Will bishops’ call for ‘revolution of hope’ affect Filipino elections?

Can Catholics make a difference in a frustrating political landscape?

The Philippines’ midterm elections started on Palm Sunday as the country’s Commission on Elections rolled out for the first time internet voting for an estimated two million registered overseas Filipino voters.

Presidential candidates in The Philippines. Credit: Vatican Media.

Filipinos in countries with the earliest time zones like New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and South Korea voted first in accordance with an advisory from the Commission on Filipinos overseas. Online voting portals opened in other locations throughout the day.

Most Filipino voters — up to 67 million more — will exercise their right of suffrage at polling precincts across the Philippines, the third-largest Catholic country after Brazil and Mexico, on election day, May 12.

The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines had urged the Filipino faithful and people of goodwill to mount a “revolution of hope” this election year to bring about nationwide “change and responsible leadership for the present and future.”

The bishops, in their letter released in February, lauded “principle-driven leaders who champion good governance” as sparks of hope across what many deem a frustrating political landscape.

Candidates, according to the election commission, vie for 12 of 24 seats in the nation’s Senate and all 317 seats representing congressional districts and socio-political or “party list” sectors in its House of Representatives.

In addition, voters will choose governors and vice governors for the Philippines’ 82 provinces, as well as provincial board members and city and municipal mayors, vice mayors, and councilors.

Election results will shape political dynamics in the final three years of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. whose term as Philippines president ends in 2028.

A reconfigured Congress is expected to tackle pieces of legislation that Catholics have kept under close watch since they deal with divorce, gender-based discrimination and same-sex unions, and teenage pregnancy prevention with controversial sex education components.

Ahead of the election, the country’s bishops had lamented “politics as usual” in the Philippines amid the Church’s jubilee year of hope.

“The scandalous misuse of public funds and resources; the questionable insertions, cuts, and adjustments in the national budget; and the anti-poverty programs that promote a culture of patronage and mendicancy are truly disturbing,” the Filipino bishops wrote in a pastoral letter signed by Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, bishop of Kalookan and CBCP president.

“As the elections draw near, we see how platforms of popularity, dynasty, and patronage are again exploited, making politics into a family business.”

Deadly violence, the circulation of falsehood on the internet, expectations of vote-buying, fears of electoral fraud, and divisiveness among political coalitions dominated by a few powerful families have besieged the campaign season that started on Feb. 11.

These developments unfold, the bishops said, as Filipinos suffer an “alarming” loss of the sense of sin, attacks on human life including those of the innocent, disasters and ecological degradation, and rising poverty, unemployment, and inflation.

Filipinos, the bishops added, also endure threats to national sovereignty (an obvious reference to China’s aggression on the Philippines’ western flank), the spread of lies that poison communication on and offline, and a broken system of checks and balances in government.

But all these, they said, can be overcome if Filipinos “pursue the path of personal, institutional, and ecclesial conversion in order to rediscover hope.”

“In this Jubilee Year of Hope, together we hold precious the gift of hope sparked by the Holy Spirit. This hope is not simply optimism or a positive feeling,” they said. “These are glimpses of the gift of hope that comes from the Holy Spirit urging us to act.”

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For most Filipinos, the elections merely pit against each other the Philippines’ most dominant political families in recent years — the Marcoses under President Marcos Jr. and the Dutertes under the still popular former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Yet for practicing Filipino Catholics and other critics of the Filipino democratic experiment, there are, as in elections past, no quick ways to determine which candidates to choose.

The country has a multi-party electoral system. But no political party that fully represents the vision of the common good summarized in Catholic social teaching — which could well go a long way toward resolving multiple crises that the nation faces — is a strong contender in national and local polls.

And Filipino political parties are not well known for their principles. They usually seal alliances with the party of the candidate who wins the presidency. Otherwise many politicians simply change their party affiliation whenever it suits them.

The 2025 elections are an opportunity for Filipinos to render judgment on the first half of Marcos’ term, which was secured on the fuzzy promise of a renewed Philippines.

Filipino bishops had denounced in the 2022 campaign period falsehoods about Philippine history, circulated on the internet, that rehabilitated the public image of the Marcos family and persisted until Marcos Jr. was elected president.

Marcos’ supporters had repeatedly claimed that the regime of his father, Ferdinand Sr. was the Philippines’ “golden age.”

Whatever might have made it a “golden age” to the Marcos family, it was also marked by nationwide economic recession and bleeding public coffers, and saw a world record set in the country for the “greatest robbery of a government.”

The elder Marcos’ regime was also darkened by state-sponsored murders, enforced disappearances, imprisonment without warrant, and torture of dissidents including clerics and religious men and women.

