Keywords

Introduction

Democracy fatigue has been cited as the reason for the rise and return of illiberal leaders in the Philippines (Heydarian, 2017). Filipinos, the story goes, have become tired of respecting human rights and due process for these aspirations have become nothing more than soundbites for activists, politicians, and intellectuals who are disconnected from the brutalities of everyday life. The spectacular rise of the strongman President Rodrigo Duterte to Presidency, together with the victory of the late dictator’s son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to claim the highest position in the land signal the public’s readiness to trade democratic aspirations to authoritarian fantasies. These interpretations have become influential in making sense of democratic backsliding in the Philippines.

In this chapter, we seek to challenge these interpretations. We argue that the popularity of authoritarian figures should not be conflated with the public’s support for these leaders’ democratic transgressions. We focus our analysis on the Duterte regime (2016–2022), although we occasionally reference the campaign and victory of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the 2022 presidential elections. We interrogate the impression that Filipinos have grown tired of democracy. Instead, we argue that Filipinos supported President Duterte despite of, not because of, his democratic transgressions. We also characterise the ‘support’ President Duterte received as qualified, contingent, and negotiated, and not fanatical as it is commonly portrayed in international press. Through this discussion, our aim is to characterise political norms in the Philippines as one that is in constant tension between authoritarian fantasies and democratic aspirations.

This chapter is organised in three parts. We begin by providing an overview of how scholars and observers have profiled the Filipino public during President Duterte’s tenure. We find that some of these interpretations suggest that democratic norms have eroded, given the public’s complicity in President Duterte’s violent and sexist rhetoric, militarised approach to crises like the Covid-19 pandemic, attacks against the press, and murderous campaign against illegal drugs. While we recognise the salience of these observations, we argue that they nonetheless obscure the complexity of the public’s response to Duterte’s rule. In the second part of the chapter, we put forward three examples of the public opinion’s discrepancy with President Duterte’s actions in terms of (1) due process; (2) gender equality; and (3) press freedom. In each of these examples, we demonstrate how Duterte’s transgressions against these norms generate public anxiety, and that Filipinos, for the most part, remain convinced of the value of these three democratic norms. We conclude the chapter by taking stock of the legacy of the Duterte regime in surfacing the tensions between authoritarian fantasies and democratic aspirations.

Democracy Fatigue

The term ‘democracy fatigue’ has been widely used in the past years to describe how diverse groups of people are “losing confidence not only in established democratic institutions, but in the very idea of democracy itself” (Blühdorn, 2020: 391). People feel exhausted by democracy’s constant failure to address complex problems that affect ordinary citizens, including abusive corporate power, climate disasters, and plummeting standards of living. Democratic processes have been reduced to media spectacles and meaningless rituals devoid of any real possibility to uplift the lives of citizens. This leads some to assert their “right to competent government” as more critical than asserting their democratic rights to participation (Brennan, 2016: 140).

The Philippines is one of many countries that have been described as tired of democracy. This observation was brought into sharp focus when strongman Rodrigo Duterte won the Presidency in 2016. As former mayor of Davao City in the Southern Philippines, President Duterte had earned a reputation for running vigilante ‘death squads’ to enforce peace and order in what once was the murder capital of the Philippines (Coronel, 2017). Duterte was called ‘the Punisher’ and ‘Duterte Harry’ for his strongman tactics against criminals, coupled with his self-styled gun-toting, tough-talking persona (Miller, 2018). As President, he was successful in delivering his campaign promise of enforcing genocide to drug pushers, which prompted the International Criminal Court to launch an official probe into alleged crimes against humanity in the Philippines (Simangan, 2018).

