Category World News

More than half a million Filipinos rallied in the capital Manila on Sunday to demand accountability for a government corruption scandal that has triggered a series of protests since August.

Sunday’s protest is part of a three-day rally organised by the Philippine sect Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ). The show of force on Sunday by the influential religious bloc, popularly referred to by its acronym INC, is a complete reversal from its support of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, whom it endorsed in the 2022 presidential race.

Central to the ongoing protest is the church’s demand for a “proper and transparent” investigation into the alleged misuse of multibillion-dollar funds for flood control projects under Marcos’s watch.

But it also exposes the escalating fight for political power between Marcos and his former ally and running-mate, Vice President Sara Duterte, whom the religious group continues to support. Marcos and Duterte had a dramatic falling out just several months after their landslide victory.

The corruption scandal has only turbocharged the political feud between the country’s two highest elected leaders and turned into calls for Marcos’s removal before his term ends in 2028.

The removal movement is being led by supporters of Duterte as well as some elements of the INC and other groups. The INC insists it is not joining calls for Marcos’s removal, but the presence of its members on the streets of Manila means they are a formidable force to reckon with.

Why are people protesting in the Philippines?

The outrage over so-called ghost infrastructure and flood control projects has been mounting in the Southeast Asian country since Marcos put the issue centre stage in a July state of the nation address that followed weeks of deadly flooding.

Government engineers, public works officials and construction company executives have testified under oath in Congressional hearings that members of Congress and public works officials took kickbacks from construction companies to help them win lucrative contracts by rigging the bidding process.

According to government data, the equivalent of $26bn was spent on flood control and mitigation programmes over the last 15 years. Of that amount, officials testified that at least 25 to 30 percent has been funnelled as kickbacks.

So far, the government has only managed to freeze $3bn in assets suspected of being linked to the huge bribery scheme.

A series of televised investigations and Congressional hearings detailing the alleged corruption further heightened public anger.

Many have criticised Marcos for acting too slowly to stop the corruption, if not for tolerating those deals carried out by his political allies, including his cousin, the once-powerful Speaker Martin Romualdez.

Last week, a former congressman and a deputy of Romualdez, who fled the country after being implicated over millions of dollars in missing infrastructure funds, released a video claiming Marcos himself was involved, something the administration has derided as “wild speculation”.

What has been the toll of the floods?

Sunday’s protests come on the heels of two powerful typhoons that left more than 250 people dead, many due to flooding and failed flood control infrastructure.

They also come just days after Marcos promised arrests in the corruption case before Christmas.

What is the INC?

The INC, which claims nearly three million members, was founded in 1914 in the Philippines by Felix Manalo, a former devout Catholic and Methodist convert.

In comparison, the predominant Catholic Church has an estimated 86 million followers.

Unlike mainstream religious groups, which adhere to the principle of the division of church and state, the INC endorses candidates during elections and encourages its members to vote as a bloc, making it a potent political force.

In 2022, it endorsed the Marcos-Duterte tandem during the elections. In 2016, its leadership also endorsed Rodrigo Duterte before his win.

When the Marcos-Duterte alliance broke up, the INC sided with Duterte.

In January this year, the INC held a huge rally in Manila opposing Vice President Duterte’s impeachment, which was seen as having the silent endorsement of Marcos.

During the almost 20-year rule of Marcos’s father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr, the INC was also seen as a supporter of his presidency.

Despite their political differences, Marcos declared a special non-working holiday to celebrate the INC’s 111th founding anniversary on July 27, 2025, demonstrating what observers point to as the group’s enormous political clout.

“The influential Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) is not missing a beat,” political analyst Alex Magno wrote in a recent column in the Philippine Star newspaper.

What are the demands of the INC-led protest?

The INC-led protest, which has been scheduled for three days from Sunday, November 16 to Tuesday, November 18, is demanding “proper and transparent” investigation of the corruption scandal and “better democracy”.

“A lot of people are getting flooded because of the corruption, and as a result people are dying,” Edwina Kamatoy, one of the protesters, told Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Lo, who is reporting from Manila.

Aries Cortez, another protester, complained that the government investigation so far is being selective and “is not going anywhere”.

The protest is being held at the Quirino Grandstand by the Manila Bay in the Philippine capital.

