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If you think democracy is getting tarnished in America, you could be a dual citizen of the U.S. and the Philippines. And then you’d be feeling twice as bad today.

Monday, May 9 is election day in the Philippines.

And it looks like the U.S.’s first colony–which ultimately was modeled to be our democracy in miniature–is poised to do what 35 years ago may have seemed unthinkable.

The Philippines is about to elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr., also known as Bong-Bong, the son of the late ousted Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, in a landslide.

Bong-Bong, or BBM in the Philippine media, has led by double digits in the latest polling, and it appears the margin may be too much for his closet rival, the current VP Leni Robredo, to overcome.

In the Philippines, presidents and vice-presidents are elected separately, and the veep candidate who has led the way is Sara Duterte, the daughter of the current Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte.

They are campaigning together though. BBM calls it a “Unity” ticket.

But the Marcos/Duterte collaboration is only a consolidation of everything bad in the history of modern Philippine politics.

Consider the achievements of the outgoing President Duterte and the thousands of extrajudicial killings attributed to his government.

The UN Human Rights Council in 2020 said since Duterte was elected to the presidency, more than 27,000 suspected drug peddlers have been killed in a mix of police operations and vigilante killings. There have also been nearly 250 human rights defenders (unionists, lawyers, journalists, and environmental rights defenders) killed.

The Philippines under Duterte isn’t even under martial law. So the numbers are somewhat of an improvement compared to the regime of the dictator Marcos back in the 1960s.

Amnesty International says Marcos imprisoned 70,000 people during martial law, tortured 34,000, and killed 3,240 Filipinos.

This perhaps is the reason VP Robredo has trailed so badly in her presidential bid. How many people has she killed? Jailed? Tortured?

And then there’s all the money the Marcoses plundered from the Philippines, an amount exceeding $10 billion.

No one comes close to the Marcoses. Even with billions partially recovered already, there is still $2.4 billion that remains in litigation, according to reports.

Government officials will need to find the political courage to go after a villainous Marcos family once reinstalled as the country’s leaders.

So you ask, how can all this happen in a democracy? Or maybe you just want to know why the son should bear responsibility for the sins of the father? Perhaps not all of them. But perhaps for most of them.

When Marcos was sent running in 1987, the whole family took refuge and exiled to Hawaii. And the family presumably shared in the wealth.

These days, BBM acts like a Brown Trump, follows the gaslight playbook, denies all negative stories, and calls them “fake news.” He isn’t even debating, just holding his “Unity” rallies. He is running on his tarnished but rebuffed name. Meanwhile, people in the Philippines are learning how to live with short memories. Because speaking up and shouting down an autocrat would lead to a much shorter life.

And then as in American Trumpism, there is the internet as a weapon. It’s littered with trolls who spew disinformation that spread rumors that candidates have withdrawn, or outright policy falsehoods, or flat-out lies about historical facts.

That kind of digital rewrite of history can turn a dictator like BBM’s father into a hero.

For this election some dual citizens in the U.S. set up a website, TrollExposer.com, to provide real-time fact-checking.

“If we can’t get social media platforms to enforce their own community standards, then we need to act ourselves,” said Loida Lewis, US Filipinos for Good Governance National Chair in New York. “The spread of harmful disinformation, manipulated narratives, and false propaganda needs to stop.”

But no one can say for sure how helpful the anti-troll websites have been.

There are 190,000 eligible voters in the U.S., a relative fraction of the nearly 1.7 million overseas workers overall. Just don’t think the dual citizens here don’t matter. Remittances talk, and the Philippines knows remittances. Filipinos overseas sent back more than $30 billion last year. From the U.S. alone, the amount is estimated at $13.2 billion.

Sadly, the rehabilitation of the Marcos family has been going on since 2016, when President Rodrigo Duterte won the Supreme Court’s blessing to go ahead and give Ferdinand Marcos a hero’s burial in the national cemetery.

“I’m just being legalistic about it,” said President Duterte to the media about Marcos Sr. at the time. “He was president, he was a soldier. That’s about it.”

Oh yeah, there are a few other choice words and adjectives Duterte could have used.

Corrupt dictator, philanderer, plunderer, I could go on.

The Pro-Marcos/anti-Marcos has always been the dividing line in the Philippines.

It split up my family, who immigrated from the region of Marcos, and where BongBong voted this morning. People in the rural areas of the country tend to be forgiving of the Marcoses, wanting peace and an end to violence. People closer to Manila, or in the business district Makati, tend to see BongBong for what he is, a name from the past that won’t propel the Philippines into a more prosperous future for all. Maybe the Marcos family, but not the entire country. But there are so many candidates splintering the anti-Marcos vote (including the candidacy of boxer Manny Pacquiao), that a strong consensus candidate like Robredo is hampered from the start.

So there is a real sense of dread among some Filipinos today. But there’s also a feeling that maybe this is a kind of redemptive act for the Marcoses. The father is gone, maybe the family will do better?

If you’re concerned about geopolitical trends, pay attention to the Philippines this week. AAPIs who are qualified Filipino American dual citizens here are voting, and there’s support both for and against Marcos Jr. But it could be just the latest black eye for modern democracy in our world.