Beyond his strongman tactics, President Duterte garnered international attention from his brutish remarks during his Presidential campaign sorties before his years in office. Most of these remarks violate gender rights and reject rights to due process. Among Duterte’s controversial remarks are those related to the rape-slay of an Australian missionary in a 1989 hostage-taking incident in Davao City, where Duterte then served as mayor. Speaking to his supporters in his 2016 Presidential campaign rally, Duterte lamented how when the men lined up to rape the missionary he should have been the first in line (Ranada, 2016). Duterte called Pope Francis a “son of a whore” after the Pope’s visit in the capital Manila resulted in traffic jams (Jenkins, 2016), and afterwards used the same curse phrase at bishops who criticised him using it against the Pope (Gledhill, 2016). Again in 2016, Duterte called then-United States President Barack Obama a “son of a whore” when the United States raised the issue of Duterte’s drug war (Rauhala, 2016). Duterte also captured international attention when, in response to calls for government aid by communities rendered jobless by the COVID-19 pandemic, he ordered the Philippine National Police to “shoot them dead” (Tomacruz, 2020).

For historian Vicente Rafael, Duterte’s transgressions demonstrated that he “will not be bound by the norms of decency or delicadeza [refinement],” in the same way that “he refuses to abide by the laws of due process and protection of human rights. Duterte, to put it crudely, doesn’t give a fuck and has long run out of fucks to give” (Rafael, 2022: 78). For these reasons, Duterte has been described as a “great repudiator,” the kind of leader who rose to power by subverting the previous regimes and building his own rules of the game (Teehankee, 2016: 9). Duterte saw social problems as taking place in a “Hobbesian world,” a world of “perpetual civil war” which requires an elementary form of justice expressed through the language of revenge (Rafael, 2022: 58). He forced the nation to “see humanity through the inhuman eyes of those he has consigned to extrajudicial hell” (Rafael, 2022: 60). Promoting a worldview of a society under constant attack justified Duterte’s disregard for democratic norms, particularly due process, for in this view, even the justice system is corrupt and unable to respond to the immediate threats posed by criminals and drug lords colluding with politicians, prosecutors, and judges.

Considering these democratic transgressions, one puzzle that emerged from Duterte’s rise to power is how citizens have come to support the strongman. The Philippines, after all, is one of Asia’s oldest democracies—a country that has inspired peaceful revolutions that ousted authoritarian regimes around the world. Czech President Václav Havel, for example, in a state visit to the Philippines in 1995, described the 1986 People Power Revolution as an inspiration for Eastern Europe. Following the ‘democracy fatigue’ line of interpretation, various scholars and observers have pointed to the disappointment of Filipinos with liberal democracy. This interpretation has been articulated in many ways. Some posited that the public perceives bureaucratic processes as the reason behind slow justice and policy implementation, thereby turning them in favour of strongman rule that can get things done swiftly (Chikiamco, 2020; Eadie, 2016; Kurlantzick, 2016; Requiroso, 2016; Santos, 2019). A related assertion is that the public is open to sacrificing liberal rights to discipline people (Butuyan, 2021) and to achieve needed change in the country (Abuso, 2021; Ranada, 2019; Thompson, 2018). Other commentators have focused on the inability of democracy to fulfil its promise of offering citizens a better life, thereby making authoritarianism with an alternative path towards progress more palatable to the populace (Arguelles, 2016; Heydarian, 2017; Jenkins, 2016). Finally, many analysts have brought forward socio-economic inequality as the driving force for Duterte’s popularity, pointing to how he is seen by many as the one who will finally pay attention to longstanding problems of middle and lower-class electorates (Arguelles, 2016; Eadie, 2016; Mercado, 2021).

Public Perceptions and Duterte’s Transgressions

We recognise the salience of these interpretations. However, we take the position that the political success of President Duterte should not be taken to suggest that his supporters uncritically endorse or mimic his beliefs. We see citizens not as passive recipients of propaganda or victims of disinformation, but as active agents that are capable of negotiating and reinterpreting populist appeals and situating the meanings of populist pronouncements in their everyday lives. In this section, we discuss the divergence of public opinion from Duterte’s pronouncements to demonstrate that Filipinos’ support for President Duterte is contingent, negotiated, and qualified. We examine three examples.