As of 08:00 GMT on Monday, the second day of the protest, an estimated 300,000 protesters have gathered at the park, according to the Manila risk reduction and management office.

On Sunday, the Philippine National Police said they are deploying at least 15,000 personnel throughout the duration of the protest.

The protesters say they are not demanding the ouster of Marcos. But many in their ranks have openly expressed their disdain for the Marcos presidency, particularly after the ICC arrest of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Who are the other groups currently protesting against Marcos?

About 2,000 people, including retired generals, held a separate anticorruption protest late on Sunday at the “People Power” monument in suburban Quezon City.

The smaller group of protesters, many of whom are identified as Duterte supporters, are calling for the outright resignation of Marcos from the presidency.

According to the police, up to 30,000 anti-Marcos protesters are expected at the site on Monday afternoon. But as of 08:00 GMT on Monday, only 3,000 protesters have showed up, according to News 5 television channel.

The centre-left political bloc and their civic and religious allies have pointedly skipped the rally, wary that it would only lead to the return of Duterte to power.

On Sunday, they held a separate “Run Against Corruption” protest at the University of the Philippines. Their group have also been staging smaller marches every Friday.

The previous protest in September, which also attracted hundreds of thousands of protesters, was mainly led by that centre-left bloc that called itself the “Trillion Peso March Movement”.

A separate and smaller group of protesters also managed to stage its own march near the presidential palace that day, leading to a violent police crackdown that resulted in at least one death, several injuries and dozens of arrests.

In recent days, the Catholic Church has also issued a statement calling for transparency in government, but warned against “unconstitutional” means to achieve justice.

How is the government reacting to the protest?

In a radio interview on Monday, Presidential Spokesman Dave Gomez dismissed as “a very small group” those who want Marcos to be kicked out of office, adding that those calling for the president’s resignation are likely to be implicated in the ongoing probe.

Gomez also said the government is monitoring people who are seeking to destabilise it.

He dismissed the recent allegations of former Congressman Zaldy Co, who directly implicated the president in the bribery case.

“As the president said, he will not even dignify the accusations,” Gomez added, pointing to the “numerous loopholes” in them.

Late on Monday, the Palace announced that Marcos’s executive secretary and budget secretary had resigned, after both officials were accused of having links to the bribery scandal.

How will it affect Marcos Jr’s government?

While Filipinos are united in anger towards the Marcos administration, they are sharply divided on the calls for the president’s removal.

Some are wary that a takeover by Vice President Sara Duterte would not lead to any substantive change, given that she is also facing allegations of corruption.

A wide philosophical disparity between the two opposition forces, however, has prevented them from uniting against Marcos. More often, the centre-left bloc has emerged as fiercely more anti-Duterte than anti-Marcos, putting them in a sometimes awkward political position.

In a statement before the INC-led protest, Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff General Romeo Brawner Jr also made it clear that the military will not support any efforts to subvert the constitution, making Marcos’s removal from office unlikely.

What’s next?

Meanwhile, the so-called Trillion Peso March Movement, which organised the September 21 anticorruption rally in Manila, has announced that it will hold its own rally on November 30.

The group said it aims to “transform a prayer rally into a movement” for the prosecution of all those involved in the ongoing corruption scandal.

A bridge collapse at a mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed at least 80 workers. Witnesses said security forces at the mine triggered a stampede when they fired gunshots that caused panic. The military has made no comment. The incident caused outrage over unsafe mining in the DRC.

Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by a special tribunal in Dhaka. Hasina, who is in exile in India, was tried in absentia on several charges related to her government’s deadly crackdown on student protests in 2024.

Prosecuting Hasina was a key promise made by the interim government, which is led by the Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus.

Here is more about Monday’s verdict, and what happens next:

What was the verdict?

The special International Crimes Tribunal 1 (ICT) in Dhaka has found Hasina guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death.

The independent ICT was originally set up by Hasina herself in 2010 to investigate crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 war, which resulted in Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan. However, it has been criticised in the past by human rights organisations and her opponents who have accused her of using it for politically motivated purposes while she was in power.

