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Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte yesterday defended his bloody “war on drugs,” saying he took “full legal responsibility” for the campaign, which involved thousands of extrajudicial killings.
In his testimony before the country’s Senate yesterday, the 79-year-old said he offered “no apologies, no excuses” for the campaign, during which between 12,000 and 30,000 people were killed. Most of the victims were young men in congested urban areas, who were shot dead during “encounters” with police.
“My mandate as President of the Republic was to protect the country and the Filipino people,” Duterte said in a statement to the Senate Committee, The Inquirer reported. “Don’t question my policies because I offer no apologies, no excuses. I did what I had to do, and whether you believe it or not, I did it for my country.”
In a defiant testimony to the committee, which featured a characteristic sprinkling of curse words, Duterte said that the campaign had been necessary to stop the spread of narcotics. “I have warned all of you as a president, then and as a private citizen now,” he said. “Drugs will destroy the Filipino, it will destroy my country, and I will not allow it.”
Duterte’s anti-drugs campaign, which began at nearly the moment he was sworn into office in mid-2016, was modeled on the tough approach he employed during his years as mayor of Davao City in the south of the country. In September 2021, judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) authorized an investigation into the anti-drug campaign, describing it as a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population.”
Duterte’s testimony came on the first day of a Senate inquiry into the drug war, and was one of the few times that he has spoken in public since relinquishing the presidency in 2022. The anti-drug campaign is also the subject of hearings in the House of Representatives, which has unfurled over the past three months, during which time it has heard the testimonies of local officials, active and retired police officers, and families of drug war victims. Among the many revelations were those provided during testimony by former police colonel Royina Garma, who said that Duterte’s office offered police up to $17,000 to kill suspects during the anti-drug campaign.
Both inquiries have come about in the context of the bitter feud between Duterte’s camp and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his allies. Despite uniting and scoring a decisive victory at the 2022 election, the two families have fallen out over the past year over a mix of policy and personal differences, and are readying their allies and proxies to do battle during the mid-term elections that will be held in May 2025. The ex-president’s daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, has led many of the attacks on her former running mate, culminating in a remarkable tirade against Marcos during a press conference on October 28.
The rift has prompted some allies of Marcos in Congress to open a probe into the “war on drugs,” as Mong Palatino wrote in these pages last week. Duterte has refused to testify at the House hearings, and skipped a scheduled appearance on October 22, but has agreed to appear before the Senate, where he has been assured of a more friendly reception. The Senate hearings were initiated by Duterte allies, including Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, who as Duterte’s police chief oversaw the initial phase of the anti-drugs campaign. Dela Rosa said that a Senate inquiry was necessary in order to counter the House hearings, which he described at yesterday’s hearing as a “gag show.”
“I am here to tell the truth, and as I do so, witness the web of lies come undone one thread at a time,” Dela Rosa said in his opening statement yesterday. In line with the more friendly environment, many of Duterte’s comments in yesterday’s Senate hearing were met by cheers from the gallery.
This is not the first time that Duterte has taken responsibility for the drug war. He has said as much many times before, including in a speech in October 2022 in which he assumed “full responsibility” and said that “if there is any person who is going to prison, it would be me.”
In his opening statement yesterday, however, the former leader denied authorizing police to kill suspects. He said that he had told police not to abuse their powers, that they should “repel the aggression only in self-defense.”
He also admitted that he maintained a death squad of seven “gangsters” while mayor of Davao City, a post that he held for more than two decades before becoming president in 2016. “I can make the confession now if you want,” Duterte said, as per The Guardian. “I had a death squad of seven, but they were not policemen, they were also gangsters.”
He also said he had ordered police under him to “encourage” suspects in Davao to fight back so that cops would have an excuse to kill them, Rappler reported. “What I said is this, let’s be frank, I said encourage the criminal to fight, encourage them to draw their guns,” Duterte said. “That was my instruction, encourage them to fight, and if they fight, then kill them so my problem in my city is done.”
The ICC investigation also covers alleged crimes committed during Duterte’s time as mayor of Davao City from November 2011 to June 2016.
For years, Duterte has denied that he maintained death squads in Davao, despite the mass of evidence assembled by human rights groups and investigators such as former Senate Leila de Lima. De Lima, who attended yesterday’s hearing, spent more than six years in prison on false drug charges that many believe were fabricated by the Duterte administration in retaliation for her investigations into extrajudicial killings in Davao and during the drug war after 2016.
Whether Duterte is held to account for the drug war, or the earlier killings in Davao, remains unclear. Given the backdrop of political acrimony with the Marcos administration, any case against him would be bound up with political disagreements and can be expected to be staunchly opposed by Duterte’s allies.
Another intriguing question involves the role of the ICC. While in office, Duterte flatly refused to cooperate with the ICC and withdrew the Philippines from the Rome Statute in retaliation. Marcos has taken a similar stance – in January, he said that his administration “will not lift a finger” to assist the ICC – but as his political feud with the Duterte clan and its allies continues to escalate, he could be tempted to leverage the ICC probe – or at least the threat of it – in his domestic fight with the Dutertes.