Due Process

Due process is the right of the accused to be present before the tribunal that pronounces judgement on life, liberty, and property; to be heard; and to have the right to controvert materials implicating her or him (G.R. No. 204487, 2019; G.R. No. 93868, 1991). It is enshrined in Article III, Section 14 of the Philippine constitution, which ensures the right to be presumed innocent, the right to be heard, the right to counsel, the right to a speedy, impartial, and public trial, and the right to confront witnesses. Duterte’s disrespect for the norm of due process and the human rights violations it espoused have not escaped notice. His war on drugs, for example, has garnered international notoriety for the 30,000 extrajudicial killings (EJKs) associated with the policy (Lalu, 2021). While it is valid to say that Duterte has eroded the norm of due process with regard to drug dealers and peddlers, a closer examination of current public perception of the drug war, put in historical perspective, renders more colour to an otherwise monochromatic interpretation.

Public support for populist leaders and the policies that they put forth is contingent on social, political, and economic considerations (Ramos, 2020). In 2020, the Social Weather Stations (SWS), the foremost public opinion-polling body in the Philippines, released a survey result according to which 76% of Filipino adults saw Duterte’s drug war to involve many human rights abuses, and 56% agreed that the United Nations Human Rights Council’s inquiry on the said policy should be carried out. Relying on survey modules of Pulse Asia Research Inc., a public polling opinion body conducting nationally representative surveys, Kenny and Holmes (2020) asserted that Duterte’s supporters do not necessarily share the same views as Duterte on contentious policies. In testing the relationships between support for Duterte’s war on drugs, charismatic leadership, and populism, Kenny and Holmes (2020) showed that approval of extrajudicial killings was not the norm. No fewer than 92% of the 552 respondents viewed EJK as an “extreme measure that may be illegal and is perhaps immoral” (p. 199). The numbers convey that people support the drug war, but not the human rights violations that Duterte has conflated his policies with. It may be the case that the respondents do not associate the EJKs with Duterte. Kenny and Holmes (2020) found no evidence of a relationship between support for EJKs and attribution of charismatic leadership to Duterte, which owes to Duterte distancing himself from EJKs.

Other occurrences under Duterte’s administration also point to his lack of regard for the right to due process. In his weekly national addresses on the COVID-19 pandemic, Duterte threatened jailtime to those who questioned his decisions, whether they be impoverished communities asking for aid or local executives adapting to exigencies in their localities (see Presto, 2020). In an unprecedented move, Duterte’s allies moved to impeach the then Supreme Court Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno, an appointee of the late President Benigno Aquino [President 2010–2016] and a vocal critic of Duterte. Duterte’s allies in the Supreme Court used a quo warranto proceeding which nullified Sereno’s qualifications to assume membership in the Supreme Court based on her failing to submit statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (Santos, 2018). The proceeding is viewed as legally questionable (Fernandez, 2021), although not grave enough to mobilise much protest. This targeting of critics also included the high-profile cases of Senator Leila De Lima and Vice President Leni Robredo. Drug charges were filed against Senator De Lima in 2016, withholding her right to a speedy trial as her hearings kept getting cancelled (Senate of the Philippines Press Release, 2022). But as the Duterte administration faced its last days in mid-May 2022, three key witnesses recanted their testimonies against De Lima and revealed that the police and the Department of Justice connived to invent cases against De Lima (Buan, 2022; Damicog, 2022). Meanwhile, the Philippine National Police filed a sedition case against Vice President Leni Robredo in 2019 (Lagrimas, 2019), but the case was later dismissed for lack of reliable proof (Buan, 2020).

Most controversial among Duterte’s railroading of rule of law is the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos [President 1965–1986] at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, the country’s burial grounds for fallen heroes. The decision was made irrespective of how Philippine laws recognise the atrocities of Ferdinand Marcos, including Republic Act No. 10368, otherwise known as Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013; and the Executive Order No. 1, s. 1986, that mandates the creation of the Philippine Commission on Good Government to recover the ill-gotten wealth amassed by Ferdinand Marcos, Sr., his family members, and his allies in the Philippines and abroad. Duterte’s permission to inter the late dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani has contributed to historical revisionism that eventually shoved Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to win his 2022 Presidential bid.