In particular, Hasina has been sentenced to death after being found guilty of the charge of ordering the deployment of drones, helicopters and lethal weapons against protesters, and “by virtue of her order” the killings of protesters in Chankarpul of Dhaka and in Ashulia of Savar. Twelve protesters were killed in these two areas.

“Accused prime minister Sheikh Hasina committed crimes against humanity by her incitement order and also failure to take preventive and punitive measures under charge 1,” the verdict stated.

“Accused Sheikh Hasina committed one count of crimes against humanity by her order to use drones, helicopters and lethal weapons under charge number 2,” the court said.

Additionally, the tribunal also issued a separate sentence of imprisonment until death on three other counts: incitement against protesters, issuing an order to kill them and failure to prevent the atrocities and take punitive action against the perpetrators.

Former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, who was on trial alongside Hasina, has also been sentenced to death. Former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who also faced charges, has been sentenced to five years in prison.

Al-Mamun was shown leniency due to his cooperation with the trial proceedings. He provided “material evidence to the tribunal to arrive at the correct decision”, the court said.

While Hasina and Khan, who is also thought to be in India but whose whereabouts are unclear, were tried in absentia, Al-Mamun was present at the tribunal.

The court added: “The government is directed to pay considerable amount of compensation to the protesters concerned in this case, who have been killed in the July movement 2024 and also to take measures, to pay adequate compensation to the wounded protesters, in consideration of the gravity of their injury and loss.” It is unclear who would be expected to pay this compensation, however.

The verdict can be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Will Hasina and Khan be extradited to Bangladesh?

It is unclear whether Hasina and Khan will be returned to Bangladesh to face justice.

Bangladesh and India signed an extradition treaty in 2013. However, the treaty says: “Extradition may be refused if the offence of which it is requested is an offence of a political character.”

India has close ties to Hasina and has not formally responded to Dhaka’s previous demands for extradition.

“Under no circumstances is India going to extradite her,” Sreeradha Datta, a professor specialising in South Asian Studies at India’s Jindal Global University, told Al Jazeera. “We saw in the last year and a half that relationships between India and Bangladesh are not at their best and have been fragile at many occasions.”

However, Ishrat Hossain, an international relations expert and associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, told Al Jazeera the verdict would help Bangladesh’s case in recovering Hasina and Khan.

“Politically and legally, the verdict strengthens Bangladesh’s hand in pressing India to extradite Sheikh Hasina, who fled there after the collapse of her government,” he said. “It also signals that the interim authorities intend to pursue accountability beyond symbolic gestures. Socially, this is an important early step toward acknowledging the suffering of survivors and the families of those killed under Hasina’s watch, even if full justice remains a distant prospect.

“Holding the perpetrators of the police-led brutality during Bangladesh’s 2024 uprising, where nearly 1,400 people were killed, has been a central priority of the interim administration.”

How has Hasina reacted to the verdict?

Hasina called the verdict “politically motivated”, the AFP news agency reported.

“The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate. They are biased and politically motivated,” she said from India.

“I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where evidence can be weighed and tested fairly.”

Who is Hasina?

Hasina, 78, is the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father, former President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. After a 1971 war, Bangladesh declared independence and split from Pakistan.

In 1975, Rahman was assassinated in a military coup, ushering in a period of military and quasi-military rule.

Hasina led a pro-democracy uprising that ousted military ruler Hussain Muhammad Ershad in 1990. Hasina came to power in 1996 as leader of the now-banned Awami League party. The Awami League, founded in 1949, is a centre-left party with roots in Bengali nationalism and secularism. The party receives strong backing from those who supported the 1971 war.

Her first term as prime minister ended in 2001 after her party lost the general election to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Khaleda Zia. Hasina became prime minister again in 2009 and remained in the position for 15 years until August 2024 when student protests forced her out of power and she fled to India. Bangladesh does not have a set constitutional term limit for premiers.

Since Hasina was deposed, Bangladesh has been led by an interim government under Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. Elections for a new parliament are expected to take place in early 2026.

In May, the interim government revoked the Awami League’s registration and prohibited its political activities, citing national security concerns and ongoing war crimes investigations against senior members.

Why was Hasina tried over student protests?

On July 1, 2024, Bangladeshis led mostly by students and other young people took to the streets to protest against a High Court decision to reinstate a policy reserving one-third of civil service positions for descendants of those who fought in the 1971 war.

