic political concerns. In media interviews following the Trump victory, he advised those of his countrymen illegally residing in the US “that if there is no legal path for them to stay in the US, they have to seriously start thinking about going back home – voluntarily, so they can still have a chance to come back at some point legally.” Out of a universe of 11 million illegal immigrants in the US, according to American estimates, 370,000 are Filipinos, which most Filipinos would think is surely a serious underestimation.
Even in terms of Trump’s muscular approach to tariffs. Romualdez seemed confident: as a net importer of foreign goods, the Philippines is not a problem for Washington. The Philippine position seems to be that encouraging Philippine investment in the US would be good public relations. According to Romualdez, “Armscor Global Defense… has joint ventures in the United States, with facilities in Nevada, Montana and Utah. This is an example of a quid pro quo business engagement since it will be beneficial to both the US and the Philippines – which is how we are going to approach our economic diplomacy agenda with the Trump administration.”
The Luzon Economic Corridor, which links Central Luzon to Metro Manila, was also summarized by the ambassador as “a partnership between the Philippines, Japan and the United States to develop infrastructure projects such as railways, port modernization and upgrades, semiconductor supply chains and others aimed at driving economic growth.” This may be more problematic, precisely because the Philippines may not be exempt from the tariff mania of Trump.
Most of all, as the opening weeks of Trump 2.0 reveals, the level of uncertainty, and thus, of risk, has increased exponentially, globally, because much of what Trump said he would do, was discounted as talking big – until Trump started doing it, and at warp speed. A freeze on global aid, grants and assistance, plus the hobbling, and then, essentially, dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has left American alliances dazed and confused. The Philippines is no exception.
Suddenly on hold is roughly half a billion dollars in military assistance and over a hundred million dollars in NGO-oriented USAID assistance. From Washington, Romualdez has tried to make soothing reassurances that these are all temporary hiccups. He has been echoed by Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro, who’s read out of a recent conversation with his American counterpart, Pete Hegseth, made no mention of the restoration of suspended aid; even the head of the Philippine National Economic Development Authority said the evaporation of USAID funding isn’t necessarily devastating as there are multilateral institutions to call on.
Among Filipino business leaders, the main fallout from Trump 2.0 has been viewed through the lens of deportations, which would impact dollar remittances to the country, and the possible scaling back of Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), which could also affect US dollar inflows into the economy. Even here, however, a recent decision by JP Morgan to expand its back end operations in the country is being taken as a sign of confidence in the maintenance of the BPO status quo, a major business for the Philippines.
Completely unforeseen is the effect of not just scaling back, but totally gutting, USAID programs which diminishes both American soft power and also handicaps Philippine NGOs in conflict-prone areas such as Mindanao. But what is catastrophic for civil society will cause hardly a shrug in elite political and business circles. After all, Manila’s hawkish approach to China over the South China Sea dispute feels reassuring to some in terms of American intent and Washington’s willingness to maintain the security umbrella over the Philippines.
III. My commentary in Asia Sentinel
An Impeachment Fast Break in Manila
The hallmark of a Marcos maneuver is strategic patience
Feb 06, 2025
By: Manuel L. Quezon III
After months of behind-the-scenes maneuvering to attempt to stop it, Vice President Sara Duterte, who from inauguration day in 2022 was determined to follow her father into the presidency in 2028, has been impeached for allegedly plotting to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, and amassing “hidden wealth,” which could admittedly be laid against most of the members of Congress.
In their defense, from the time relations with the Marcoses began to sour, the Dutertes pulled out all the stops: the former president appealed to the military to intervene, politically, to his loyalists to protest in the streets; he invoked Divine Protection from his closest allies, the disgraced pastor Apollo Quiboloy and the Iglesia ni Cristo church which has been a formidable political player for generations.
But in the end, the person does not seem to have translated into the political enough: the military, one of the two institutions (the diplomatic service being the other) that blunted Duterte’s pro-China policy during his presidency, held firm by declining to enter the fray, fond of him as it might still be. Pocket protests never reached critical mass, while the public’s opinion of his daughter fell more drastically than it did for her rival and antagonist, the president. Quiboloy, the pastor of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, is in jail on charges of human and sex trafficking, money laundering, immigration fraud, and other offenses (though still running for office in a society where election is tantamount to absolution), and the Iglesia ni Cristo was able to mobilize but seems stymied on what to do next, short of outright rebellion, and thus, has revealed its limitations.
Add to this the at-times slow, at other times swift, but overall, relentless reduction in the political ranks of the Dutertes: from the start of the Marcos term in 2024, when the party Duterte Senior headed dwarfed Marcos Junior’s own nominal party, his party’s share in the House dwindled from 39 to 10 representatives, while Marcos’s grew from one to 13; at the same time, his first cousin (and Speaker of the House) wrested control of the durable Lakas-CMD party from former president (and former speaker) Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and grew its ranks from 67 to over 100. And all other major parties are in the administration coalition.
