Death threats in Marcos-Duterte row highlight Philippines’ problem with political violence

In the world’s sixth-largest democracy, the vice president could be accused of being a terrorist for threatening to kill the president.

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte made an extraordinary public admission last weekend that she ordered an assassin to kill President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives in case he was killed.

Authorities now say Ms. Duterte could be charged under the controversial anti-terrorism law passed in 2020 by her own father, former president Rodrigo Duterte.

“When you take actions that harm or threaten the life of another person, that is considered terrorism,” Philippine Department of Justice spokesman Jesse Andres said at a news conference.

This is the culmination of months of tension between two former allies who are now openly at war.

Responding to Ms. Duterte’s explosive comments, Mr. Marcos vowed to fight back: “If it’s so easy to plot the assassination of the president, how much more is there for ordinary citizens?”

A history of violence

Democracy is alive in the Philippines.

Elections held at the national, provincial, municipal and village levels are generally considered free and fair.

But the explosive conflict between the country’s two most powerful political clans has exposed the entrenched culture of violence in politics.

Adele Webb of the Center for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance said the culture has its roots in the Philippines’ experiences of colonization, especially by the United States in the first half of the 20th century.

He said the United States claims to be “teaching the Philippines how to be democratic.”

“But violence was very much part of the governing logic of Americans in the Philippines,” he said.

The dictatorship of Mr. Marcos’ father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., is remembered for a period of martial law in the 1970s and ’80s that was marked by extrajudicial killings, torture and enforced disappearances.

Violence continued during the Philippines’ democratization period.

During an infamous gubernatorial election campaign in 2009, 58 people, nearly half of them journalists, were gunned down in the worst act of political violence in Philippine history, now known as the Maguindanao massacre.

Duterte’s presidency between 2016 and 2022 has seen the extrajudicial killings of up to 30,000 people as part of the “brutal war on drugs.”

And the killings have already begun ahead of next year’s midterm elections, in which the Marcoses and Dutertes will seek to strengthen their power.

The National Human Rights Commission announced in August that it was investigating the killing of a local deputy mayor and deputy mayoral candidate in the country’s restive south.

Asia’s most dangerous place in terms of fighting for the environment

Journalists, activists and others seeking to hold the powerful to account are other major targets of deadly violence in the Philippines.

According to UNESCO, at least 117 journalists have been killed in the last three decades, 81 of which remain unsolved.

The Philippines is the most dangerous place to be an environmental advocate in Asia, where more environmental activists have been killed in the past 11 years than anywhere else in the region.

Rights groups have raised alarm over the intensification of the practice of “red tagging,” in which government officials accuse human rights and labor advocates of being “terrorist” sympathizers of the Philippines’ long-running communist insurgency.

“Activists and other critical voices are red-tagged and targeted by the government and then tracked online,” Damini Satija, Amnesty International’s director of technology, said in October. he said.

The terrorist label is given credence by Mr. Duterte’s 2020 anti-terrorism legislation; rights groups argue that it allows authorities to label almost any critic of the government as a “terrorist”, thus making them fair game for extrajudicial killings.

‘There is always a need for an enemy’

Family dynasties have a stranglehold on Philippine politics – and this week we were reminded that some at the top are militaristic and prone to violence.

An investigation by Filipino media outlet Rappler earlier this year found that five members of the Duterte clan alone own approximately 654 guns.

Mr. Duterte, who recently said he led anti-drug death squads while he was mayor of Davao City, was revealed to have at least 363 registered weapons.

Sara Duterte has 28 guns registered in her name.

“Violence has always been an important part of their identity as a political dynasty,” said Aries Arugay, a politics professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman.

Perhaps this feeling is justified, at least for now.

The House of Representatives is investigating Ms. Duterte’s secret spending equivalent to $4.2 million in 2023.

Meanwhile, Mr. Duterte’s signature drug war is being investigated by both the Philippine Department of Justice and the International Criminal Court.

Still, after his threat, Mr. Marcos said on Friday that impeaching Ms. Duterte for her threats would take time in Congress and would not make a difference in the lives of Filipinos.

“Why are you wasting time on this?” he said.

Indeed, the Philippines is still recovering Six tropical storms hit the country in November alone, killing at least 171 people and displacing thousands.

For some, solidarity among ordinary people in one of Asia’s most climate-vulnerable countries offers hope.

“There are people working really hard to build peace movements or meet rescue needs when there are floods,” Dr Webb said.

“(They) are trying to fill the governance gap that is not filled by these political actors who are purely self-interested.”