Mar. 17, 2025 |
The former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte was arrested in Manila by Interpol early-morning on March 11. Later that day, he was flown to The Hague, where he’ll face charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court. Prosecutors say Duterte, during his time as head of state and mayor of Mindanao, is responsible for the killings of more than 12,000 people allegedly involved in the drug trade.
But Duterte had withdrawn the Philippines from the ICC—and yet his successor as president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., allowed Interpol to arrest Duterte. Why? It looks like politics: Marcos had been feuding for at least a year with the Duterte family. Duterte’s daughter Sara Duterte is Marcos’s vice president, and she’s leading in polls ahead of the next presidential election, in 2027.
Limited by law to one term as president, Rodrigo Duterte remains highly popular in the Philippines, despite his apparent disregard for the law, his public calls for the deaths of drug dealers, and his years of authoritarian rule. And Sara Duterte appears to follow the same script as her father.
Why would the Duterte family still be so popular in the Philippines?
In the latest member’s despatch, we return to our conversation with Alvin Canba on the populist style in Filipino politics—and how the kinds of narrative about good citizens being victimized by corrupt elites, which have been powerful in the U.S., Europe, and around the world, have worked for Duterte …
—Michael Bluhm
