The dangerous stalemate in Indonesia’s presidential election may be resolved tomorrow, when official results are due. But it’s already having a destabilizing effect on another Southeast Asian island nation: the Philippines.

As I wrote last week, Suharto-era General Prabowo Subianto still refuses to accept early indications that he lost the July 9 presidential election to Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo, who’s known as Jokowi. The world’s third-largest democracy is now holding its political breath to see if Prabowo digs in for a long and market-shaking leadership battle ― one pundits fear may spark protests akin to those in 1998 that dispatched dictator Suharto.

Prabowo’s brinkmanship has stirred speculation in the Philippines, where the family of Ferdinand Marcos is plotting its own comeback. Facebook and the Twittersphere are pulsating with chatter about how a Prabowo victory or extended electoral challenge might embolden the former dictator’s son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., to run for president in 2016.

As Rappler.com, a Filipino Huffington Post, asked in a recent piece headlined “Marcos, Prabowo and a Failure of Memory”: “With a possible Prabowo win and persistent talk of Bongbong Marcos for 2016, are Indonesia and the Philippines in danger of an authoritarian throwback?” Social media platforms are awash with efforts by Marcos supporters to woo young voters, many of whom are only dimly aware of how the family’s patriarch plundered their future from 1965 to 1986. When current President Benigno Aquino receives kudos for winning his nation’s first-ever investment-grade ratings, he’s really getting credit for attacking the corruption and dysfunction wrought by Marcos Inc. (Aquino’s father was assassinated trying to unseat Marcos).

On recent trips to Manila, I’ve been struck by the steady rise of Marcos nostalgia. For many young Filipinos, the Marcos clan is more the nation’s answer to the Kardashians than the root of its poverty and economic backwardness. Pundits fear this emphasis on the Marcos glitz and bling might lead voters to forget the pain the family’s rule exacted on Filipinos.

Ferdinand’s shoe-loving widow, Imelda, is now in Congress. His son, Bongbong, is a senator, and his daughter is a provincial governor. Imelda makes no secret of her desire to get the family back into Malacanang, the presidential palace, come 2016. A tainted result in Indonesia wouldn’t help directly. But it would certainly fan the flames of that ambition, and might even increase the appetite for a strongman candidate in Manila, too.

“The ongoing uncertainty over Jokowi’s victory in Indonesia represents a huge challenge to the legacy of democracy in Southeast Asia,” says Richard Javad Heydarian, a political science professor at the Ateneo de Manila University. “After all, Indonesia has served as a beacon of democracy in the region and in the wider Islamic world. Prabowo’s strong presidential bid ― and potential challenge to Jokowi’s assumption of power ― shows how powerful is the legacy and political capital of the deep state, and how people continue to sympathize with the rhetoric of ‘strong leadership’ ― precisely what the Marcoses in the Philippines, and supporters of Suharto and Prabowo in Indonesia have been touting.”

Heydarian’s gut feeling for 2016? “I think the Marcos bid for the top post doesn’t look promising. The roster is pretty tight, and that might force him to consider the vice presidency instead.” But even that would mark a spectacular and disturbing rehabilitation for a family that siphoned untold billions of dollars from the national treasury and drove a resource-rich nation into the ground.

In the 1960s, the Philippines was destined to be the Japan of Southeast Asia. Today, for all Aquino’s success, it’s ranked behind India, Djibouti and Colombia in Transparency International corruption perceptions index. If it’s glitz and the bling young Filipinos want, perhaps they should consider the Michelangelos, Rembrandts and Van Goghs the Marcoses allegedly spent millions procuring with embezzled funds, and that the government is seeking to recover.

No one knows how far Prabowo is prepared to go to return a touch of Suharto to power. What should be crystal-clear, though, is that the last thing the Philippines needs, just as it’s beginning to shed the dark Marcos legacy, is its own bout of dictator nostalgia. 

By William Pesek

William Pesek is a Bloomberg View columnist based in Tokyo and writes on economics, markets and politics throughout the Asia-Pacific region. He can be reached at wpesek@bloomberg.net. ― Ed.

(Bloomberg)