In 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was elected as the President of the Philippines. Perhaps foreshadowing the events to follow, the campaign proceeding his election was one of the more brutal and norm-defying election campaigns that a democracy has yet faced. This campaign cycle was so unique due to several factors that all contributed to Duterte’s eventual win, as well as the brutality he promised during the campaign and followed through with when elected. Duterte’s callous, crude, populist, and punitive campaign style drew the attention of the world, as his unabashedly violent and obscene rhetoric was both jarring as well as eerily reminiscent of a global trend towards authoritarian politics across the world. The concurrent rise of social media as a campaign mechanism, disseminator of news, and potential as a manipulator of public opinion played a significant role in the election and subsequent public support for policy decisions made by Duterte’s government. The confluence of these factors created a unique environment for a populist authoritarian leader to wrest the reigns of a fragile democracy away from traditional liberal values towards a regime of terror. It became a regime that would be responsible for the dissolution of the rule of law, the erosion of Human Rights, and state sanctioned/perpetrated violence that might have been thought to be impossible under a democracy in such a short time.
Before the election in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was the mayor of Davao City. As mayor, he grew a reputation as being a “strongman” leader with controversial conservative views on strict drug enforcement policy and police use of force after instating martial law on the island of Mindanao where Davao is located. “Although the evidence that Davao is indeed safer is widely questioned, this manipulation of Duterte’s legacy ultimately leant legitimacy to his argument for a national campaign modelled on Davao.” (Raffle, 2021) As the 2016 election cycle began heating up across the Philippines, Duterte suddenly went from relatively unknown mayor with despotic tendencies, to the front-runner in the election for the office of the Presidency, nearly overnight. (Kenny, 2020) Through the campaign, his rallies drew huge crowds of supporters to watch him boorishly rail against ‘elites’ in the Filipino government and society, while promising that he would oversee the extermination of all drug users and dealers in the country within six months of being elected. “…he would kill thousands of criminals, the funeral parlors would be packed and he would dump 100,000 of the slain criminals in Manila Bay where the fish would grow fat. He promised no mercy, saying ‘God will weep if I become President.’” (Kenny, 2020) Earning the nickname ‘The Punisher’ for his punitive, conservative theory of crime prevention, he had no intention of addressing what he believed was an epidemic of drug use with policies that would mitigate suffering or reform criminals, he advocated only for murder. “As ‘The Punisher’, Duterte ‘securitized’ a social problem, focusing on the purportedly widespread illegal drug trade as an existential threat to public safety and national security, and with no view to addressing the socially structured impact and drivers of both drug trade and drug consumption.” (Ramos, 2020) By stoking fears of rampant criminality that could only be addressed through a campaign of ruthlessness, Duterte was dealing in what has been termed “post truth”. (Ghosh. 2022)
This concept of post truth has been referred to in many ways, but in the context of society in the Philippines of today, this is most strikingly observed by examining social media use and how it can and has been utilized to manipulate an electorate in a campaign and to garner support for controversial policies. “Mass and rapid circulation of ‘news’ in social media make it difficult for an average person to cross-check the validity and authenticity of the news.” (Ghosh, 2022) This is exactly what happened in the Philippines in the lead up to Duterte’s election and through his administration. “More than 67 million of the country’s 104 million population is on Facebook, making the Philippines among the top Facebook-using countries in the world.” (David, 2019) This makes the social media landscape a crucial element of any political strategy in the Philippines as this is the primary means of interacting with citizens. Interestingly though, it does not appear that Duterte’s campaign or administration was especially adept at capitalizing on social media themselves, but rather that, “Much of this was thanks to vocal digital supporters who cheered his mundane [yet, often offensive] statements and rallied to his defense when competing candidates voiced criticism.” (Sinpeng, 2020) This makes the idea of post truth being disseminated through social media even more relevant as it does not even apparently require the progenitor of the post truth to be the one administering it. “Facebook mobilization produced a notably toxic and crude digital fan base that reflected and amplified the insurgent and brutish personality of it’s champion.” (Sinpeng, 2020) Rather, all that is required is enough strong support from a minority to become the megaphone for what, in Duterte’s case, was a campaign of fear and the ‘othering’ of marginalized groups. This is expressed in authoritarian regimes in general through a “Rampant exclusion and inequality [which] sharply reduce people’s trust [in] public institutions, experts, and media… the new leaders become popular by circulating narratives of a conspiracy theory…[by using] hate speech, instigating ethnic, racial, and communal violence and a sharp polarization between ‘we’ and ‘they’.” (Ghosh, 2022) In Duterte’s Philippines in particular, these tactics played out through a campaign of extra-judicial killings, sanctioned and advocated for by the government.
