From win-win to lose-lose?
The Marcos-Duterte alliance was built to win an election, not to govern a country. That is the simplest way to understand the unraveling of UniTeam. In 2022, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Sara Duterte created the most powerful electoral combination in recent Philippine politics. Mr. Marcos brought northern Luzon, elite rehabilitation, campaign resources, and the promise of restoration. Sara Duterte brought Mindanao, Duterte continuity, populist intensity, and the aura of succession. Together, they solved each other’s political weaknesses. The alliance was brilliant as electoral engineering.
But after victory, the quick, vociferous collapse that followed was not accidental. It was built into the arrangement from the start. Duterte was never going to be an ordinary vice president. She entered office as the presumed 2028 successor of a powerful political brand. Mr. Marcos, meanwhile, had no reason to spend his presidency as a caretaker for another dynasty’s return to Malacañang.
That unresolved succession problem has now become institutional conflict—from whispered tension, Cabinet exits, public denunciation, budget battles, and eventually impeachment proceedings. The advancing impeachment process against the Vice President is the formalization of a festering political divorce.
This is what makes the moment dangerous. Allegations involving confidential funds, statements of assets and liabilities, unexplained transactions, and possible conflicts of interest cannot be dismissed as mere political noise. If public office was abused, the country deserves answers. If public funds were misused, the public deserves accountability. If official declarations do not match financial realities, the Vice President has a duty to explain.
But the impeachment process also carries a political risk for the Marcos camp. If it appears selective, vindictive, or choreographed by rivals seeking to clear the 2028 field, it may not weaken Duterte. It may complete her transformation into a grievance candidate. Social media can be weaponized to conjure an alternative reality.
That is the paradox. The very process meant to disqualify or diminish her could strengthen her if voters conclude that impeachment is less about accountability than about succession management. A damaged Duterte may still be politically potent if she becomes the symbol of resistance to a presidency associated with high prices, corruption controversies, and elite infighting. A black swan event, say, in the ICC detention of former President Rodrigo Duterte, might shoo in the Vice President into the presidency the way Cory did for former President Benigno Aquino III.
This is where Mr. Marcos’ own vulnerability lies. He may hold the institutional advantage: the presidency, the bureaucracy, foreign policy, and much of the legislative coalition. But institutional power does not automatically become public trust. Voters will judge him through rice prices, jobs, electricity bills, corruption, disaster response, and whether daily life becomes easier. If those tests are failed, no amount of congressional arithmetic can produce lasting legitimacy.
Sara Duterte, by contrast, may lack institutional control but retain emotional intensity. Her base is not built on policy detail. It is built on loyalty, grievance, and the idea that the Duterte brand represents strength against hypocritical elites. Impeachment can wound that brand, but it can also feed it.
Was the rift avoidable? In theory, yes. Mr. Marcos and Duterte could have sustained a win-win arrangement if they had built a real power-sharing compact. Mr. Marcos could have protected Duterte’s successor status while she accepted his undisputed leadership until 2028. The House could have avoided turning budget scrutiny into open warfare. The two camps could have negotiated foreign policy differences and accountability boundaries quietly.
But such was impossible sans deep trust. Once the election was won, the transaction had to be renegotiated. Mr. Marcos could not allow a vice president to become an independent and impudent president-in-waiting. Duterte could not allow the House, especially under Marcos allies, to define her before 2028.
By the end of the term, who wins? So far, Mr. Marcos does. He commands institutions. The impeachment machinery moves under a House aligned with his political orbit. But without a viable Marcos bet in 2028, the Vice President may still win if she survives politically, via acquittal, delay, resignation, or public backlash.
But the greater, more tantalizing possibility is that both lose. Impeachment proceedings have a way of forcibly opening the eyes of the public. The people, nauseated, may finally turn to a more promising third force that has learned the lessons of 2022, wrenching away from dynastic inertia. The tragedy of the Marcos-Duterte rupture may well augur another chance for Filipinos at transformative change in a changeless land.
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