Duterte’s disregard for the rule of law and frequent violations thereof give off the impression that his time in power has heralded a new era in which the rule of law can be disobeyed in a whim. Yet arguably, Duterte rather offers a rearticulation of the rule of law that stands farther away from, but is still attentive to, democratic values. The rule of law is interpreted by the Philippine Supreme Court as a guarantee that future conducts would be observant of government processes and regulations, where deviations would be met with necessary countenance (G.R. No. 176951, 2011). Duterte, meanwhile, has interpreted the rule of law as “discipline and rule enforcement” (Tugade, 2021), whereby critics and unruly citizens can be persecuted on grounds of the perceived threat they pose to the public order. In his speech during the 80th founding anniversary of the National Bureau of Investigation in 2016, Duterte said that he chose to “innovate” the rule of law (Gonzales, 2016). It is important to read Duterte’s discipline and rule enforcement as a rearticulation of the rule of law since it implies that the principle of rule of law has neither been outrightly rejected by the Duterte administration nor by the people (Tugade, 2021).

Filipinos’ appetite for democracy, on the one hand, and simultaneous tolerance for authoritarian performances, on the other hand, further elucidate the consistent excellent satisfaction ratings of Duterte, a record-high net satisfaction of “very good” +60% in December 2021 (SWS, 2022a). These two tendencies contribute to widening the space of negotiation for Duterte’s continued transgressions. Many Filipinos sense a sluggishness in democracy’s outcomes following the historical abuses committed by previous administrations. Starting with the 2001 toppling of the corrupt administration of Joseph Estrada [President 1998–2001] and disillusion with the incompetent Gloria Macapagal Arroyo [President 2001–2010] and Benigno Aquino III [President 2010–2016] administrations, Filipinos have grown tired of the liberal order (Curato & Yonaha, 2021) and the ardent hypocrisy that plagued it. The Arroyo administration for example, was beset with issues related to EJKs of activists and human rights advocates (see Fernandez, 2021; Garrido, 2021). And while the Aquino administration had less controversies about human rights abuses, it also failed to exact accountability from the Arroyo administration. Notably, the level of inequality did not decrease despite Aquino’s macro-economic policies, thereby sowing discontent towards the gains of democracy (Thompson, 2019).

Dissatisfaction with how democracy is exercised in the country makes Filipinos susceptible to an authoritarian rule that promises to get things done swiftly (Curato, 2016; Dressel & Bonoan, 2019; Garrido, 2020, 2021; Thompson, 2019; Timberman, 2016). It is the perception of Duterte’s ability for quick response, aggravated by failures of previous elite-captured administrations (Timberman, 2016), that makes up the foundation of Filipino’s tolerance towards his transgression. Nevertheless, this tolerance is not absolute as shown by how Filipinos disagree with the extrajudicial killings and agree with further investigation on Duterte’s drug war.

Gender Equality

The norm of gender equality has come under threat in the time of Duterte, as evidenced by the country’s lowering rank in the Global Gender Gap Report. In 2016, the year that Duterte was sworn into office, the Philippines placed 7th in the Global Gender Gap Report. By 2019, the middle of Duterte’s term, the Philippines had slid down to rank 16, which was attributable to the lack of women’s representation in Cabinet under the Duterte administration (Rola, 2019). Duterte is known to be tough on women critics, whether they be elected officials, appointed public servants, or journalists. Among the women who bore this wrath is Senator Leila De Lima, former Justice Secretary under Benigno Aquino’s term and a vocal critic of Duterte’s drug war. She was arrested in 2017 on drug-related charges following the testimonies of convicted prisoners (Yabes, 2021) and remains behind bars as of writing, although a final court decision on her case is yet to be issued. The actions against Senator De Lima showcase the fragility of Philippine state institutions encountering the whims of a strongman leader. Worse, the case also exposed the deep-seated sexism and misogyny of these state institutions. In court, De Lima’s personal life was also put on trial, including her alleged relationship with her driver which Duterte portrayed as De Lima not only “screwing with the driver, but also the nation” (Corrales, 2016).

