The president is both head of state and head of government and is directly elected to a single six-year term. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. won the May 2022 presidential election with 58 percent of the vote, defeating outgoing vice president Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo, a progressive candidate and democracy activist. The vice president is directly elected in a separate contest and may serve up to two successive six-year terms. Sara Duterte, Marcos’s running mate, won with 61 percent of the vote in May 2022, defeating Senator Francis Pangilinan, Robredo’s running mate.

While elections in the Philippines are free from overt restrictions on voting, they are not necessarily fair, with poorly regulated spending and disinformation campaigns often distorting the preelection environment. Allegations of fraud surrounding the 2022 elections persisted in 2023, as critics argued that the electronic transmission of votes was vulnerable to manipulation. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) agreed late in the year to reexamine some of the 2022 ballot boxes, though the action was still pending at year’s end, and there was little evidence of fraud that would alter the election’s outcome.

The 24 members of the Senate are elected on a nationwide ballot and serve six-year terms, with half of the seats up for election every three years. The 316 members of the House of Representatives serve three-year terms, with 253 elected in single-member constituencies and the remainder elected through party-list voting. Legislative elections feature the same relatively free but sometimes unfair campaign environment as presidential elections. More than 30 parties won seats in the May 2022 elections, but Marcos’s UniTeam alliance secured supermajorities in both houses.

In late October 2023, the country held elections for barangays, the smallest local administrative units, and for local youth councils, or Sangguniang Kabataan. In keeping with past local elections, the balloting was accompanied by political violence. Police documented 305 violent occurrences between August and November, with 96 confirmed as election related and 26 people killed. Cases of vote buying and vote selling were also reported.

Comelec performs both election administration and adjudication functions. Members are appointed by the president and confirmed by a congressional commission, and serve nonrenewable seven-year terms. Election monitors have noted that this process has few practical safeguards against partisan appointments, and that the president may in any case circumvent legislative scrutiny by appointing Comelec members when Congress is not in session.

Comelec’s performance in recent years has been satisfactory, though it has been criticized for technical glitches and procurement issues.

In September 2023, the US government accused a former Comelec chairman of a money-laundering scheme related to alleged bribes from Smartmatic, a company that secured a Comelec contract for its vote-counting machines. Comelec said it would conduct its own investigation and cooperate with US authorities.

The Philippines has a record of open competition among multiple parties, though candidates and parties typically have weak ideological profiles. Legislative coalitions are exceptionally fluid, and politicians often change party affiliation, typically to join the dominant bloc or the incumbent president’s party. Parties tend to be led by powerful political families who have the resources to fund the campaigns of their allies.

Incumbent politicians and those from powerful families, especially at the legislative and subnational level, enjoy an electoral advantage over opposition forces, which lack similar access to state and private resources and are at greater risk from political violence. Campaign finance rules are weak and poorly enforced, allowing campaigns to spend freely on media content and vote-buying efforts. This impedes the ability of grassroots opposition movements to mobilize, participate in, and win elections.

The Duterte administration’s practice of “red-tagging,” in which officials allege that a government critic harbors communist—and thus terrorist—sympathies or connections, continued at a lower level under the Marcos administration, exposing victims to stigmatization and an increased danger of physical attack.

In October 2023, former president Duterte threatened the life of opposition congresswoman France Castro in a televised speech. Castro had been critical of Vice President Sara Duterte’s request for intelligence funds during recent budget hearings.

Distribution of power is heavily affected by patronage and kinship networks. Approximately 70 percent of House of Representatives seats were controlled by political families that have been in power for decades, according to a 2022 survey from the election watchdog Kontra Daya. A significant portion of political donations, which are effectively unlimited, come from a relatively small number of major donors.

In addition to hyperpartisan media content, online disinformation campaigns, and vote-buying efforts, political factions have used violence to influence electoral outcomes. Ahead of the 2023 barangay elections, rivalry among local elites contributed to a number of shooting incidents, including the murders of some candidates and supporters, though the level of violence was not considered unusually high compared with previous years.

No law limits the participation of specific groups in the political process, and the constitution guarantees equal access to opportunities for public service. However, the dominance of political dynasties is an obstacle to the exercise of political rights for some groups, and electoral opportunities are limited in practice to those who can afford the cost of running for public office.

While women make up about 29 percent of the Senate and 27 percent of the House, most are members of politically powerful families. Muslims and Indigenous groups are not well represented. Perceptions of relative socioeconomic deprivation and political disenfranchisement, along with resentment toward Christian settlements in traditionally Muslim areas, have played a central role in the Philippines’ Muslim separatist movements.

Some politicians and municipal governments have attempted to advance the interests of LGBT+ people in recent years, but national legislation banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity had yet to be adopted in 2023.

While elected government officials and legislative representatives determine state policies, the president plays a dominant role due to a political system that grants key authorities to the executive branch. A relatively small number of powerful families that are active in politics and business also have disproportionate influence over policymaking. As a result, legislative output does not always reflect the interests of the electorate.

