This year-ender examines Philippine politics in 2025 through the lens of the May midterm elections and their effects on political, economic, and foreign policy incentives. As elections approached, institutional reform stalled and unresolved elite rivalries were reorganized into electoral competition, most visibly through impeachment efforts, alliance breakdowns, and Senate contests. Economic performance remained narrowly based, driven primarily by consumption amid weak investment, persistent planning constraints, and limited structural change, yet sufficiently stable to reduce pressure for difficult reforms. At the same time, corruption in infrastructure became unusually visible, exposing long-standing patterns of politically mediated contracting but without producing durable accountability. In foreign affairs, sustained pressure from China in the West Philippine Sea reinforced a familiar strategy centered on presence, legal framing, and alliance signaling rather than resolution. The result was continuity rather than transformation, as power, policy, and posture were reordered by electoral incentives rather than institutional change.
Nico Ravanilla (Sun,) studied this question.