By DIEGO MORRA
The Filipino people should be enraged by the fact that since the government plunged headlong into globalization and dismantled protections for workers and peasants, the more power the oligarchy obtained. Regimes from Cory Aquino to Ferdinand Marcos Jr. only differed in the manner they dispensed favors and the magnitude of gains amassed by wealthy families.
On July 11, 2025, Dr. Antoinette Raquiza of the University of the Philippines Asian Center delivered her findings on how the oligarchy gained so much power, and how the traditional landlords and compradors gained new members like Manny Villar, who used his political power to amass economic power, as well as the Filipino-Chinese families that were in the margins of Philippine politics for decades but who now wield enormous political influence as they expanded their businesses, acquired banks in the process and even won concessions from the Marcos dictatorship to build commercial centers and superprofits from rentals and delayed payments to their suppliers.
Dr. Raquiza deserves praise for using her precious time to monitor the rise of the oligarchy using annual financial statistics and the assessments by Forbes on who the wealthiest Filipinos are from among those in manufacturing, in the highly speculative landbanking and property development projects, to power generation, water business and commercial centers. Indeed, the rise of Villar as the “wealthiest Filipino” may appear as a rags-to-riches story but beneath the façade is a story of how a cunning politician using the levers of power can protect and defend his businesses. Of course, his claim of trillion-peso earnings from land speculation has been derided, along with the continuing tax amnesty for his companies bestowed by the Las Pinas city government. Moreover, most of his land deals are termed “joint ventures” with landowners while his subdivisions, particularly his Camella-Palmera brand have narrow streets that residents describe as having “1-1/2 lanes.”
Right off the bat, the oligarchy and its army of enforcers, from the lawyers who exploit legal loopholes and the lacunae of jurisprudential rulings to protect their clients, to the accountants and auditors who invoke generally-accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to fix the books and to the lawmakers who would not rock the boat and the political dynasties which have their interests interwoven with those of the oligarchs, will never contemplate reforming the very system that sustains their greed. Merely changing legislative personnel during the elections will not change the system and will never alter the inequitable social system. There may be annual movements in the Forbes list of wealthy Filipinos and these plutocrats may actually be vicious rivals but they all share one principle: Never ever let the poor and the deliberately marginalized peasants and workers ever gain sufficient political power to overhaul the entire socio-political and economic system. They are no different from Elbert Hubbard’s tyrant who believes only in freedom for himself.
Just as the ruling classes do not believe in Xi Jinping’s “shared prosperity,” they relish the thought that poor Filipinos are content with bread and circuses and false promises of cosmetic changes. The social ladder is not for the wretched of the earth. Unless the Filipino people devote themselves to overturning these plutocrats, they are condemned to watching the oligarchs getting fatter along with the political dynasties whose members conspire with them. They are united in controlling those do not earn the minimum wage and are reduced to hand-to-mouth existence 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These oligarchs are never the paternalistic class they purport to be but the political class that pampers a system that exploits and oppresses, that takes advantage of its coercive to dismember the real social opposition. “Piscis primum a capite foetet,” as Erasmus noted. The fish rots first from the head. To stop total decay, just cut the head off.
Indeed, since 1965, when the most powerful oligarchs in the country threw P20-million for the presidential campaign of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., there has never been an instance when oligarchs lost out in deals with the government. The oligarch who wagered on Marcos Sr. was Eugenio Lopez Sr., whose own brother, Fernando Lopez, became Marcos’ partner as vice presidential bet. Eugenio Lopez became the most influential businessman at the time, representing the sugar bloc, operating Meralco, publishing the Manila Chronicle and running ABS-CBN. The Marcos-Lopez honeymoon lasted five years or so, and the break came when the Lopezes tried but failed to build a much-needed petrochemical complex in Batangas. Marcos Sr. knew that making the Lopezes superwealthy was a bad idea. He must have thought so back in 1965, when “Andy,” as Marcos Sr. was known, purportedly was made to wait for seven hours before meeting the Lopez patriarch. Marcos Sr. dumped the Lopezes as he had already had his own cronies, all of them ready to support martial law before it was imposed in September 1972.
Curiously, it was an Ilocano politician who got wind of the plan for martial law and the dismantling of the Lopez empire. Eventually, the late journalist and lawyer Manuel F. Almario learned about it. Forewarned, many journalists took the matter seriously and prepared for the inevitable. Today, another Marcos is surrounded by plutocrats, but this time, they have an organization with a nice name: the Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC). Then there is Enrique “Ricky” Razon, who has the President’s ear and who has been competing with fellow plutocrats to grab deals in power generation, oil and gas exploration, and control water distribution in Metro Manila. The Henry Sy children are represented as well, along with the Gokongweis, the Aboitizes, with Sabin as PSAC chief. The Sys are into banking, commercial centers and sit on the boards of corporations indebted to Banco de Oro and China Banking Corp. They are big players in the National Grid Corp. of the Philippines (NGCP), where a Chinese company has 40% stake.
While they advise government, they also get awarded with business deals. The Gokongweis get Clark International Airport to manage while the Aboitizes won management control of airports in the Visayas and Mindanao even as they hydropower projects. Ramon Ang is now the head honcho at the NAIA and is pushing his own airport-cum-industrial center with a racetrack in Bulakan, Bulacan while his MRT-7 project slogs through a maze of right-of-way (ROW) cases. Lest we forget, Manny Pangilinan is PLDT-Smart chief whose principals also earn from expressways, Meralco, agribusiness ventures and others. Moreover, Filipino plutocrats also have their own version of the 2010 Citizens United ruling by the US Supreme Court (SC), which gave corporations political rights, free speech and the absolute duty to meddle with government. Thus, you have Villar’s Nacionalista Party (NP), which some party members said was “purchased,” while Ramon Ang inherited Danding Cojuangco’s Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC), the political arm of San Miguel Corp. (SMC), and Razon is the real power at the National Unity Party (NUP.) Marcos Jr. also has his Partido Federal ng Pilipinas (PFP) while cousin Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez is the chief of Lakas-CMD. Plutocrats and political dynasties. You can’t have one without the other.
