Twin Plagues: How Duterte and Covid-19 Wrecked the Philippine Economy

by J.C. Punongbayan

Twin Plagues: How Duterte and Covid-19 Wrecked the Philippine Economy chronicles the Philippine economy under Rodrigo Duterte’s presidency from 2016 to 2022, a period marked by authoritarian populism and the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on economic data, policy analysis, and contemporary reporting, the book argues that weak governance and institutional erosion had already undermined economic performance well before the pandemic. The pandemic then exposed and magnified these failures, culminating in the country’s worst postwar recession and the deepest economic contraction in Southeast Asia. The book challenges the persistent but misleading narrative that Duterte handled the economy well, offering an economic counterpoint to a literature that has largely emphasized the war on drugs, media repression, and foreign policy. Written in an accessible style, Twin Plagues is both an economic history and a cautionary tale about how authoritarian populism can rapidly corrode governance and inflict lasting damage on developing economies.

430 pages, Paperback

Published June 30, 2026

Reviews

[J]

actual rating: 4.5 stars

reasons why I recommend “Twin Plagues”:
📈 gutsy & sharp-witted commentary about Katay Digs and his minions
📊 meticulously researched
📈 JC made the economic data & analyses easier to understand for those of us who aren’t experts in economics.
📊 I consider it an immersive sequel to “False Nostalgia”. (I would recommend that myth-buster against Marcos loyalists.)
📗 I appreciated the well-thought-out proposed solutions to our country’s problems.

[Nikka Regina]

3.5 stars.

Maybe I start with a bit of a disclaimer -- the last two books on Duterte that I read were written by Maria Ressa and Patricia Evangelista, which given that they are journalist, were written with a bit more artistic flair. They were tough books to follow. So one star less, but just for that.

Writing style aside, it is a fairly good, readable documentation of what went wrong during the Duterte administation -- parts were painful to relive (most of the pandemic years have been buried deep in my brain) but I guess that's what the book hopes to do -- to remind us of how colossally bad it was so that we avoid the same in the future.