Government corruption and impunity remain serious problems, and institutions including the courts, Congress, and dedicated anticorruption bodies have struggled to hold leading politicians and their associates to account. For example, the Office of the Ombudsman, tasked with investigating and filing complaints against government workers and officials, is poorly resourced and has relatively weak statutory powers. Currently headed by a Duterte appointee, the office has been criticized for the significant decrease in the number of cases it has filed in recent years, and for resisting transparency on some issues. In practice, corruption is generally exposed by the media or as part of disputes between rival political families.

Government transparency remains limited despite some positive initiatives. The country’s first freedom of information directive was issued in 2016, but it mandates public disclosure only for the executive branch and allows major exemptions. Since 2021, the Office of the Ombudsman has restricted public access to elected and government officials’ statements of assets and liabilities, asserting that they were being “weaponized.”

In 2023, the Marcos administration continued to request tens of millions of dollars in “confidential and intelligence” funds, a budget category that is typically intended for government surveillance and military intelligence-gathering operations. Due to the classified nature of such operations, comprehensive audits of these funds are difficult, and the potential for graft is high. However, opposition and Marcos-allied lawmakers objected to the latest request for such funds by Vice President Duterte’s office in October 2023, and Duterte withdrew her request in November.

The constitution provides for freedoms of expression and the press, and private media are vibrant and outspoken. However, media outlets have faced intense political pressure, including the use of regulatory and law enforcement tools to punish critical coverage. For example, the news network ABS-CBN was forced to shut down its broadcasting operations in 2020 after Congress refused to renew its license. Journalists also experience physical attacks; threats, including death threats and bomb threats; smear campaigns claiming that they conspire against the government; red-tagging; and cyberattacks.

Both legal harassment and physical threats persisted in 2023, though at lower levels than in previous years. In September 2023, a court acquitted prominent independent journalist Maria Ressa and her news website Rappler on the last of five tax-evasion charges against them. Appeals were pending in two other cases, related to a financial regulator’s order to close Rappler and an online libel case against Ressa and a colleague. All of the cases were seen as reprisals for Rappler’s critical reporting on the administration of former president Duterte.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least two journalists were killed during 2023. Radio reporter Cresenciano “Cris” Bundoquin was shot and killed in Calapan in May, allegedly in response to his reporting on illegal gambling operations in the area. Another radio journalist, Juan Jumalon, was shot to death during a live broadcast in Calamba in November. Only 11 percent of cases in which journalists are killed in connection with their work result in convictions of the perpetrators, according to the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

Freedom of religion is guaranteed under the constitution and generally respected in practice. However, some churches have faced red-tagging campaigns in response to their work to uphold the basic rights of people living in rural areas affected by armed conflict and economic exploitation.

Academic freedom is generally respected, though in recent years authorities have criticized or taken steps to intervene in the operations of educational facilities. The Duterte administration scrapped limits on military and police operations at the University of the Philippines, red-tagged graduates of the university, and pushed several universities to purge their libraries of books associated with communist ideology. It further closed dozens of Indigenous primary schools in the Davao Region following allegations that the schools taught leftist ideology.

Under the Marcos administration in 2023, education officials received criticism over a proposal to dissociate the president’s family from the dictatorship of the 1980s in school curriculums.

Some academics practice self-censorship to avoid libel cases filed by politicians or their allies.

People are generally able to speak their minds freely, though organized disinformation campaigns and harassment—including red-tagging linked to the government, the military, the police, and some media figures—are rampant in the Filipino internet space. Red-tagging can have serious offline consequences, making it a deterrent to open expression. Rights groups continue to voice concern about the use of criminal libel laws to punish legitimate speech.

Citizen activism is robust, and demonstrations are common. However, permits are required for rallies, and police sometimes use violence to disperse antigovernment protests.

Civil society has historically been robust in the Philippines, which hosts a range of active human rights, social welfare, environmental, and other groups. However, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and individual activists who are seen as threats to the interests of political and economic powerholders experience physical and legal harassment, and a number of civil society activists and human rights defenders have been assassinated in recent years.

The Philippines is one of the world’s deadliest countries for environmental and land-rights activists in particular. Communities located near mining sites are frequently affected by such violence. In September 2023, two environmental activists who had opposed land-reclamation projects in Manila Bay—due in part to their effects on fishing communities—were allegedly abducted and held for two weeks by the military. The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) intervened to secure their release, but they still faced possible charges.

Trade unions are independent, though less than 10 percent of the labor force is unionized. Collective bargaining is common among unionized workers, and strikes may be called legally as long as unions provide notice and obtain majority approval from their members. Violence and red-tagging against unionists discourage labor activism. In some cases, police have killed unionists and labor leaders while executing search warrants, claiming that the victims fought with officers. In September 2023, for example, police in Rizal Province killed labor leader Jude Fernandez after appearing at his home to serve a warrant.