Sexism is central to Duterte’s performance of populist masculinity against his critics (Parmanand, 2020). He has sexualised human rights advocates and painted them as “gay” for being soft on criminality. Speaking in front of victims of the world’s strongest typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban in Southern Philippines, Duterte admitted to ogling Vice President Leni Robredo’s knees during Cabinet meetings, and to teasing Robredo as a recourse when Cabinet meetings were getting tense (Ramos, 2016). In 2017, Duterte stated that the late Commission on Human Rights Chairperson Chito Gascon was gay and a paedophile for pursuing further investigation on minors killed in the context of the drug war. Duterte has also actively coaxed public servants to target women, such as when instructing the Armed Forces of the Philippines to shoot women activists in the vagina to prevent them from reproducing (Rauhala, 2018). Duterte’s sexist remarks are not only employed to skirt investigation and attack critics, but also to downplay facts that may hurt his image through redirecting attention to women. In 2018, when the Philippine National Police released data showing that Davao City had the highest reports of rape among the large cities in the Philippines, Duterte retaliated by putting the blame on women. Rape, he charged, is a result of having attractive women around, and could not be avoided in Davao City as long as there were attractive women there (Villamor, 2018).

Duterte is yet to answer to his sexism. Even Senator Pia Cayetano, a Duterte ally who ran under the platform of women empowerment and gender equality, refused to condemn the President. In a 2017 women’s rights conference titled Every Girl, Senator Cayetano defended Duterte’s misogyny. Citing his pro-women efforts in Davao City and his tendency to stand up when a woman is “disrespected” especially through sexually motivated language, Senator Cayetano said Duterte’s belittling statements against women were forgivable and that “boys will be boys” (Wiser, 2017).

To his critics and to many women’s rights activists, Duterte has aggravated gender inequality in the Philippines. This picture, however, is incomplete. De Chavez and Pacheco (2020) argue that Duterte has played into longstanding gender stereotypes in the Philippines by performing the image of a vulgar protector with a soft spot for women. Filipinos have long idealised the concept of a vulgar gentleman, as shown by the famous and often-invoked phrase “maginoo, pero medyo bastos” (a gentleman who is a little bit vulgar) (De Chavez & Pacheco, 2020). The idealisation of the vulgar gentleman is also cited as the reason for the public’s adoration of the action star who is ready to engage in fistfights for the sake of women (Angeles, 2001), which propelled the popularity of hypermasculine politicians and previous action stars such as former President Joseph Estrada and former Presidential candidate Fernando Poe, Jr. Duterte’s performance as the endearing vulgar gentleman includes his frequent pronouncement of weakness for the beauty of women and allowing—even initiating—kisses with his women supporters in official events (McKirdy, 2018). But while Filipinos were enamoured with Estrada and Poe because of their deference to women’s charms, Duterte’s case is different because he has targeted women in his tirades of sexist rants. Duterte, therefore, follows the trend of vulgar gentlemen in the Philippine political space but deviates from the trend by virtue of his exercise of gender violence.

For Duterte supporters, the vulgar, brutish man who engages in rowdy encounters is forgivable not least because of his record of progressive gender policies from his years as a local executive in his bailiwick of Davao City. In a 2019 documentary by Filipino journalist Atom Araullo titled ‘Women's rights in the Duterte era', women Duterte supporters claimed that they look at his “performance rather than his mouth”. Duterte served as the mayor of Davao City for 22 years, split in 7 terms where he served as Congressman and Vice Mayor in between to avoid term limits. An oft-cited initiative is Duterte’s banning of the swimsuit segment in beauty pageants in Davao City, however reflective of Duterte’s paternalistic posturing (Parmanand, 2020). Davao City under Duterte’s leadership was also stern on the issue of violence against women. In 1997, the City passed a Women Development Code that allocated 30% of Official Development Assistance Funds as well as 6% of the City’s Annual Development Fund for gender projects. Davao was also one of the first localities to have a Philippine Commission on Women-certified Gender and Development Local Learning Hub, which was a trailblazer in terms of local government’s best practices for gender responses (Parmanand, 2020). Under Duterte’s term, Davao City provided accessible and free contraceptives to women even before the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act (RH Law) was signed into law. The policies he championed won him the endorsement of women’s groups when he ran for the Presidency in 2016. In 2017, as President, Duterte issued an executive order to start full implementation of the RH Law after five years of temporary restraining order issued by the Supreme Court (Viray, 2017). Near the end of his term in March 2022, he raised the minimum age of sexual consent to 16 from the previous 12, which had been the lowest in all of Southeast Asia (Magsambol, 2022).

