At a Persian restaurant in Manila, a former Cabinet secretary who served under President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told a visiting Malaysian journalist something blunt. “Malaysia’s politics is starting to resemble our politics,” he said.
The journalist, Philip Golingai of The Star, wrote about the exchange in a column carried by the Asia News Network. The official has dealt with Malaysian ministers and prime ministers, and Golingai took the remark as sobering given how deeply political plunder is entrenched in the Philippines.
The timing mattered. On Aug. 27, Golingai wrote, three former Malaysian prime ministers were in the Kuala Lumpur court complex: Najib Razak, Muhyiddin Yassin and Ismail Sabri Yaakob. They faced separate trials and asset declaration proceedings, which he called a historic and unwelcome milestone. In his view, the number of top Malaysian politicians in jail or on trial for corruption rose sharply only after Barisan Nasional lost the 2018 election.
The Philippine record
In the Philippines, Golingai argued, it is almost a culture. President Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown in February 1986 after years of state plunder, human rights abuses and fraudulent snap elections, and fled to Hawaii. Under Philippine law, looting of the state is non-bailable plunder when public officers amass at least 50 million pesos (about RM3.2 million).
He pointed to the present Senate. The House impeached Vice-President Sara Duterte earlier this year over unaccounted funds, and her case is now before the senators. Conviction takes 16 of 24 votes. Golingai said she has a solid bloc of eight senators, enough to block it.
Several senators face their own trouble, he wrote. Jinggoy Estrada, who spent years detained over a pork barrel scam before beating plunder charges, is back in jail facing a new non-bailable plunder case involving infrastructure kickbacks. Loren Legarda went on medical and personal leave in Paris while the Ombudsman conducted a preliminary investigation of her and her son, Congressman Leandro Leviste, over a solar power franchise. Others named over flood-control anomalies were Emmanuel Joel Jose Villanueva, Francis “Chiz” Escudero, Mark Aguilar Villar, Camille Aguilar Villar and Christopher “Bong” Go.
Wealth and dynasties
Golingai has been in and out of the Philippines as a journalist for three decades. He described provincial warlords who rule “with guns, goons, and gold,” and rich Manila families arriving at luxury hotels in bulletproof SUVs with bodyguards. His impression was that Filipino politicians, even mid-level ones, are wealthier than Malaysian ones.
He put the Philippine population at 117.7 million across 82 provinces, with municipal and city power held by roughly 180 to 250 political clans. Presidents’ children often reach high office: Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is president, Diosdado Macapagal’s daughter Gloria served, Corazon Aquino’s son Benigno ruled and Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter Sara is vice-president. Malaysia, he wrote, is more egalitarian, even though sons of prime ministers have become prime ministers there too. Manny Pacquiao and Joseph Estrada are the exceptions in the Philippines, not the rule.
A contact in Manila explained the gap to him as a sharply polarized society, with a tiny group of oligarchs, a thin middle class and a large base living at subsistence level. Golingai’s closing point was aimed at home: with three former prime ministers in court, Malaysians “might no longer be able to claim we are all that different.”