The younger Marcos has been unclear about whether he would apologize for atrocities that took place under his father’s watch, saying that this is a personal matter for the Marcos family and that he would rather focus on what he considers the larger reality of his own presidency.

The elections also test the political clout of the former president who is — through the cooperation of the incumbent Marcos’ government — detained for crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and of Duterte’s daughter, impeached Vice President Sara Duterte.

Clergy, religious, and laity had consistently criticized the violence that claimed tens of thousands of lives under Duterte’s flagship “war on drugs.”

The coalitions under the rich and powerful families of the current and former presidents compete to secure majorities in both chambers of Congress in the wake of the falling out between President Marcos and Vice President Duterte.

The breakup of the alliance does not herald reform but only reflects the dynastic nature of Philippine politics where political clans lead at least 71 out of the nation’s 82 provincial governments.

The lopsided concentration of power in the hands of a few, which to many defeats the purpose of democracy, has prompted citizens including Catholic bishops and priests to petition the Supreme Court in March to compel Congress to enact an anti-dynasty law. Last week, the High Court directed Congress to comment on that petition.

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Philippine senators, elected by a nationwide constituency, have terms of six years. Senatorial elections are scheduled so that only 12 seats are contested every three years and the remaining senators may ensure continuity in the legislative agenda regardless of whether their colleagues return after the elections. Members of the House of Representatives and local officials are elected every three years.

Local races featuring thousands of smaller parties and independent candidates are crucial because contenders for provincial and smaller offices are thought to deliver through their endorsements votes for national candidates.

At stake is the future of Vice President Duterte, who faces a post-impeachment trial by the Senate and whose leadership has been frequently taken to task by Catholic Church leaders.

The vice president could remain in her position or be removed and permanently barred from holding public office depending on the composition of the Senate.

After the elections, senators will convene as an impeachment court to try her for culpable violation of the Constitution, graft and corruption, bribery, betrayal of public trust, and other high crimes.

The articles of impeachment stem from several allegations. She is accused of having misused confidential public funds of at least $10 million as education secretary and vice president. She is also alleged to have conspired to assassinate Marcos and the first lady.

Sixteen of 24 senators are needed to convict and remove the vice president.

The CBCP had commended the House of Representatives for using constitutional means to address accusations against Vice President Duterte.

“This demonstrates that our democratic institutions are functioning as intended. No leader should be beyond scrutiny, and governance must always serve the common good,” Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo of Kidapawan who chairs the conference’s social action commission said in a statement.

Priests and sisters from various religious congregations in the Philippines had joined other Filipinos in filing an impeachment complaint against the vice president at the Lower House, with the Conference of Major Superiors of the Philippines (CMSP) subsequently calling for her prompt trial.

The elections will moreover indicate the importance to voters of candidates’ dispositions toward China in the face of its sustained aggression on Filipino territory.

Beijing claims as part of China on the South China Sea what Manila calls the West Philippine Sea that is recognized as Filipino territory under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea per a ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague.

Filipino bishops have been relentless in calling for a peaceful resolution to the territorial dispute, encouraging non-violent activity such as civilian supply missions and the offering of the rosary for peace in the area.

The elections will also be decisive for legislative measures that Church leaders view as threats to human dignity and relationships.

Last year, the House of Representatives approved on third and final reading a bill to legalize absolute divorce. The Senate adjourned for the campaign period without further discussing a counterpart measure.

The Philippines is the last state outside the Vatican where divorce remains illegal.

A civil unions bill that seeks to recognize same-sex partnerships has been filed at the Senate while a separate bill at the Lower House seeks to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

The bishops have stated that they, too, oppose discrimination but also firmly oppose homosexual acts and do not encourage people to choose their own gender.

The lower house had passed on third and final reading a bill to prevent teenage pregnancy that has become controversial because of its sex education features that may draw from secular Western models. Senators have yet to fully deliberate on their version of the bill that Christian groups assailed as a possible path to robbing children of their innocence and promoting gender fluidity among them.

The Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines had raised concerns about the bill, reasserting the primacy of parents in educating their children and the academic freedom of Catholic schools in teaching religiously sensitive and culturally appropriate sexuality education.

Bills do not become laws in the Philippines until lawmakers in each house of Congress separately approve them on third reading and they are eventually signed by the president or lapse into law without the presidential signature.

Even if the controversial bills do not become law in the current and 19th session of Congress, they can still be refiled at future sessions until they pass.

Lawmakers did this with what is now the law on “reproductive health.” Many Filipino Catholics had opposed the legislation for its artificial birth regulation components with possibly abortifacient effects.

Abortion is illegal in the Philippines where the Constitution equally protects the lives of mothers and their unborn children.

