Millions of citizens participated in the Philippine midterm elections on Monday, a poll featuring a diverse pool of candidates, including the incarcerated former president Rodrigo Duterte, all contending for approximately 18,000 national and local positions, while domestic media documented President Marcos Jr.'s meticulous completion and submission of his ballot in Batac City, Ilocos Norte.

A photographic dispatch furnished by the Presidential Communications Office captures Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., positioned centrally, displaying the indelible ink upon his digit subsequent to the exercise of his suffrage at an electoral precinct in Batac City, Ilocos Norte province, Philippines, on Monday, May 12, 2025.

In Quezon City, Philippines, on Monday, May 12, 2025, a constituent exercises their franchise, casting their vote at a designated polling precinct. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe)

On Monday, 12 May 2025, the electorate in Quezon City, Philippines, discharged their civic duty by casting their votes at an appointed polling station. (AP Photo/Basilio Sepe)

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte is captured in a moment of emphatic gesticulation while addressing the media during a press conference, having just exercised her democratic franchise at a polling station in Davao City, southern Philippines, on Monday, May 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Manman Dejeto)

Captured in this image, disseminated by Team Pacquiao, is the Filipino pugilistic icon and erstwhile senator, Manny Pacquiao, exhibiting the enduring voter's ink upon his digit subsequent to exercising his electoral franchise at the Kiamba Central Elementary School within the territorial confines of Kiamba, Sarangani province, in the southern reaches of the Philippine archipelago, on the twelfth day of May in the year two thousand and twenty-five, a Monday. (Wendell Alinea/Team Pacquiao via AP)

Penned by TERESA CEROJANO

Notwithstanding his detention in The Hague, ex-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte featured among the aspirants competing for approximately 18,000 national and local mandates in Monday's midterm elections, an electoral exercise analysts posit will be determinative of the perpetuation of political hegemony by himself and his progeny.

Notwithstanding Duterte's detention by the International Criminal Court since March, whilst awaiting adjudication on charges of crimes against humanity pertaining to a punitive campaign against illicit narcotics that precipitated the demise of thousands of alleged offenders throughout his 2016-2022 presidential tenure, he remains undeterred in his pursuit of the mayoral post in his southern Davao City bastion.

Pursuant to Philippine jurisprudence, individuals subject to criminal prosecution, including those undergoing custodial detention, retain eligibility for public office absent a final conviction and the exhaustion of all available legal remedies.

Duterte's anticipated mayoral triumph in Davao, a position he occupied for more than two decades prior to his presidential tenure, presents an abstruse conundrum as to the practicalities of fulfilling his municipal duties whilst incarcerated.

More than sixty-eight million Filipinos were enfranchised to cast their ballots this past Monday to elect half of the twenty-four-member senatorial body, the entirety of the three hundred seventeen seats within the House of Representatives, and a panoply of posts across provinces, cities, and municipalities.

The polling stations ceased their operations at 19:00 hours local time; however, those electors still queueing in sundry precincts were nonetheless permitted to exercise their franchise. Electoral officials posited that the provisional tabulation might be ascertainable within a matter of hours, whereas the ratified outcomes would be formally declared within the ensuing hebdomad.

The senatorial race commands the spotlight, a contest fraught with high stakes potentially determining the political trajectory of Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of former President Duterte, who is scheduled for impeachment proceedings in the Senate in July amidst allegations of orchestrating a plot to assassinate President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and accusations of graft concerning her office's intelligence funds, charges she vehemently refutes, attributing their dissemination to political adversaries intent on her undoing.

Sara Duterte is widely regarded as a formidable candidate for the forthcoming 2028 presidential contest; nonetheless, a conviction by the Senate would inexorably lead to her divestiture of the vice presidency and her disqualification from any future public office, thus necessitating the affirmative votes of at least nine of the twenty-four senators for her exoneration.

"The forthcoming 2025 midterm elections are posited as pivotal by Maria Ela Atienza, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines, who asserts their outcome will substantively determine the trajectory of future political dominance, specifically indicating which familial or factional alignment is poised to exert preeminence in the 2028 electoral cycle."

Should Sara Duterte face conviction in the impeachment proceedings, it could portend the diminution of the Duterte family's preeminence in the nation's political landscape, she posited. Among other family members contesting the election are Rodrigo Duterte's youngest scion, Sebastian, the incumbent mayor of Davao, who is now vying for the vice mayorship and is widely prognosticated to prevail. His eldest progeny, Paolo, is seeking re-election as a member of the lower house. Two grandsons are also competing in local electoral contests.

The impeachment of Rodrigo Duterte, culminating in his apprehension and subsequent translocation to the tribunal in The Hague, transpired subsequent to the disintegration of the intricate political alliance between Marcos and Sara Duterte, a rupture precipitated by irreconcilable political divergences and their antithetical aspirations for power.

Preceding Monday's proceedings, Sara Duterte exercised her electoral franchise in Davao, concurrent with Marcos's casting of his ballot in his ancestral Northern stronghold, Batac City.

Following the act of suffrage, she apprised journalists that she would acquiesce to the electorate's mandate should her preferred candidates fail to secure victory.

Regarding her father's anticipated triumph, she posited, "Unequivocally, his presence shall be wanting; our collective prognostication posits that the vice mayor, Sebastian, will assume the mantle of acting mayor."

On the very eve of the electoral contest, Marcos, via a video communiqué, had exhorted the Filipino populace to exercise their franchise and ensure their collective voice achieved resonance.

Despite his detention on charges of sexual abuse and human trafficking, televangelist Apollo Quiboloy, a spiritual adviser and intimate political confederate of her father, is likewise contending for a senatorial mandate, concurrently facing outstanding warrants in the U.S. for analogous offenses.

The electoral process has been significantly undermined by sporadic outbursts of violence. For instance, law enforcement in Silay City, central Philippines, documented a shooting incident resulting in two fatalities and seven injuries. Concurrently, in the southern New Corella municipality, an exchange of gunfire between supporters of opposing mayoral candidates tragically led to two deaths and two casualties. Further south in Basilan, suspected election-linked shootings claimed seven lives. Numerous individuals sustained injuries in analogous incidents across other regions of the nation.

Fractious encounters between partisans of contending candidates additionally impeded electoral proceedings in certain constituencies. In Manila, a contingent of voters voiced grievances regarding the inexplicable absence of their names from the electoral roll within their designated precinct. A further multitude lamented the protracted and oppressive queue under conditions of stifling heat.

According to the elector Reymark Marquez, the coalition of Marcos and Duterte, triumphant in the 2022 elections, demonstrably failed to fulfil their pledges, asserting that the forthcoming midterm elections transcend the binary of Duterte versus Marcos, instead representing a critical juncture for the discernment of apt leadership.

Diana Joy Acosta, a 32-year-old recent mother, posited that the crux of this election pertained to the destiny of the forthcoming generation, articulating this conviction subsequent to depositing her ballot in a polling station situated within the metropolitan Manila district of Mandaluyong City; she expressed fervent aspirations for the eradication of corruption and the ascendance of politicians distinguished by probity, framing these as indispensable prerequisites for the auspicious future of her offspring.