EVERY Philippine president eventually confronts the same uncomfortable truth: The office ends, but the enemies do not. In a political culture where succession is as much about survival as governance, every administration builds what analysts quietly call an "exit architecture," a deliberate arrangement of allies, successors, and institutional shields designed to protect the outgoing leader from legal jeopardy, preserve policy legacies, and maintain influence from behind the curtain.
Rodrigo Duterte understood this better than most. His partnership with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in 2022 was never purely ideological, it was transactional. A Marcos presidency offered a buffer against the International Criminal Court, which had been circling Duterte's drug war record for years. The arrangement collapsed spectacularly. In early 2025, the Marcos administration signaled it would cooperate with ICC requests. Rodrigo Duterte was arrested and flown to The Hague. The exit plan had failed — and his daughter Sara, now vice president, suddenly found herself both politically exposed and more powerful than ever.
This is the paradox at the heart of Philippine politics today. The Marcos camp's attempt to eliminate Sara Duterte is not simply a legal accountability exercise. It is a succession war, and both sides know it.
Here now comes the impeachment as a weapon to redefine the exit in 2028. Sara Duterte has now been impeached twice by the House of Representatives. The second impeachment, in May 2026, passed with 257 votes, well above the required threshold. The charges are substantive: alleged misuse of confidential funds, unexplained wealth, and the extraordinary accusation that she threatened to have President Marcos Jr., the first lady, and the House speaker killed if anything happened to her.
But the political logic behind the impeachment is equally transparent. Sara Duterte is the frontrunner for the 2028 presidential election, a race Marcos cannot contest due to the single-term limit. A Senate conviction, requiring 16 of 24 senator-judges, would result in her removal from office and perpetual disqualification from public life. That outcome would effectively hand the Marcos camp the ability to anoint a more pliable successor, someone who would protect the administration's legacy and, crucially, shield its principals from post-term accountability. Still, VP Duterte cancels the resignation option, standing behind her 32 million mandate.
But the plan hatched in early 2023 has one major flaw: Sara is fighting back and fighting smart. Before the House voted on her second impeachment, her allies outmaneuvered Marcos' Senate bloc and installed Duterte-era loyalist Alan Cayetano as Senate president. Securing a conviction now requires flipping senators in a chamber led by the opposing camp. Legal experts have noted that even parallel criminal cases are unlikely to reach a final, unappealable verdict before the 2028 election filing period. The trap was set. It may not spring in time.
Whoever makes it in 2028, there is a mixed inheritance to accept, one defined by Marcos Jr. and another cause by Marcos Jr., which is the economy. Whatever the political outcome, the next president inherits an economy that tells two different stories depending on which numbers you read. The Marcos administration's boosters point to real achievements: inflation fell from 6 percent highs in 2023 to 1.6 percent by late 2025, the country exited the FATF gray list, and the IMF projected 5.6 percent GDP growth for 2026. Unemployment dropped to near-historic lows. These are not trivial accomplishments. But they are not the here and now.
The structural picture is more troubling. GDP growth slowed to 4.4 percent in 2025, the weakest in 15 years outside the pandemic, after an infrastructure corruption scandal froze government construction spending. Marcos promised prosecutions by year-end 2025. None materialized. The administration consistently missed its own 6.5 to 8 percent growth targets, and economists have calculated that returning to the pre-pandemic growth trajectory by 2028 would require an implausible 13 percent annual expansion.
The 2028-2034 administration therefore inherits both genuine potential and accumulated damage. The Philippines has strong demographic fundamentals, a massive OFW remittance base, and a growing BPO sector. But political instability, the kind generated by years of dynastic warfare, institutional manipulation and weaponized impeachments, is the single greatest deterrent to the sustained foreign investment the country needs to break into a higher growth orbit. Whoever wins in 2028 will spend at least the first two years managing the fallout of the Marcos-Duterte war rather than governing.
And yet, the surveys are unambiguous. A poll from May 2026 placed Sara Duterte at 51 percent in a direct matchup against Leni Robredo, who garnered 41 percent. Her approval rating stands at 55 percent, nearly 20 points above Marcos' own numbers. In Mindanao, her home turf, she commands 88 percent support. In the Visayas, over 50 percent.
The positioned opposition, meanwhile, is fragmented. Robredo has declined to run again. No unity candidate has emerged. In a multi-candidate field, vote-splitting among so-called reform-oriented voters could deliver Duterte a plurality even if her numbers soften.
Her father's detention at the ICC has not weakened her, it has galvanized her base. For millions of Filipinos who supported the Duterte years, the ICC reads as foreign overreach, and Sara becomes the embodiment of defiance. That is a potent electoral identity.
The 2028 Philippine presidency remains hers to lose. She has survived two impeachments, outflanked a sitting president, and maintained commanding poll leads through the most sustained political assault mounted against any vice president in the country's modern history.
In the Philippines, exit plans matter. So does knowing how to survive someone else's.