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Calling for conversion and decrying the society-wide loss of the sense of sin while nudging the faithful to pay attention to public figures who uphold good governance, the Filipino bishops aimed to remind voters that good governance first of all advances the integrity of human persons and basic communities.

“We call upon our dear faithful, in government, in business, in public or religious communities,” they said, “to harness a tempest of change by a sincere witness to our Christian values and fidelity to conscience.”

According to the bishops’ guidance, voters must elect politicians with beneficial platforms excluding measures that would break human persons and families to serve some strange vision of the good society.

Citizens will need much time and effort to satisfy that voting framework amid rambunctious campaigning from bewildering numbers and combinations of candidates and political alliances.

Across parties, candidates echo in their actions and political platforms the positions of the CBCP and CMSP on subjects related to justice, sovereignty, and good governance such as resisting Chinese expansionism and exacting accountability from the vice president.

But the same candidates do not necessarily support the natural institution of marriage, educating children in chastity and purity of heart, and preserving Filipino culture against gender ideology.

Other candidates, in contrast, may be opposed to legalizing divorce and same-sex partnerships.

But many of them are perceived to have enabled corrupt and violent administrations. They often encounter backlash from a generally liberal media, intelligentsia, and human rights movement due to their ambivalence on justice and peace concerns.

The two biggest coalitions of national political parties — Alyansa Para sa Bagong Pilipinas (Alliance for a New Philippines) and Partido ng Demokratikong Pilipino Laban (Philippine Democratic Party) — are respectively closely associated with President Marcos and the Dutertes and have almost complete slates of senatorial candidates. Until recently, they counted as one administration coalition, having joined forces for the 2022 election cycle.

There are two main opposition coalitions. First is the centrist KiBam coalition, named after the nicknames of two former senators, Francis Pangilinan and Paolo Benigno Aquino IV and consisting of the Liberal Party and Akbyan and Katipunan ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (Association of United Filipinos) parties.

Hoping for fresh six-year terms, Pangilinan and Aquino have authored laws behind policies such as 105 days of paid maternity leave and tuition-free tertiary education in the Philippines. They also raised their voices against former President Duterte’s counterfeit drug war.

The Makabayan or Patriotic group of parties is another opposition coalition. It is composed of leftist political parties with platforms that include institutionalizing a living minimum wage, ending the contractualization of workers, and imposing a wealth tax on Filipino billionaires.

The opposition often makes headlines for their human rights advocacies, be it opposing the death penalty and lowering the age of criminal responsibility for children, fighting corruption, condemning summary executions, promoting workers’ rights, or advancing women’s welfare.

But many of them support the legalization of divorce and gender ideology.

Candidates regardless of party affiliation are unevenly committed to the non-negotiables of the Catholic conception of the common good or represent platforms at variance with that conception.

So the Filipino Catholic, election after election, does not have the luxury of voting along party lines but has to carefully and prayerfully discern who among the candidates best serve the public interest.

For those who have not yet voted, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, April 17 and 18, when campaigning is suspended and illegal, may be ideal days for making final decisions.

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Candidates whose platforms appear to align with Catholic teaching could be abandoned by shrewd supporters as part of intense lobbying to change their views.

This was the case with Heidi Mendoza, a senatorial candidate who is running as an independent. A former United Nations under-secretary-general for internal oversight services and chief of the Philippines’ Commission on Audit, she has run her grassroots campaign on a platform of eradicating corruption anchored on her sterling international track record.

Mendoza is long known for being proud of her Catholic faith and stands against the legalization of divorce and abortion. She is a favorite among university students and her position has been rising in surveys on Filipinos’ preferred candidates for the Senate though she has so far been unable to be among the top 12.

But last week, many supporters turned against her after an edited video spread online suggesting that she opposes same-sex marriage laws.

Campaign volunteers identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender castigated Mendoza on social media for her opposition to what they call “marriage equality” — and said they are no longer voting for her.

Mendoza has since softened her position, apparently hoping to retain support from voters across political and moral persuasions.

She reasserted her priority of enhancing the government’s anti-corruption mechanisms and said that she does not stand in the way of love between people of the same sex but opposes a system that denies the dignity and rights of people with non-heterosexual orientations.

Whether belonging to a party would have helped Mendoza is uncertain. History has shown that electoral victory is not guaranteed for candidates from a party which says it is shaped by Catholicism.

Ang Kapatiran or Alliance for the Common Good, inspired by Catholic principles was founded in 2004.

A stated belief in God is at the top of the party’s principles, which also encompass life and dignity of the human person, common good, family, community, and participation, rights and responsibilities, social justice and love, preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, dignity of work and rights of workers, subsidiarity or people empowerment, and care of God’s creation.

