Dutertismo: A cult of authoritarian populism
Ibiza—“Be careful with posting nonsense implicating [former President Rodrigo Duterte], otherwise, you, animal, might taste a hammer,” a Duterte supporter privately messaged me on Facebook. In subsequent messages, he warned that ostensibly anti-Duterte forces should prepare once “your allies are no longer in power”—implying a campaign of vengeance should the current Vice President or a Duterte factotum end up in Malacañang in the future. At once, I found the threats both amusing and alarming.
On the one hand, it echoed the sanctimonious narrative around progressives’ alleged support for the Ferdinand Marcos Jr. administration—an intellectually vacuous and fatuously hypocritical one—from the very people who shamelessly supported the “UniTeam” in 2022. After all, it was Rodrigo Duterte who backed Mr. Marcos’ vice presidency and questioned the legitimacy of former Vice President Leni Robredo’s victory in the 2016 elections; who buried the remains of the former dictator in the Libingan ng mga Bayani and valorized Marcos Sr. as a visionary leader; who defanged institutions designed to retrieve ill-gotten wealth during the Marcos dictatorship; and who helped mediocre politicos like Sen. Imee Marcos secure and retain a seat in the Senate against all odds.
In fact, no force has been as decisive in the Marcoses’ recapture of Malacañang as the Duterte dynasty and its “Solid South” base, which largely coalesced behind the UniTeam. The pro-Duterte forces only turned on the Marcoses once it became clear that the latter were neither fools nor stooges. Even before winning the highest office, the namesake son of the former dictator had made it clear he wasn’t going to be a puppet.
“Our relationship with the US is not something that we can be cavalier about. It is a very important one. [America] has stood [with] us in good stead for over a hundred years …,” Mr. Marcos said during the sole presidential debate he attended in the 2022 elections. He declared that the Philippines, under his watch, “will not cede any one square inch to any country, particularly China” and “we can send the Navy or even Coast Guard, so there’s a [Philippine] military presence” in disputed portions of the West Philippine Sea.
Once in office, Mr. Marcos immediately walked back his earlier promise to offer Vice President Sara Duterte the Department of Defense, making it clear he couldn’t trust his supposed allies with running the most sensitive ministry determining both our defense policy and the overall predisposition of our armed forces. Then came Mr. Marcos’ first State of the Nation Address, where he explicitly distanced himself from Duterte pet projects—most notably the “drug war” and the “federalism” agenda. Then came Mr. Marcos’ increasingly ambiguous position on whether he would cooperate with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on the potential arrest of Rodrigo Duterte on charges of crimes against humanity. In short, a Marcos-Duterte political divorce was just a matter of time.
For all their popularity and bravado, the Dutertes lacked both foresight and cohesion to impose their agenda on a Marcos Jr. presidency. Now more politically vulnerable and isolated than ever, pro-Duterte forces are unabashedly lashing out at everyone. I must confess that the death threat—the latest among thousands since the national ascent of the Dutertes in 2016—was also alarming.
Sure, it was nothing compared to the avalanche of hate messages, and worse, that I received after pro-Duterte forces and their troll farms weaponized my deliberately taken-out-of-context comments on the Human Development Index disparities in the country during an interview on the eve of Duterte’s ICC arrest last year. And it was nowhere near as disorienting as the death threats I received during the bloody Duterte presidency, a dark era when I was constantly in a state of alarm and couldn’t help but wonder about every motorcycle with a helmet-clad driver passing near me.
I read the death threat while walking toward the picturesque Lake Zurich, and I was also in no mood to allow any negativity to affect a sublime visit to a favorite destination. Nevertheless, it’s hard to deny one of the most perilous legacies of the Dutertes, namely their having inspired a cult following that celebrates violence, rejects pluralistic and rational politics, and treats every dissenting voice as an enemy rather than a legitimate counterpoint in a modern democracy. Even if the Dutertes themselves were to be relegated to the dustbin of history, reintegrating their core “constituency” into the civic body politic would be one of the greatest democratic challenges for the foreseeable future.
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