Neither Marcos nor Duterte: Renewing Calls
for Grassroots Politics vs. Managed Dissent
The Philippine political stage today is dominated by spectacle and illusion.
In a recent broadcast excerpt, former senator Antonio Trillanes laid bare what he described as the agenda of the so-called mainstream opposition: an attempt to forge an alliance with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—a maneuver that, to many observers, appears deeply embarrassing for a faction that purports to oppose his administration.
Labeling this opposition as “dominant” may sound paradoxical at first, yet within the Philippine political landscape, it is accurate. This faction represents the acceptable face of dissent, a performative opposition whose primary function is less about transformative change and more about containment. By framing the political battlefield on terms convenient to itself, it channels genuine discontent into safe, manageable outlets, ensuring that truly transformative forces from below never gain meaningful traction.
Trillanes himself, in an interview, reduced the Philippine political scene to a quartet of forces: the pro-Marcos camp, the pro-Duterte camp, the Kakampinks—a coalition of Liberals and social democrats—and the so-called “unaligned” masses. From the perspective of political theory, this is a textbook example of what Antonio Gramsci termed a passive revolution: a strategy whereby dominant groups absorb dissent, control the narrative, and exclude radical alternatives from legitimate discourse (Gramsci, 1971). Similarly, Chantal Mouffe’s work on “hegemonic pluralism” underscores how liberal democracies often manufacture consent through a controlled opposition that prevents the emergence of antagonistic politics capable of disrupting entrenched hierarchies (Mouffe, 2005).
Yet this manufactured framework conceals more than it reveals. Opposition is not monolithic. Many reject both Marcos and Duterte outright. It is unsurprising, some argue, that such citizens are willing to go beyond the narrow parameters of legality if that is what is required to realize true nationalism and systemic reform. Trillanes, it seems, has forgotten that he was once a coup‑plotter inspired by the ideas of a “Filipino Ideology” and a “National Recovery Program”—visions in which the ills of society, including systemic corruption, were to be surgically excised. Ironically, his current rhetoric minimizes the very principles he once embraced.
Perhaps, however, his strategy is calculated: a “revolution from the center,” an attempt to rescue the political center by performing the appearance of radical opposition while preserving the underlying system. In this light, Trillanes’s maneuver resembles a neo‑Marcosian tactic: aligning the so-called “liberals” and “pinks” with a figure he opposed as recently as 2022, while framing it as principled resistance. By doing so, the dominant opposition claims moral high ground, yet in practice leaves the deeper structures of corruption untouched.
This is consistent with wider patterns identified in comparative political science. As James C. Scott has observed in Domination and the Arts of Resistance, state power often relies on controlling the visible and symbolic forms of dissent, while quietly neutralizing the capacity of the subordinate to mobilize transformative change (Scott, 1990). Similarly, the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos reminds us that dominant legal-political frameworks often marginalize “subaltern counterpublics,” rendering their knowledge and praxis invisible, even when their movements embody systemic critique (Santos, 2002).
Not surprisingly, when Marcos is positioned as the lesser evil relative to Duterte, the administration’s past misdeeds are quietly relegated to footnotes—convenient omissions in a narrative that prioritizes political optics over accountability. The result is a theatre of controlled dissent: citizens are presented with the illusion of choice while the entrenched elite maintain their grip on power. The radical aspirations of students, workers, and organized communities are marginalized, dismissed, or pathologized as “extreme”—even as these very forces confront the systemic failures left unresolved by both Marcos and Duterte.
The irony is sharp: Trillanes, a coup plotter during the Arroyo era, once sought to surgically remove corruption, to confront systemic injustice decisively. Today, by performing a safe, centralized opposition, he may be inadvertently perpetuating the very problems he once vowed to eradicate. The gap between past principle and present strategy is stark, and it is being noticed—by citizens who refuse to be contained within the narrow parameters of elite-managed politics.
At present, countless citizens are actively engaged: students, farmers, workers, women, Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQIA+ communities, faith-based groups, and professional associations. The mainstream opposition, Trillanes included, seeks to shrink politics to a comfortably abstract game, one that ignores the concrete conditions shaping people’s lives. As Gaston Bachelard observed, “the world in which one thinks is not necessarily the world in which one lives” (Bachelard, 1984). This disconnect explains why these factions dismiss massive, sustained mobilizations—from the September 21st actions to the approaching “Baha sa Luneta 2.0” on November 30th—movements fueled by floods, government scandals, and a growing awareness of Marcos Jr.’s central role in the nation’s crises.
Established powers—from Malacañang to the Kakampinks, including the police and military—view these grassroots forces with suspicion. They are accustomed to dealing with compliant masses: bodies to be swayed, ridiculed, disciplined, or suppressed. These organizers are different. They are aligned, principled, and refuse to become collateral damage in a decayed political system. The only concession to Trillanes’s framework is his critique of the Duterte faction; a resurgence on their part, he warns, would bring devastation.
Observers note a troubling pattern: a tendency to see politics as a choice between lesser evils, arguing that removing Marcos alone is insufficient because Duterte’s faction remains a looming threat. Yet corruption thrives across both camps, often shared by the same personalities who benefited under both administrations. Selective finger-pointing obscures the systemic rot at the heart of governance.
The grassroots are resolute. By refusing to name them, dominant forces hope to erase them from the narrative. But they will make themselves visible—vivid, undeniable, and unignored. Their presence will be felt in Luneta on November 30th, as students, workers, organizers, and citizens converge to demand justice, accountability, and systemic change. They demand neither Marcos nor Duterte. In doing so, they embody a politics that the mainstream opposition cannot contain: a vision of nationalism, reform, and systemic justice that refuses to be hemmed in by legalistic limitations or performative politics.
As Helmut Schmidt dryly observed, “Those who don’t talk won’t be heard” (Schmidt, 1987). In the streets, in the barrios, in factories and campuses, the people intend to make themselves heard. They will not settle for the hollow scripts of the established “opposition.” In this city of power and performance, they remind the nation that true politics emerges from below, not from the carefully curated illusions of privileged dissent—a truth echoed by Paulo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, who argued that liberation arises from the conscientization of the oppressed, not the benevolence of the powerful (Freire, 1970).
In the Philippines today, the question is not simply who governs, but whether governance will ever be accountable to the people themselves. And in the streets of Luneta, the answer may finally be making itself unmistakably clear.
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Bachelard, G. (1984). The New Scientific Spirit. Beacon Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers.
Mouffe, C. (2005). On the Political. Routledge.
Santos, B. de S. (2002). Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization, and Emancipation. Butterworths.
Schmidt, H. (1987). Memoirs: Politics and Power in Germany. Pantheon.
Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press.