Duterte: Feted and Feared

Alan Davis

Asia & Eurasia Director

Wednesday, 12 March, 2025

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It’s taken almost two decades, but justice has finally caught up with former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. It was something that never seemed likely to happen, not least given the country’s endemic problem with impunity.  

Duterte has long been feted and feared in equal measure.  

Feted, because he was the kind of archetypal populist politician who attracts far too many votes in the Philippines. His blunt-talking style and showmanship served him way too well in election after election.

Feared, because he didn’t just talk dirty. As prosecutor and then mayor of Davao on the island of Mindanao, he revelled in the sobriquet “Dirty Harry”.  He didn’t so much believe in the law as he did in summary justice, and he was more than happy to dole it out himself.

While the city’s police force answered to him, so did many guns for hire. And given he was supposedly the law in the city, it was less than surprising that so many killings went unsolved.    

My first visit to Davao several decades ago was when IWPR ran a project that sought to help investigate and combat the long-standing impunity around extra judicial killings.

It was an era when the city was plagued by death squads - known as 'the Sparrows' - gangs of young teenagers who were given guns and handfuls of pesos and instructions to rid the streets of so-called undesirables.

The victims were typically petty criminals and drug dealers or addicts. Any local journalists or human rights activists brave, or mad enough, to dare challenge Duterte could also find themselves targeted.  

I remember sitting in on some public meetings when the then-head of the Commission on Human Rights, Leila de Lima visited Davao to try to interview people and collect evidence around the extra judicial killings. She was later reportedly put on the death squad’s hit list herself.

Unsurprisingly, very few people did speak out – one reason it was very hard to pin anything on Duterte. Within the Davao justice system, it was highly unlikely the charges would ever stick, or witnesses would live to see him held to account.

The problem - a problem that remains today - was that in many quarters Duterte was very popular. And he was kept in power by voters who appreciated the fact that Davao appeared an oasis of law and order in the badlands of Mindanao.

Uniquely for the Philippines, during his time as mayor nobody ever smoked in the city’s bars and restaurants or got into a fight with a taxi driver over a contested fare. No one wanted to earn the wrath of the mayor, the so-called “punisher.”

It was no surprise that when he stood for and then won the presidency in 2016, he would seek to remodel the country as he did Davao.

Countless killings followed. The courts and senate were cowed. De Lima, by then a senator, was thrown in jail on trumped up charges.

Street kids, petty criminals and drug-dealers were gunned down across the country on a daily basis. Arrests were few and far between and victims were often found shot in the head or in the back. The rule of law went out the window under Duterte’s tenure.    

And while he campaigned and was elected on a firm anti-drugs platform, it has long been alleged that the cabal that surrounded him were themselves into big-time narcotic smuggling from China.

Duterte himself, when he was not threatening violence or flinging - often misogynistic – insults, spent much of his presidency cosying up to Beijing.

While many commentators over the years have painted him as a populist leader of the hard-right, the fact is he long had links with the country’s Communist insurgents, the New People’s Army.

It is just one of the many ironies and imponderables that surrounds Duterte and his elevated position in Philippine society.

Following his arrest, local media in Manila broadcast footage of vigils of ordinary Filipinos holding candles and placards mourning his arrest and extradition at the hands of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Calling out for their hero to be defended by Filipino law and given justice at home, they appeared totally oblivious to how many times others had similarly stood and mourned loved ones gunned down on his orders.

So it is very right and fair Duterte has gone to the Hague. Yet his tenure cheapened politics in the Philippines dreadfully - and given his equally combative daughter Sara remains the country’s vice president, nobody should be surprised with what might come next.