This is not to say that Duterte has not received and deserved criticism for his sexism. But for supporters, Duterte’s records of gender policies make up for his transgressions. While the above policies that Duterte implemented still tread the terrain of traditional gender norms (Parmanand, 2020), and were predominantly local-level as opposed to national-level, they nonetheless maintain relevance in the minds of his supporters. The vulgar gentleman as a culturally idealised caricature in Philippine politics has helped solidify Duterte’s popularity (De Chavez & Pacheco, 2020). But unlike those that came before him, Duterte has a track record of implementing pro-women policies that are evoked when his sexism is put into question. Consistent with their attitude towards due process, for Duterte’s supporters, policy implementation makes up for the strongman’s character. This suggests that Filipinos remain committed to gender equality, but tolerate sexist language for the sake of what is perceived as a robust performance in terms of gender policy implementation.

Press Freedom

The Philippines remains among the low-ranking countries in the Press Freedom Index (PFI) of media watchdog Reporters Without Borders. This was true also during the Aquino and Arroyo administrations. What makes the Duterte administration unique, however, is the five-year consecutive backsliding in the PFI from 2018 (ranked 133 out of 180) to 2022 (ranked 147 out of 180). The PFI’s 2022 Philippines country profile flags the continued harassment against journalists and the shutdown of ABS-CBN, one of the biggest media companies in the country which earned the ire of Duterte after refusing to air his political advertisement for his 2016 presidential bid (Dancel, 2020). Duterte’s allies in the Congress denied the franchise application of ABS-CBN in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic when there was a heightened need for health and health protocol information. Although Duterte had repeatedly threatened ABS-CBN with non-renewal of their contract (Salaverria, 2017), Duterte denied having influenced his allies in Congress. Nonetheless, because a majority of the members of Congress and the Senate were either allies of or neutrally disposed towards Duterte, these institutions were accommodating of Duterte’s wishes (Teehankee & Kasuya, 2020).

Free press, for Duterte, is a privilege and not a right in a democratic state. The guarantee for press freedom embedded in the Philippine constitution does not prevent Duterte from overriding it anytime he judges the free press to be irresponsive to the “best interest of the nation and the people” (Salaverria, 2020). For instance, in 2020, the Department of Justice prosecuted journalist and Duterte critic Maria Ressa for cyberlibel (Barron, 2020). Ressa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2021 as the first Filipino (Talabong, 2021). To date, Rappler, the news organisation that Ressa founded, faces revocation of license and claims of cyberdefamation and fraud, totalling up to seven court cases (Associated Press, 2023). Besides intimidating the media through misogyny, Duterte has also banned journalists who ask difficult questions on contentious issues, including Rappler journalist Pia Ranada (Conde, 2018). And consistent with how Duterte handles critics, women journalists are oftentimes labelled as “attention-seeking whores” by Duterte’s supporters and allies (Go, 2019) for asking hardball questions.

Duterte is able to consolidate his power by shrinking spaces for accountability and ensuring control over discourses in the public sphere (Curato & Yonaha, 2021). Duterte’s actions and tirades against news media, however, have not obliterated Filipinos’ regard for the importance of the press. The 2020 Digital News Report (DNR), a global survey sponsored by the Oxford University’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, recorded that 95% of 2, 019 Filipino respondents were interested in consuming news (Chua, 2020). And in a 2020 SWS survey, 3 out of 4 respondents said that the Congress should renew the franchise of ABS-CBN, while more than half (56%) of the respondents considered the non-renewal of franchise as a major blow against press freedom. The shutdown of ABS-CBN is widely regarded as a loss not only for environmental journalism, but also and mainly for far-flung and vulnerable communities that used to receive climate and typhoon information from the outlet (Fernandez, 2020). The 2021 Philippine Trust Index (PTI) conducted by the communications firm EON shows that media’s information dissemination role during disasters, calamities, and pandemics is the primary reason behind Filipinos’ trust in news media. In the 2021 PTI, trust in the media stood at 76%, higher than the 2019 pre-pandemic record of 69%. This conforms with a 2021 SWS survey where 72% of nationally representative 15 to 30-year-old respondents believed information from traditional news media to be reliable and factual.