“Some democratic qualities like popular sovereignty grind directly against other democratic qualities like institutional integrity…Efforts to make state judicial institutions more efficient and effective… can never fully overcome the inherent fallibility of legal institutions that makes their justice non-arbitrary. Efforts to make policing and judicial institutions less procedurally oriented, by contrast, do violence (often quite literally) to suspects’ democratic rights.” (Smith, 2019) This contradiction is what the Philippines is being forced to confront while grappling with Duterte’s anti-drug crusade. Duterte’s flagrant disregard for the rule of law is blatantly exhibited through his use of State law enforcement to carry out mass-killings in the name of curbing drug use. “The Philippines Mission to the UN has blamed ‘vigilante elements’ for such extrajudicial killings, but it is clear in many cases they are organized by the police.” (Raffle, 2021) But it is more subtly accomplished through the erosion of the rule of law in precise ways. For example, the attempted erosion of search and seizure rights in the People v Sapla case: “it is not hard to imagine the horrid scenarios if the Court were to allow intrusive warrantless searches and seizures on the solitary basis of unverified, anonymous tips.” (Candelaria, 2020) Importantly though, this erosion of the rule of law is rendered irrelevant in relation to reports that “the police planted guns, spent ammunition, and drug packets next to the victims’ bodies” (Burki, 2020) Another example of the erosion of the rule of law in systematic ways is the sub judice rule which relates to the right of freedom of expression: “The inconsistent and erroneous application and interpretation of the sub judice rule in the Philippines has been used to silence dissent against the government – all at the pretext of maintaining judicial stability. The unfortunate consequence of this trend may be the precise opposite: the erosion of the independence of our courts and the integrity of the administration of justice.” (Artiaga, 2021) Again, this undermining of democratic principles and state institutions becomes less alarming when presented with the fact that “state vigilantism” (Raffle, 2021) is overwhelmingly the most acute problem facing Filipino society, as these state-sanctioned, often “execution style” killings, are so prevalent according to several of the sources cited herein.
It is difficult to imagine what could be cause for greater alarm than the State sanctioned extrajudicial killings, considering the alleged frequency, severity, and widespread nature of this campaign of murder is so brutal and has been allowed to proceed with such apparent impunity. But the erosion of freedoms may prove to be a longer lasting devastation wrought by Duterte’s regime. The targeting of journalist, Maria Ressa, is perhaps the most dramatic and striking example of Duterte’s abuse of the rights of journalists and freedom of expression. While the administration has been threatening the press and media outlets that deviate from the official government position on any issue, Rappler and its founder, Ressa, have been the overwhelming target of Duterte’s ire. Facing nine different criminal cases, Ressa has been the scapegoat for a significant portion of Dutertes anti-freedom of expression initiatives. The allegations against her and her website range from the revocation of the news license “alleging that its foreign ownership places it in violation of the Constitution”, “…tax evasion and failure to file returns”, and “cyber-libel” despite the law only being enacted after the allegedly libelous material was published and has since had its constitutionality questioned by the Philippines Supreme Court. (Dressel, 2019) But while Ressa’s situation has garnered the most international attention, she is far from the only victim of Duterte’s authoritarian suppression tactics. “…the imprisonment on drug charges of a Senator…removal of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court… from her position. Both [of whom] had sought investigations into the [extrajudicial] killings. These issues raise serious questions about the willingness of authorities in the Philippines to investigate or prosecute alleged crimes occurring during the ‘war on drugs’” (Palmer, 2019) As horrific as the crimes against humanity in the form of extra judicial killings are, the dismantling of human rights, particularly the freedom of expression and free press, have reverberating ramifications for human rights if there are not consequences for Duterte’s brutal form of authoritarianism.
“Although violence in the context of the war on drugs cannot be considered to be genocide, as the intent is not to destroy a ‘national, ethnic, racial or religious group’, it has been claimed… that it may constitute a crime against humanity.” (Raffle, 2021) Duterte seems to be an adherent to older, more conservative theoretical perceptions of criminology. He apparently sees crime as involving individual factors rather than societal or institutionally based motivations, blaming those who many would argue are in fact the victims of society and addiction. While “The term ‘extra-judicial killings’ does not appear in the Rome Statute or in the Philippines IHL Act” (Palmer, 2019) and considering the Philippines did in fact withdraw from the Rome Statute in 2019, there are still possible avenues by which Duterte and his administration could face repercussions for their crimes against humanity. Whether domestically, through possible interpretations of the International Criminal Court’s principle of “complementarity” which aims to encourage international law prosecution through domestic courts, on “war crimes” charges which would allege that the ‘war on drugs’ could warrant the application of International Human Rights Law through the law of armed conflict, or otherwise, the Duterte regime must face consequences.