Judicial independence deteriorated under the Duterte administration, which appointed allies to the Supreme Court and initiated the successful removal of a chief justice whom it perceived as an opponent. Judicial independence is also hampered by corruption, high vacancy rates, and intimidation. Several current or former judges have been killed in recent years.

In February 2023, the Supreme Court dismissed graft charges against members of President Marcos’s cabinet, and an anticorruption court dismissed cases against the Marcos family and its associates. The anticorruption court dismissed another “ill-gotten wealth” case against the president’s family in June. Despite these judgments, regional trial courts and some other judicial bodies have displayed more autonomy, for example by convicting police officers in high-profile killings and ruling against the executive branch on various topics.

The justice system fails to guarantee due process rights. There has been an increase in investigations, prosecutions, and convictions of military and police officials implicated in rights abuses and criminal activity in recent years. However, arbitrary detention, disappearances, kidnappings, and abuse of suspects are still common, and the police and military continue to face allegations of corruption, extortion, and involvement in the illegal drug trade.

Former senator Leila de Lima, a critic of extrajudicial killings during former president Duterte’s war on drugs who had been in pretrial detention on dubious drug charges since 2017, was released in November 2023 after a regional trial court allowed her and a codefendant to post bail. The charges remained pending, even though key prosecution witnesses had recanted their testimony.

Physical security in the Philippines is undermined by a variety of illegal armed groups, including radical Islamist organizations and the New People’s Army (NPA)—the armed wing of the banned Communist Party of the Philippines and its National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) umbrella group. In November 2023, the government and the NDFP agreed on a plan to resume peace talks for the first time since 2017, with the goal of ending the NPA’s decades-long insurgency.

The government’s counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns, combined with the Duterte administration’s violent crackdown on illegal drugs, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and numerous human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings and the torture of detainees. Police and military personnel have typically enjoyed impunity for such abuses, which persisted in 2023. Under the Marcos administration, however, there is a general perception that violence has decreased, and police abuses that are exposed in the media or on social media have sometimes resulted in disciplinary action.

Chinese coast guard ships continue to threaten and harass fishing boats and government vessels in western Philippine waters, despite a 2016 ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration that largely rejected Beijing’s territorial claims in the area.

Legal provisions mandating equal treatment are upheld inconsistently, and some groups lack formal protection.

Indigenous people’s rights are affected in practice by land disputes and local development projects that regularly cause friction and sometimes lead to violence. In Mindanao, Indigenous people have experienced harassment, torture, disappearances, and killings by the military, which typically accuses victims of links to the NPA insurgency.

LGBT+ people face bias in employment, education, and other services, as well as societal discrimination. A bill that would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity passed the lower house in 2017 but has not yet become law. Several cities, including Manila, have passed ordinances recognizing LGBT+ people’s rights and prohibiting acts of discrimination. In the absence of national legislation, transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals cannot alter their identification documents.

According to the World Economic Forum, the Philippines features one of the smallest gender-pay gaps in the world. Women’s educational attainment outpaces men’s, and women are well represented in professional roles. However, they still face employment discrimination and some constraints on their access to credit.

The law mandates that at least 1 percent of public jobs be reserved for people with disabilities, but this standard is poorly upheld.

Citizens enjoy freedom of travel and choice of residence, except in areas affected by violent conflict. Although martial law in Mindanao ended in 2020, the military continued its counterterrorism measures, which included checkpoints and a curfew.

The use of checkpoints in various parts of the country increased surrounding the October 2023 barangay elections. The tactic can deter electoral violence, but it can also limit the legitimate movement of supporters of certain candidates.

Private business activity is often dependent on the support of local power brokers in the complex patronage system that extends throughout the country. Competition is more restricted in less urban areas, especially where local elites are known to use violence to protect their interests. However, outside of conflict zones and in larger population centers, people are generally able to exercise their property rights and operate businesses without undue interference.

Most residents enjoy personal social freedoms. Same-sex marriage is illegal. Divorce also remains illegal, though annulments are allowed under specified circumstances, and Muslims may divorce via Sharia (Islamic law) courts. A bill that would fully legalize divorce made progress in Congress but had yet to be adopted at the end of 2023.

Domestic violence is a significant problem, and while spousal rape is a crime, very few cases are prosecuted. Abortion is illegal in nearly all circumstances, though unregulated abortions are common in practice.

The Philippines is a source country for human trafficking, with some Filipinos taken abroad or relocated within the country and forced to work in the fishing, shipping, construction, or other industries, or forced to engage in sex work or online scam operations. Organized crime groups have increasingly exploited foreign nationals for forced labor in online scam operations that are based in the Philippines but target foreign victims. Child labor remains a problem, and there is a shortage of labor inspectors tasked with enforcing legal protections. The country’s illegal armed groups have been accused of enlisting children.