By July 19, the protests had escalated, a telecommunications blackout was imposed and the army was deployed to crack down on protesters. Student protesters were also attacked by Awami League’s student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League. Thousands of students fought with armed police in Dhaka, and about 1,400 people were killed, according to estimates by the United Nations.

The tribunal heard ample evidence that Hasina’s forces were ordered to fire on unarmed protesters.

During its own investigations since then, Al Jazeera also discovered secret phone call recordings in which Hasina “issued an open order” to “use lethal weapons” on students protesting against her government’s policies last year and shoot “wherever they find them”.

Who was on the tribunal?

The ICT has three members and was headed by a retired district court judge, Justice Golam Murtaza Mazumdar.

In December, the Awami League criticised Mazumdar’s appointment as chairman of the tribunal in an X post, saying: “Golam Murtaza Mazumdar retired in 2019 and has not served as a judge for five years. Despite this, he has been elevated to the status of an appellate division judge as the Tribunal’s chairman.”

The other two members of the tribunal were Mohitul Haque Enam Chowdhury and Shofiul Alam Mahmood.

Even though the tribunal was established by Hasina herself, members of her party have called it a “kangaroo court”, a derogatory term for a court or tribunal that ignores recognised standards of law and justice, often delivering predetermined or biased outcomes.

Is the tribunal fair?

In October 2024, the ICT issued an arrest warrant for Hasina and 45 others, including former ministers.

“The court has … ordered the arrest of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and to produce her in court on November 18,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, the ICT’s chief prosecutor, told reporters in October 2024.

“Sheikh Hasina was at the helm of those who committed massacres, killings and crimes against humanity in July to August,” he added.

A state lawyer was appointed to defend Hasina and the two others on trial.

In October 2024, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a letter urging the interim government to amend the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act to ensure a fair and impartial judicial process.

An HRW statement alleged that the tribunal has “previously been fraught with violations of fair trial standards. This included failure of evidence gathering, lack of independence of judges including collusion with prosecutors, witness tampering, denying proper rights to defense, forcibly disappearing relatives of the accused, and the use of the death penalty.”

HRW urged the interim government to suspend and work to abolish the death penalty in line with international human rights standards, amend laws to safeguard due process rights of the accused and establish a well-resourced witness and victim protection unit capable of safeguarding individuals and their families before, during and after testimony.

How did the tribunal proceed?

Arrest warrants for Hasina and Khan were again issued in June after the pair failed to appear before the tribunal in November 2024. They were formally charged on July 10. Al-Mamun pleaded guilty on the same day and agreed to become a state witness, agreeing to testify for the prosecution.

Testimony was heard from August 3 to October 8. Final arguments concluded between October 12 and October 23.

The tribunal examined a trove of evidence against Hasina: 14 volumes of documents spanning about 10,000 pages, including official reports, medical and postmortem records, ballistic data, flight logs and media footage; 93 documentary exhibits and 32 physical exhibits, such as ammunition, clothing, recordings and field reports; and testimony from more than 80 witnesses, including survivors, doctors, organisers and investigators with 54 testifying in court.

Security was tightened in Dhaka before Monday’s verdict, especially around the ICT and the surrounding Supreme Court area. Police and paramilitary forces – including the Rapid Action Battalion, Border Guard Bangladesh and army units – were deployed.

A “shoot-at-sight” order was issued for anyone engaged in arson, attacks involving explosives or violence before the verdict in Dhaka and other parts of Bangladesh.

What happens next?

“This decision marks a significant inflection point in Bangladeshi politics, one that could trigger heightened volatility in the run-up to the February 2026 national election,” Hossain told Al Jazeera.

Hossain said that while the Awami League is now banned from participating in elections, the party retains a large, deeply embedded activist base that is likely to mobilise, potentially through disruptive and violent protests.

“Such confrontations risk re-creating the same patterns of repression and lethal force used by the law enforcers that the interim government now seeks to adjudicate.”

Crucially, however, about 15 million Bangladeshis living abroad, many of whom came out to protest in solidarity with the students in 2024 – often risking imprisonment in the countries they live in – have now been given the means to vote by post for the first time. Many analysts think their votes could sway elections because they now account for about 10 percent of the nation’s electorate.

