After rumors of his death fanned by the usual suspects surfaced online, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. responded by doing jumping jacks and jogging on the Malacañang grounds, with Palace reporters huffing and puffing behind him.

As if cardio alone weren’t proof enough of his vital signs, the President, in a Manila event a few days after, hoisted bags of rice above his head, giving birth to a new exercise: the presidential overhead press. 

But the President wasn’t just debunking rumors of his death. He was, consciously or otherwise, channeling his father, the former dictator, who dismissed similar rumors of declining health with the vanity of shirtless photographs. The curated physical vigor, antedating the shirtless optics of Vladimir Putin, was Marcos the father telling the opposition he ain’t going anywhere. We know how that ended. In February 1986, the former president, visibly weak, fled to Hawaii with his family, ousted by a popular uprising.

We are living through a bizarre period in Philippine politics, one where the children of larger-than-life, if deeply flawed, fathers now occupy positions of power. In the estimation of their fathers, their children were not meant to step into these shoes. Yet here they are.

Former president Rodrigo Duterte was, by his own public admission, an unsparing critic of his children’s fitness for office. His choicest words were reserved for his youngest son, Sebastian, popularly known as Baste, whom he described in terms that would make any parent wince. 

His private characterizations of Baste, as later revealed in a congressional testimony, were less paternal and more cynical, belittling his son’s mental acuity and manhood. But Baste is now the mayor of Davao City by default, calling for the head of Marcos. His father would have delivered these lines with more menace and better timing. From Baste, it lands somewhere between filial loyalty and absurdist theater.

Vocal defenders

The anger, however, is real. Despite the unkind words about his children, Duterte the father’s detention at the Hague seems to have galvanized the family in ways that private disdain never could. The children Duterte doubted are now his most vocal defenders. 

Vice President Sara Duterte invokes her father’s legacy at every opportunity while trying to publicly control the famous temper that sent her on a midnight rant against the President and his family. 

From his detention center in the Hague, the patriarch who once called his daughter unfit for the presidency is watching her fight for political survival. He told her to get out of politics but she stayed. The stubborn streak, the rebellious instinct, is also trademark Duterte.

Marcos the father privately fretted that his only son was spoiled and would be hated. The hating part, at least, turned out to be prophetic. The elder Marcos, debunking reports that he had undergone surgery, had himself photographed lifting his barong tagalog to show a scar-free abdomen. Decades later, his son, also the President, does jumping jacks. 

The optics may be different but the instinct to resort to the performative is identical.

What makes these moments both genuinely fascinating and sad is how the fathers’ own misgivings about their children have been waylaid by the very dynastic force they set in motion. 

Duterte groomed Sara and tolerated Baste. He built a political kingdom in Davao City that propelled him to the national stage. 

Marcos the father sent his son to school abroad, kept him largely decorative, bequeathing the political instinct to the eldest daughter Imee. But the son carried the father’s name, and the name eventually carried the son all the way back to the same Palace his father fled in disgrace.

The fathers knew their children’s limitations better than anyone. They said so in public and in private, in speeches, conversations, and journals, in ways both affectionate and brutal. Yet they emerged as leaders. 

The cruel truth is that dynasties, once unleashed, do not stop for parental doubt. – Rappler.com

Joey Salgado is a former journalist, and a government and political communications practitioner. He served as spokesperson for former vice president Jejomar Binay.