Marcos vs Marcos: the bitter truth behind the Philippine first family’s feud

From awkward wedding encounters to public snubs and shouting matches, President Marcos Jnr and his sister Imee are now openly estranged

As Ferdinand Marcos Jnr touches down in Washington this weekend, his mind may well be half a world away, fixed not on the security and trade talks that await him but on the family feud back home: one born of betrayal, blind ambition and the wounds of history.

The 67-year-old Philippine president – known to many as “Bongbong” – and his sister Senator Imee Marcos, 69, were once the very picture of sibling solidarity, but have now become estranged, their rift laid bare for all to see.

Imee has thrown her lot in with her brother’s former ally turned fiercest political enemy: Vice-President Sara Duterte-Carpio, who has previously menaced not just Bongbong’s life but those of his wife and their cousin, and even threatened to desecrate his late father’s remains.

Three years have passed since Bongbong’s electoral victory restored the Marcos family to the Philippines’ top office, nearly four decades after a bloodless “People Power” revolution sent them into exile. With the president’s three sons all too young to claim the mantle in 2028, only Imee and her own son are positioned to maintain the dynasty’s influence at the next election. But their animosity makes such a prospect far from certain.

Quiet signs, loud break-up

For months, the feud between Imee and her brother simmered behind closed doors, visible only in fleeting, awkward moments. At a church wedding earlier this year, guests watched in disbelief as the two siblings studiously avoided each other. “They don’t get along too well,” the surprised groom was overheard telling a guest.

On another occasion, shortly before the results of the 2022 presidential election were in, a prominent businessman stumbled upon a scene in the Marcos campaign headquarters: Imee and Marie Louise “Liza” Araneta Marcos, the president’s wife, locked in a furious shouting match. The businessman hastily left, reportedly unnerved by the raw tension.

Another telling moment was captured, unwittingly, in an official live stream. During Duterte-Carpio’s vice-presidential oath-taking in Davao City, Imee joined the group on stage for a photo, unannounced and uninvited. But when the siblings’ paths crossed afterwards, Bongbong turned away, embracing Sara’s mother instead of greeting or even acknowledging his sister. Imee, visibly snubbed, sought out outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte.

Despite such incidents, the siblings maintained a public facade. Imee batted away reporters’ questions about her relationship with the president, blaming her Senate workload for their lack of contact. But the cracks widened. In a candid interview in April last year, First Lady Liza hinted at deeper divides: “Maybe you should ask her. I’m just the outlaw. I know what line not to cross,” she said, further revealing that Imee had stopped attending the family’s Sunday lunches with matriarch Imelda.

The tension finally burst into the open in March, weeks before this year’s midterm election. The president, for the first time, stopped mentioning or offering any endorsements of his sister. On social media, Liza posted a family lunch photo on March 23: Imee’s three sons were present, but she was not. This came after Imee had publicly condemned as “illegal” the arrest and extradition to the Hague of former president Duterte, which her brother’s government enabled, to face crimes against humanity charges over his deadly war on drugs.

Days later, Imee formally withdrew from Bongbong’s Senate slate, launching her own Senate investigation into Duterte’s arrest in a calculated rebuke of her brother. Final confirmation of their estrangement came on April 14, when Imee posted a 31-second video online with Duterte-Carpio, both clad in mourning black, denouncing Bongbong’s government for causing hunger, injustice and political repression. Duterte-Carpio endorsed Imee’s candidacy and Imee went on to secure a Senate seat in the election.

Still, the two camps mostly refrained from direct attacks, opting instead for veiled barbs. At an April press conference, Imee likened the presidential palace to “a snake pit”, claiming her brother was being led astray by “snakes” with selfish motives. For Duterte loyalists, “snake” has become a code word for Liza, ever since a former ally dubbed her ang babaeng ahas (the snake woman) in a YouTube video.

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Asked days before the midterm election about her relationship with the president, Imee replied, “No, I haven’t seen him in ages. I’m sure he’s not happy about what’s happening. I’m certainly miserable about these developments.” Her brother has yet to open up publicly about the feud.

Meanwhile, Imee and Liza’s quarrel took an even darker turn this week, when the president’s sister put out a statement implicating his wife in the death of Filipino businessman Paolo Tantoco, who died of a suspected drug overdose in the US on March 8.

In her statement issued on Monday, Imee referenced “claims circulating online that the first lady may have personal knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Tantoco’s death”, citing allegations that Liza “was present at the scene”. This appeared to be an allusion to an apparently doctored police report that was shared on social media detailing the presence of three companions, including Liza, in Tantoco’s hotel room as well as “white powder suspected to be cocaine”.

A copy of the original police report obtained by Philippine broadcaster ABS-CBN made no mention of the companions or the cocaine, but a separate medical examiner’s report concluded the death was “accidental” and listed the primary cause as “cocaine effects” with heart disease a contributory factor. “We can see and prove that the police report posted on Facebook was fake, it was digitally altered,” presidential spokeswoman Claire Castro told a media briefing on Wednesday.

Roots of the rift

Attempts by This Week in Asia to speak directly with the first lady and Senator Marcos yielded no meaningful response. But sources close to the family trace the bitterness back to the early 1990s and Bongbong’s decision to marry Liza.