Faced with the public’s continued recognition of the media’s role in information dissemination, Duterte played his cards in two ways. First, constructing an online media army allowed his administration to cater to Filipinos’ need to stay informed of current events, while diverting them from credible channels that might provide critical reportage about the administration. Duterte predominantly utilised Facebook to forward propaganda and State-approved reportage of events (Sy, 2019). Among the core members of his media team was Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) appointed Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson, known as the leader of a sing-and-dance group prior to her appointment in public office. Uson resigned as PCOO Assistant Secretary in 2018 amid a public outcry over her continued disinformative posts on Facebook, which were publicly deemed to be contradictory to her role as information vanguard at the PCOO (Ranada, 2018). This illustrates that despite Duterte’s disinformation network (Ong & Cabañes, 2018), a pushback against falsehood is still possible, especially with regard to non-journalist and influential Duterte supporters like Uson whose platform gets used for information dissemination yet who are not bound to the journalistic norm of accountable and accurate reporting.

Second, awarding free television and radio frequencies previously controlled by ABS-CBN to Duterte’s allies made news propaganda even more mainstream and facilitated more widespread attacks against Duterte critics. In January 2022, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) awarded two broadcast frequency channels to Advanced Media Broadcasting Systems Inc operated by billionaire and Duterte supporter Manny Villar (De Guzman, 2022). Also in January 2022, the NTC awarded Channel 43 to Sonshine Media Network International (SMNI), which is owned by Duterte’s spiritual adviser and long-time political campaign funder, Kingdom of Jesus Christ pastor Apollo Quiboloy (Rey, 2022). Quiboloy is a United States fugitive who is on the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted list after being charged with sex trafficking in 2021 (Tan, 2021). SMNI has peddled disinformation and attacked Duterte's critics (Baizas & Macaraeg, 2022). Quiboloy himself had likened ABS-CBN to the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People Army (CPP-NPA) for being anti-Duterte. A map of accounts and websites that harass journalists created by Baizas and Macaraeg (2022) shows that SMNI is the top source for communist-tagging content against journalists and activists. In the May 2022 elections, SMNI also targeted opposition Presidential candidate then-Vice President Leni Robredo and boosted Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s presidential bid through lies. For example, during the SMNI Presidential debate, the only elections debate that Marcos attended, SMNI falsely claimed that Marcos was an economist (Cayabyab, 2022) accompanying a previous SMNI lie that Marcos had graduated from Oxford University (Vera Files, 2021).

In the 2020 Digital News Report, 91% of Filipino respondents agree that independent journalism is necessary for society. Nevertheless, such journalism is not always perceived as possible. In a 2021 SWS survey, 45% of the respondents agreed that it is dangerous to print or broadcast anything critical of the administration, even if it is the truth. Only 19% of the respondents disagreed, which shows that, although acknowledging the necessity of press freedom, the public also harbours fear about speaking truth about the administration. Thus far, it can be seen that Filipinos still stand by the tenet of a certain press freedom, but only within the bounds of safe reportage and acceptable criticism against the administration. This can be seen in the 2021 Digital News Report where news organisations publishing critical reportage of the Duterte administration enjoy among the lowest trust and highest distrust ratings. Compared to GMA News, one of the mainstream TV and online news channels in the country enjoying 74% trust and 9% distrust rating, ABS-CBN records 57% trust and 21% distrust rating. Meanwhile, Rappler has a 45% trust and 29% distrust rating. There remains public support and trust for the media in the Philippines, but only in so far as reporting centres on calamities and disasters, and keeps away from criticising the Duterte administration. Given that the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. has also exhibited intolerance of the media and a leaning towards non-journalist social media influencers, the same public attitude towards the media will likely prevail.

