Philippine Democracy Online

  Bending the Law or Betraying Justice? Ricoeur’s Practical Wisdom and Political Discretion in the Philippines By Francis Jeus Ibañez  It is easy to invoke justice when people are angry. It is much harder to determine what justice actually requires. In the Philippines, where allegations of corruption involving flood-control projects have intensified public frustration, the demand to recover allegedly misappropriated public funds is understandable. People want their money returned. They want those responsible held accountable. Above all, they want to believe that the law still means something in a society where political power can appear to protect those who possess it. But what happens when public officials argue that the law must be bent to achieve these demands? Can justice justify an exception to the law, or does the decision to make an exception risk undermining justice itself? This is not merely a question of legal interpretation. It is a question about political power an...

Christopher Ryan Maboloc’s Radical Democracy in the Time of Duterte has had an impact that goes beyond the question of whether one agrees with its interpretation of Rodrigo Duterte. Its most important contribution is that it forced Philippine political philosophy to reconsider where democracy is theorized from, whose political experience counts, and what Duterte’s rise meant for the country’s democratic order. Maboloc introduced a distinctly Mindanao-centered interpretation of Philippine politics. The book challenged the tendency to interpret Philippine politics primarily from Manila and the political experience of Luzon. Maboloc approaches Duterte as a Mindanawon political phenomenon, connecting his rise to the historical marginalization of Mindanao, the Bisaya experience, colonial centralization, and the exclusion of peripheral communities from national political power. A 2022 review by Waseda University’s Juichiro Tanabe specifically praised the book for showing that Duterte’s radic...

The question of whether there is a distinct philosophy of Mindanao is not simply a question about geography. It is a question about history, identity, memory, power, and the authority to define what counts as knowledge. It is also a question about whose experiences deserve to become part of the philosophical record. In his plenary presentation, “History and Indigeneity: A Preliminary Inquiry into Mindanao Philosophy,” delivered at the 2nd SES-PUP International Ethics Conference at Waseda University in Tokyo, Dr. Christopher Ryan Maboloc placed Mindanao at the center of a larger philosophical conversation about indigeneity, colonialism, democracy, peace, and the meaning of history. The conference itself was organized around the theme “A New World Order: Peace, Democracy, Global Security, and a Sustainable Future.” Held from September 9 to 11, 2026, the gathering brought together philosophers, academics, researchers, and students from the Philippines, Japan, and other countries. In this ...

In 2017, Dr. Christopher Ryan Maboloc analyzed the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte through the lens of Chantal Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy. Wataru Kusaka, who wrote the foreword to Maboloc’s Radical Democracy in the Time of Duterte, observed that Maboloc, like Duterte, puts forth provocative arguments. Jeffry Ocay, a prominent critical theorist from the South, sees it as a fresh look into Philippine politics, while suggesting that if critics suspend their ideological biases, "they can hardly contend with Maboloc’s position." It can be argued that the author is not merely applying Mouffe’s radical democratic theory to Philippine politics but is developing a distinct interpretation of radical democracy grounded in the political realities of the Philippines, particularly those of Mindanao. In this sense, the radical democracy debate in the Philippines may be emerging as a theoretical contest between Mouffe’s original conception of radical democracy and Maboloc’s attempt t...

Today is the start of VP Sara Duterte's impeachment trial. What is at stake is not just the political future of the Vice President. This is about the type of governance that is centered upon one principle that her father had started - justice for Mindanao and the Filipino people against the interests of the elite. This is the case because the members of Congress who impeached Sara do not represent the Filipino people. They represent the corruption in our system of politics. The irony is obvious. Those who want Sara convicted are actually acting at the behest of the mastermind of the flood control scandal. They fear a Sara Duterte presidency because they know that they will be running knowing that they have no place to hide. There is nothing new in what the House prosecutors will present at the Senate impeachment court. The Filipino people already know what Ridon, Diokno, or Delima will say. Their witnesses are not credible. They are simply forcing a narrative that has no evidentiar...

  Dr. Christopher Ryan Maboloc is a prominent and well-cited contemporary philosopher in the Philippines. An Associate Professor at the Ateneo de Davao University and a fellow of the ASAP Yale Global Justice Program, Maboloc has carved out a unique space in Asian philosophy by shifting the academic gaze away from Eurocentric ideals and anchoring it firmly in the lived realities of the Global South—specifically the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.   Maboloc’s philosophical contributions span political philosophy, applied ethics, environmental thought, and radical democracy. ​Maboloc is perhaps best known for his philosophical analysis of contemporary Philippine politics, most notably during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte. In books like Radical Democracy in the Time of Duterte and The Davao School of Radical Democracy, Maboloc challenges mainstream, Western-style liberal interpretations of populism.   He argues that post-1986 Philippine democracy (the po...