Controversial Philippine president-elect, Ferdinand Marcos Jr has been sworn in as President today thereby completing a decades-long effort to restore his family to the country’s highest office.
Marcos Jr who is the son and namesake of the country’s late dictator, had taken his oath in front of hundreds of local and foreign dignitaries as well as journalists and supporters at the National Museum in Manila.
Analysis by independent reports have also shown that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. who clinched a decisive win in the just concluded Philippine presidential election on Monday has made some new adjustments to re-shape the Southeast Asian country’s relations with China and the United States as his tenure would seek to breed better friendships with Beijing.
Marcos, the son, and namesake of the country’s former dictator, has long-standing ties with China and is seeking a new deal with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping over the contested waters of the South China Sea.
Marcos’s relations with the United States, on the other hand has already been previously complicated by a contempt of court order for his refusal to co-operate with the District Court of Hawaii, which in 1995 ordered his family to pay $2 billion of plundered wealth to victims of Marcos Sr.’s rule.
The Philippines is a fulcrum of the geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China, with its maritime territory encompassing part of the South China Sea, a strategic and resource-rich waterway over which China also claims sovereignty.
In 2016, an arbitral tribunal constituted under the International Law of the Sea ruled in favour of the Philippines over China’s claim, a decision seized upon by other claimant states, as well as the U.S. and its allies concerned by China’s construction of military installations on islands in the waters.