Conclusion: Authoritarian Fantasies and Democratic Aspirations

In writing this chapter, we do not propose that Duterte has stayed true to democracy nor that Duterte’s indiscretions are justified. Rather, we seek to give more colour to the monochromatic painting of Filipino supporters as suffering from ‘democracy fatigue’ which makes them support Rodrigo Duterte’s violations of norms of due process, gender rights, and press freedom. With Duterte enjoying a record-high net satisfaction rating of +60% near the end of his term, this popularity must not be conflated with public support for his democratic transgressions. Rather than signalling a shift of political norms in the Philippines, Duterte exhibited a vulgar articulation of the worst norms of longstanding elite democracy in a highly unequal society. Before and beyond Duterte’s presidency, Filipinos’ authoritarian fantasies are inextricably linked with their democratic aspirations.

Duterte ran and won the 2016 Presidential race with the promise of ending elite democracy in the Philippines (Timberman, 2016). Portraying himself as outside the elite circle of Philippine politics, he was able to differentiate himself from his opponents. However, Duterte himself is also a member of a political family. Duterte held Davao City mayoral position for 22 years. His father, Vicente Duterte, served as one of the Cabinet members of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. and as a governor of Davao province (CNN, 2021). Duterte’s children are also well-entrenched in political positions. His daughter Sara Duterte won as Vice President in the 2022 elections after serving as Mayor of Davao City. His son Sebastian Duterte, previously Vice Mayor of Davao City, won as the Davao Mayor in 2022. Paolo Duterte, another of Duterte’s sons, meanwhile, maintained his position as a member of the 19th Congress of the Philippines. It may be the case that due to the Manila-centric bias of national elections, Duterte’s consolidation of his own Davao-based political family escaped the national consciousness. It is worth noting that the Duterte family were able to consolidate their power during the democratisation process of the 1980s and 1990s. In this sense, Duterte benefited from the failures of democratisation in two ways: first as a strongman who could circumvent sluggish democratic processes, and second as a member of an elite family. The Duterte family’s hold on political power is poised to continue with Duterte’s children securing key national posts in the 2022 elections.

The six years of Duterte’s presidency were plagued with controversies related to his strongman and authoritarian character, as well as his illiberal transgressions (Fernandez, 2021; Thompson, 2019). Duterte was seen as a leader who could ‘discipline democracy’ (Garrido, 2020, 2021). In this sense, Duterte has not entirely upended the values that Filipinos place on democracy, but instead played into the ‘authoritarian nostalgia’ (Webb, 2017) of Filipinos already tired of the old order that is too respectful but is not always productive. Duterte’s strongman brand has been welcomed even in communities outside his bailiwick of Davao, exemplifying an idealisation of the results of a democracy that disciplines people, rather than a democracy that gives people uncontrolled freedom. In this respect, Duterte’s War on Drugs does not represent an erosion of democracy nor democracy fatigue, but a more disciplinarian kind of democratic order ardently desired by a tired and disillusioned public. An illustration is the 2018 SWS survey on Filipinos’ attitudes towards democracy showing that 84% of the respondents are satisfied with how democracy works in the country, while 59% say they always prefer democracy over any other kind of government.

Years after the end of the Duterte administration, and well into the Marcos Jr. administration, current events do not provide a very different picture from the period 2016–2022. The transgressions committed by the Duterte presidency have contributed to the Presidential victory of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and running mate Sara Duterte. Rodrigo Duterte has displayed cruder manifestations of the worst norms of longstanding elite democracy, thereby making Philippine democracy more malleable and therefore more stretchable for political and elite families that want to circumvent it.

Funding Declaration

Nicole Curato received funding from the Norwegian Research Council for the project ‘Strongmen of Asia: Democratic Bosses and How to Understand Them’ (Project Number: 314849).