Now, in 2025, Duterte is no longer in power in the Philippines, having been succeeded by Bongbong Marcos, the son of the former dictator of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos. So, clearly, the Philippines electorate has similarly short-memories or fascist leanings as does the US electorate. But now that we in the US are facing our second lap around the right-wing fascist government track, the degradation of civil rights that Filipinos experienced under Duterte are a crucial lodestar to keep track of. Maria Ressa, CEO of Rappler media, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her work to combat Duterte’s corruption, and should be our guidepost for how journalism should act under a fascist government. We as the US electorate and consumers of journalism must be prepared to hold journalists and journalistic outlets and platforms to account under the coming Trump regime. We can do so by using the example of the Philippines and Maria Ressa’s work to expose the government’s corruption as a standard to which we can hold US journalists’ feet to the fire. If we witness the media falling into line behind a Trump Administration talking-point, or framing a story in such a way that obscures or launders the critical point of a story, it is our job as consumers of media, to call it out. We have to stay vigilant about what we expect from our media institutions and those who work within it. Maria Ressa’s refusal to comply with or be intimidated by Duterte’s fascism should bring us hope that such journalism is possible even in the US under Trump’s inevitable curtailing of civil rights and targeting of critical media. We just need to keep track of who is consistently fighting against fascism, exposing the corruption, and not bending the knee in the name of access or remaining in the regime’s good graces.
UPDATE: Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the International Criminal Court and flown to the Hague on March 11th, 2025.
Sources
Artiaga, J. P. M. (2021). The Sub Judice Rule in the Philippines as an Interference in the Right to the Freedom of Expression: Determining Tensions and Defining Legal Standards to Address Conflicting Interests. Asian-Pacific Law & Policy Journal, 22(2), 237–309.
Burki, T. (2021). What next for the Philippines’ war on drugs? Lancet (London, England), 398(10317), 2139–2140. https://doi-org.ez.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02783-5
Candelaria, S. M., & Leshen, B. E. A. (2020). Tipping the Scales in Favor of the Accused: the Implications of People v. Sapla on the Philippines’ War Against Drugs. Ateneo Law Journal, 65(2), 831–892.
David, Tandoc, E. C., & Katigbak, E. (2019). Organizational adaptations to social media: How social media news workers in the Philippines are embedded in newsrooms and influences on editorial practices. Newspaper Research Journal, 40(3), 329–345. https://doi.org/10.1177/0739532919835611
Ghosh. (2022). Politics of Manufacturing Consent in a Post-Truth Society. Journal of Developing Societies, 38(1), 7–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0169796X211068451
Kenny, & Holmes, R. (2020). A NEW PENAL POPULISM? RODRIGO DUTERTE, PUBLIC OPINION, AND THE WAR ON DRUGS IN THE PHILIPPINES. Journal of East Asian Studies, 20(2), 187–205. https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2020.8
Dressel, & Bonoan, C. R. (2019). Southeast Asia’s Troubling Elections: Duterte Versus the Rule of Law. Journal of Democracy, 30(4), 134–148. https://doi.org/10.1353/jod.2019.0057
Palmer, E. (2019). Complementarity and the implementation of international criminal law in the philippines. New Zealand Journal of Public and International Law, 17(1), 67-92.
Raffle. (2021). The war on drugs in Southeast Asia as “state vigilantism.” The International Journal of Drug Policy, 92, 103114–103114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugpo.2021.103114
Ramos. (2020). Change without Transformation: Social Policy Reforms in the Philippines under Duterte. Development and Change, 51(2), 485–505. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12564
Sinpeng, Gueorguiev, D., & Arugay, A. A. (2020). STRONG FANS, WEAK CAMPAIGNS: SOCIAL MEDIA AND DUTERTE IN THE 2016 PHILIPPINE ELECTION. Journal of East Asian Studies, 20(3), 353–374. https://doi.org/10.1017/jea.2020.11
Smith, N.R. (2019) Contradictions of Democracy: Vigilantism and Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Oxford University Press, New York