Hossain said instability is likely in the short term but it is unclear what will happen in the long term.

In the latest episode of the soap opera that passes for politics in the United States, President Donald Trump has dramatically split with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a former ally and a notorious wearer of the MAGA hat.

Writing on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump denounced his fellow Republican as “wacky” and “Far Left”, claiming that he did not have time to deal with her alleged barrage of phone calls: “I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day.”

As The New York Times noted, Trump had previously “stood by” Greene when she was criticised “for voicing conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks, school shootings and wildfires started by space lasers”.

Anyway, nothing “Lunatic” about any of that.

Greene denies having called the president, saying instead that she had texted him to suggest that he cease endeavouring to thwart the full release of the so-called Epstein files pertaining to the late paedophile and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, which may implicate Trump.

The US House of Representatives is set to vote this week on the matter – and Greene is not the only Republican to have broken ranks. Several other House Republicans have also defied Trump on the Epstein front, including Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

In a typical about-face, Trump has now spontaneously reversed his position on the Epstein files, posting on Truth Social late on Sunday: “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”

And yet the Epstein files are hardly the only issue that raises the question of whether MAGA might not be headed for some sort of self-combustion.

As Trump recently reminded Americans, “Don’t forget, MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else’s idea.”

And so it’s only logical that folks would associate the distinct failure to “make America great again” with the idea man himself.

Outright propaganda can only go so far – and people tend to notice when they don’t have enough money to put food on the table in spite of upbeat presidential pronouncements regarding the state of the economy.

Even Trump has apparently realised, to some extent, that he stands to further alienate his base by insisting on nonsensical tariffs and other punitive financial measures. As a nonsolution, the government will now lower tariffs on coffee and bananas while the president muses over potential $2,000 tariff rebate cheques and 50-year mortgages.

A November 14 White House news release blamed the Democrats for the country’s “economic mess” but assured citizens that “grocery prices and housing prices are trending in the right direction” with prices “for everyday staples” such as ice cream seeing “declines”.

The news release ended on the inspiring note: “We’re making progress – and the best is yet to come.”

In addition to the cost-of-living crisis, another source of rising discontent among Republicans is US support for Israel. In July, Greene became the first Republican lawmaker to call the genocide in the Gaza Strip by name, condemning the “starvation” of Palestinians.

To be sure, US aid to Israel is not just a Republican thing; Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden was more than happy to fling tens of billions of dollars at the genocidal state as it went about starving and otherwise annihilating civilians in Gaza.

The Trump administration, however, has added a slight twist to business as usual by not only backing Israel to the hilt but also simultaneously threatening to starve poor Americans at home by withholding essential food assistance.

But, hey, at least the price of ice cream is “declining”.

Last week, two days before his official breakup with Greene, Trump took to Truth Social to warn that “only a very bad, or stupid Republican would fall into” the Democratic “trap” of the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax”, allegedly concocted purely to detract attention from the Democrats’ wide-ranging transgressions.

But it seems that an ever-greater number of MAGA adherents may be at risk of descending into badness and stupidity as Trump reveals himself to be maybe not the most qualified person to “drain the swamp in Washington, DC” – one of the president’s perennial promises to do away with corruption and other traditional political vices.

Indeed, Trump’s apoplectic fits over the possible release of details regarding Epstein – ie, someone who was very much entrenched in said “swamp” – do not bode well in terms of drainage prospects.

Then again, the fact that Americans re-elected a nepotistic billionaire and convicted criminal to head the country suggests that the swamp probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

On a micro level, the intra-MAGA soap opera may provide some fleeting gratification for spectators. But it’s not like the drama sets the stage for any substantive improvement to the political panorama.

And while opposing Trump is, objectively speaking, a noble aim, we don’t really need any more people who think space lasers cause wildfires and compare pandemic safety measures to the Holocaust. Nor, for that matter, do we need any more genocide-enabling Democrats, who at the end of the day are just as committed as Republicans to maintaining a corrupt plutocracy.

Blind and unquestioning support for the president may be eroding among his MAGA base. But rest assured that the swamp is here to stay.