The couple met in New York and wed in 1993. At the time, Liza worked at a law firm while Bongbong was accompanying his parents, who faced racketeering charges in the United States connected to the elder Marcos’ two-decade reign. According to a source within their social circle, Imee was blunt in her assessment of her brother’s partner. “Why are you marrying her? You could have done better,” she reportedly said.

Imee and her mother Imelda “never approved of, and were always hostile to, Ferdinand Jnr’s wife”, historian Manolo Quezon told This Week in Asia, citing “an assertion often made by those who claim to know them”. It was this that led to both being “pointedly excluded” from the inner workings of the 2022 campaign, he said.

Political analyst Ronald Llamas sees class as part of the story. Despite Liza’s ties to the wealthy Roxas-Araneta clan, her branch of the family was less privileged. “She is not an Araneta who was rich. Her father was a basketball player. So I think that piece of gossip has basis,” Llamas, a former political adviser to the late Philippine president Benigno Aquino, told This Week in Asia.

At the couple’s wedding in Italy, Imee was largely absent. Though present for the ceremony at the church, she was nowhere to be seen in the photos of the intimate reception that followed. And when the couple renewed their vows in 2018, she was again missing. Llamas believes the current tension dates back to this early antipathy.

Imee played a central role in her brother’s 2016 vice-presidential run, only to later be blamed for his narrow defeat. Llamas said “the biggest contributory factor” to their bad blood was their “really contradictory and clashing personalities”.

A prominent businessman with knowledge of their relationship concurred: “The enmity is highly personal and they haven’t gotten along for a long time,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But there’s no right and wrong here.”

Caught between these “alpha women”, Llamas said, was a president who’s “conflict-averse”.

Unresolved rivalry

Yet the siblings’ rift runs even deeper, back to their childhood and the ambitions of their father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos Snr.

Imee, “not her brother”, was originally groomed as heir, Llamas said. She was installed as head of Kabataang Barangay by her father, who reportedly modelled the organisation onthe Hitler Youth, according to Marcos Snr’s ghost writer, Jose Almonte. In a rare interview conducted by journalist Paulynn Sicam in the 1970s, Marcos Snr called Imee his “intellectual twin”, reserving for his son only that he had “good muscle coordination”.

When Bongbong did finally ascend to the presidency – a move Llamas said Imee had “publicly discouraged” – resentment simmered. “She was the one ready for it. She was brighter, trained by her father,” he said. Quezon added that the two siblings were “hostile … putting it mildly”.

Sentor Panfilo Lacson tried to broker peace between the two last autumn, assuring Imee at a public forum in October: “Your brother loves you very, very much.” But this was not enough to bring her back to the administration’s slate of Senate candidates.

Another businessman, close to both siblings, described Imee as a “rebel” who believes she, not “Bonget” – a pet name for Marcos Jnr – should be president. “She’s quite egotistical, but she knows he was electable and she is not,” the source said.

Polling data corroborates this assertion. Llamas said surveys commissioned by the family showed that Bongbong was more palatable to voters than Imee. “She was not the choice of the family to run for president,” retired publisher Vergel Santos added.

Even after Bongbong’s candidacy was made official in 2021, Imee allegedly tried to have him disqualified, hoping to step into the void.

“My own sources say it was at the instigation of the Dutertes and Imee that steps were taken to have Bongbong disqualified,” Santos, who has been a journalist since the Marcos dictatorship, told This Week in Asia. For him, this betrayal explains the Philippine president’s eventual break with the Dutertes and the first lady’s enduring chill towards Imee.

“Because you are not on good terms with your own brother, how could you be on good terms with the wife of your brother, the woman who goes to bed with him?”

Then president Duterte revealed to reporters in the autumn of 2021 that Imee had been visiting his daughter Sara in their political stronghold of Davao “hoping that if she ran [for president] she would make Imee her vice-presidential mate”.

Imee continued to be a disruptive force in the Senate, Santos said, “conspiring with the Duterte bloc” against her brother’s administration. Describing her as “too impulsive”, he said Bongbong was the “sensible choice” for the family to put forward as a political heir, but added: “He’s a weak president, unfit for power”.

“Obviously, their quarrel will affect everything because they now belong to opposite sides and they have blood connections,” Santos said.

What’s next for the Marcoses?

With just three years remaining of his term, Marcos Jnr is now scrambling for a successor. The family’s preferred heir, eldest son Ferdinand “Sandro” Marcos III, is too young – he turns 34 in 2028, when the next presidential poll is due to be held, well below the constitutional minimum age of 40.

House Speaker Martin Romualdez and Liza herself are unlikely contenders: he lags in popularity and she tends to shun the spotlight.

For Quezon, the “real existential threats” to the Marcos dynasty’s longevity are Duterte-Carpio and her father. Bongbong, he said, “will be remembered for his own style of leadership, essentially one that leaves no impetus for either continuation or replication”.

As for Imee, the prospect of reconciliation with her brother or his wife seems remote. “They’ve already burned their bridges. She has allied herself with those who are planning to destroy her brother and his family, politically and physically. There’s no turning back,” Llamas said.