The party has fielded a presidential candidate at least once. Candidate John Carlos de los Reyes, a theology graduate of the Franciscan University of Steubenville who went on to obtain additional degrees in law and public administration and serve two terms as city councilor, finished last in the nine-way presidential elections that Benigno Simeon Aquino III won in 2010.

The party has also fielded at least three candidates for the Senate. All of them lost.

In recent years, Ang Kapatiran has focused on taking legal actions designed to improve politics and governance in the Philippines. It is one of the groups to have asked the Supreme Court to hasten the legislature’s enactment of an anti-political dynasty law.

The party also lobbies for the enactment of a freedom of information law, the repeal of the bank secrecy law, and the ending of the pork barrel system.

In the 2025 elections, the national alliance has only one candidate, lawyer Jaime Guerrero who is running for municipal councilor of Camalig in Albay province.

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Whoever Filipinos elect, committed Filipino Catholics continue to participate in these elections, as in previous ones, in two other ways aside from casting their votes.

Of course, bishops and other Church leaders in the country have always aimed to provide voters with guidelines to discern for whom they should vote.

But Catholics in parish and civic organizations also provide the government with indispensable elections manpower and logistical support.

The national elections committee relies heavily on volunteers to successfully stage the elections and ensure the integrity of the ballot and credibility of the results.

The volunteer organizations include the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections or Namfrel, Legal Network for Truthful Elections or Lente, Kontra Daya (Against Fraud), and Cebu-Citizens’ Involvement in Maturation for People Empowerment and Liberation (C-Cimpel).

Kontra Daya is a movement which includes consecrated men and women, artists, young people and students, lawyers, information technology experts, teachers, and government employees “to oppose election fraud and other undemocratic practices during the election period.”

The group has released a manifesto calling for the reversion from fully automated to hybrid manual and electronic elections, which it argues would be less prone to cheating.

Lente links with the other organizations to guard against the abuse of state resources during elections. The networks of lawyers, paralegals, law students and other volunteers contribute to fair elections in various ways but especially through filing administrative and complaints in the courts against violators of election laws.

The PPCRV, attached to parishes and dioceses, administers voter and candidate values education programs in the Philippines especially in areas beyond the reach of the elections commission.

The PPCRV takes pride in being “a child of the Church, the first concrete laity response to the call for renewal of Plenary Council of the Philippines II.”

“Like its Mother the Church, PPCRV is open to every volunteer, believer or non-believer for as long as the volunteer is non-partisan, non-violent and adheres to democracy. PPCRV carries on its mission in every diocese as a Community of Disciples that is a Church of the Poor and for the Poor.”

“The center of gravity of its service, from the beginning till now, is tilted towards the poor and the youth. Voters from these sectors are the most vulnerable to exploitation and repression of their absolute right to suffrage.”

Before elections, volunteers help bring election paraphernalia to the voting areas. During elections, they assist voters at polling places, for instance by helping locate their voting precinct and monitoring the elections to ensure that election officials and voters follow correct procedures in handling ballots.

They also conduct a shadow, unofficial tally of voting results based on official copies of election returns, which are issued prior to the transmission of data to the election commission for the official tally.

For PPCRV and its partners like C-Cimpel, the parallel vote count “reduces the likelihood of inaccurate and misrepresented results.” The organization is mandated by law to report mismatches in election results to the commission.

Like the two organizations, Namfrel also conducts voter literacy programs and a parallel count to deter the manipulation of election results at the official canvassing.

Between election years, Namfrel “is also involved in anti-corruption and good governance programs such as medicine and textbook monitoring programs, and participation in bids and awards committees of various government agencies” such as the health and education departments.

Namfrel monitoring had been among the basis of the bishops’ statement condemning fraud in the 1986 snap elections which eventually triggered the Edsa People Power Revolution.

In March, Namfrel condemned the violence during the campaign period and urged candidates and their supporters to seek peaceful means to achieve victory in elections.

“We encourage community-led initiatives such as dialogues, candidates forums, social covenants among competing candidates, and other non-violent activities that promote understanding and mutual respect,” volunteers said in a statement released on March 28. “These efforts are essential in de-escalating tensions and fostering a culture of peace during this critical time.”

“To address this pressing issue, Namfrel, alongside our civil society partners, commits to monitoring potential flashpoints of violence and intervening to prevent escalation before harm occurs. We also urge citizens to remain vigilant and actively participate in promoting peace within their communities.”

These volunteer organizations supporting the conduct of elections correspond to the statement of the bishops who said, “We see sparks of hope in local initiatives and efforts to empower communities for change.”