A society with a weakened Catholic Church (which once upon a time could confer, or deny, the mandate of heaven, that is, moral legitimacy, on a government), mass media (which could make or break reputations by covering investigations in Congress) and Civil Society (which had expertise in organizing protests), the other three pillars (the military being the fourth) of the post-1986 Edsa Revolution political establishment, is one where political contests will be fought out within the confines of official institutions and the electoral arena. In other words, where patronage is the key to political success.
Here, a public that may be increasingly disenchanted with all leaders, but uninclined to adventurism in the streets, which has tuned out from a fragmented and thus no longer, mass media, and where adventurism no longer permeates the barracks or bishoprics, will take a spectator’s –or a mendicant’s—approach to any contest. If purely a spectator sport, then Filipinos respect a winner and despise a loser and whoever wields the levers of power more effectively, wins and is admired for it; if from the perspective of handouts, then whoever has the cash, wins.
The hallmark of the second generation of Marcoses has been their ability to bide their time politically. This strategic patience was inherited from Marcos Senior who was known, in his time, for his “jujitsu,” meaning his ability to suddenly take everyone by surprise. Young or old, the Marcoses too are adept at disbursing government largesse: in fact, the remnants of civil society have railed, in recent months, over the manner in which the national budget was stuffed with provisions for cash grants directly disbursed by legislators to their constituents at the expense of programmed expenses for social programs administered on a more rationally and thus less politically helpful manner.
The government took a hit, went ahead anyway, the president piously protested, the speaker took the blame, just as he continued investigating the vice president while the president studiously distanced himself from the enterprise during the Christmas holidays, when no one wants any friction.
Then the House of Representatives, in the guise of attending a funeral service for a recently deceased former congressman on February 5, showed up in full force and was reported to be engaged in a secret caucus, sending tongues wagging. It rapidly leaked that impeachment was finally afoot in what can only be called a congressional fast break – it was to be the last session day of Congress before it formally adjourned in anticipation of this year’s midterm election, which traditionally serves as a referendum on the incumbent administration.
Impeachment complaints, which under the Philippine system can originate from the public (if endorsed by a member of the House) or the House itself, require a low threshold to result in an impeachment: only one third of the House needs to endorse it, superseding slow committee-level deliberations and voting, and instead automatically transmitting the complaints as articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial.
The spadework had been done in a series of amazingly disciplined and tightly-orchestrated hearings which still eked out results despite revealing that mass media has lost much of its amplifying power: most recently, despite a large percentage of Filipinos remaining ignorant of the charges (or the impeachment effort itself) a plurality favors impeachment anyway, a politically-strong starting point for a big push.
The remnants of the old anti-Marcos and Center-Left coalition beat everyone to the gun when an impeachment complaint was filed last December; disgruntled radical leftists in alliance with the speaker’s coalition, sheepishly filed theirs while grumbling their thunder had been stolen by their mortal enemies; but it was a fourth complaint, that revealed the true lay of the land. It was this complaint that the President’s own son, Ferdinand Alexander Marcos III, signed onto – the significance of his being the first signature in the list of endorsers was manifestly clear to all observers. He had, after all, reacted with outrage to the Vice President’s declaration she’d hired an assassin to bump off the President and others should that fate befall her.
There are seven charges to be prosecuted by House managers, who themselves can be said to have rehearsed the cases they will make during the devastating congressional hearings that the vice president at first tried to brush off, but ended up having to attend. The Senate, for its part, received the articles of impeachment but promptly went into recess without attending further to the task now in its lap. Would the Senate thus leave itself the option of convening as an impeachment court? It would do so in the twilight period after the midterms, but before the formal adjournment of the present Congress, beginning a task that will have to be completed when the new Congress convenes, with half of the Senate’s membership having been changed. To be acquitted, the Vice-President needs five senate votes; this narrows down the administration’s goal to preventing that number of pro-Duterte allies eking out a Senate win.
On February 6, the Senate president weighed in and said the Senate can start tackling impeachment on June 2 when it returns for the lame duck period for the current Congress. But it will mainly be the incoming 20th Congress which convenes on June 30, that will conduct the trial. And so, how much the political math will have changed by then depends on the outcome of the midterms, where the ability of a president to get his candidates elected to the upper house determines if the administration is perceived to have won or lost a national vote of confidence. An interesting sidenote in all this is that the president’s own elder sister, Imee Marcos, whose love-hate relationship with her brother has been immortalized in films she herself produced, has nailed her political colors to the mast: vowing to be eternally loyal to the vice president.
Your bluster is bigger than your bite, sir.