The Messy Reality of Philippine Democracy

On March 11, 2025, Police Major General Nicolas Torre III, chief of the Philippines’ Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, stood before former President Rodrigo Duterte and read out his Miranda Rights.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Torre said, after he informed Duterte that the International Criminal Court had issued a warrant of arrest for crimes against humanity.

“You have the right to counsel of your choice. Anything you say may be used for and against you in a court of law,” he continued.

The symbolism was profound. It was the Philippine National Police – the very institution that had once been the frontline enforcer of Duterte’s bloody drug war – now carrying out the arrest of the man who had empowered its most brutal excesses. Under Duterte’s presidency, police forces had been linked to widespread extrajudicial killings, often targeting the country’s urban poor. 

This shift in the role of the security forces echoed a deeper legacy in Philippine political history. In 1986, the People Power Revolution brought down the Marcos dictatorship when elements of the military and police broke with authoritarian rule and sided with the people. Nearly four decades later, the security sector signaled a break with impunity, carrying out the arrest of a former president under the authority of international law.

From his years as mayor of Davao City through his presidency that concluded in 2022, Duterte’s anti-drug campaign left tens of thousands dead, most of them from urban poor communities. Left in its wake was a generation of widows and orphans who endured not only the trauma of witnessing loved ones shot in the streets or dragged from their homes, but also the humiliation of being branded as families of criminals. It was a stigma fueled by Duterte’s supporters and online troll armies that vilified the victims even in death. The scale of the bloodshed drew the attention of the International Criminal Court, which gathered enough evidence to launch an investigation into alleged crimes against humanity.

Torre remained composed as he faced Duterte’s legal counsel.

“We can do this the hard way,” he said. “Or we can do this the easy way.”

The easy way, Torre explained, was for Duterte’s team to choose three individuals to accompany the former president on a chartered flight. As to where the former president would be taken, Torre noted, the answer was “above my pay grade.”

Like Marcos Sr., Duterte’s final moments on Philippine soil concluded with him boarding a plane and leaving the nation with no indication of when or if the strongman would ever return. Marcos Sr. and his family were exiled to Hawai‘i, while Duterte was flown to The Hague to face detention and trial before the International Criminal Court.

A Beacon

There are various ways to interpret what happened on March 11. Here’s one way to see it: Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest once again positioned the Philippines as a beacon for the world, just as it had been in 1986. It served as a reminder that no strongman can hold power forever.

The peaceful uprising that toppled Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 proved that dictators could fall without a single shot being fired. It inspired movements in Eastern Europe under repressive Communist regimes, including Václav Havel’s Velvet Revolution. The Philippine experience challenged prevailing notions about democratic transitions. It turns out that authoritarian rulers can be forced out of power through collective, nonviolent action.

Decades later, the Philippines showed once again that strongmen can be humbled. Through the tireless efforts of activists, lawyers, civil society groups, religious leaders, courageous victims of the drug war, and legislators who exposed Duterte’s links to extrajudicial killings in committee hearings, legal action was pursued both at home and on the international stage to deliver justice.

The swaggering, foul-mouthed president who dismissed human rights as “bullshit” and boasted he would be “happy to slaughter” drug addicts like Hitler killed Jews was gone. In his place stood a diminished figure, described by the former president’s aide as elderly and frail.

In the streets of The Hague and Manila, emboldened protesters raised placards declaring, “Netanyahu and Putin are next.”

A Warning

Yet there is another way to interpret what happened on March 11. The Philippines may be an inspiration, but it is also a warning.

Duterte’s arrest unfolded in a complex political context, not as a clean narrative of justice, but against the backdrop of a fractured alliance between two of the country’s most powerful political clans: the Marcoses and the Dutertes.

Their alliance had been long in the making. It was during Duterte’s presidency that Ferdinand Marcos Sr. was finally buried at the Heroes’ Cemetery, a state endorsement of the revisionist narrative that the ousted and exiled dictator was a patriot worthy of national honor. Under Duterte, the official commemoration of the People Power Revolution was systematically downplayed. It was diminished from a national celebration into an insignificant event marked only by personalities willing to publicly identify with liberal values, which Duterte derided as elitist and out of touch.

In 2021, the alliance between the Marcos and Duterte families was formalized. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., the son and namesake of the late dictator, ran for president with Sara Duterte, Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter, as his vice president. The alliance was framed as a moment of national unity. It fused the Marcoses’ “Solid North,” referring to a bloc of northern provinces loyal to the Marcos family, with the Dutertes’ “Solid South,” the Mindanaoan provinces where the Dutertes commanded overwhelming support. Observers considered it a political masterstroke in a country where regional and linguistic loyalties have long been the primary fault lines shaping voter preferences.

The Marcos-Duterte ticket delivered a historic landslide, described by observers as the final dismantling of the post-1986 political order and the normalization of strongman rule through the ballot box. It signaled the consolidation of the dynastic power of families whose patriarchs had left legacies of contempt for human rights.

But it did not take long before tensions between the Marcos and Duterte camps started to surface. Disagreements over Cabinet appointments, budget allocation, and diverging political ambitions all came into play. By 2025, the rift had become undeniable. Some observers argue that Marcos’ decision to act on the Interpol Red Notice was a pragmatic move aimed at weakening a once-useful ally who had evolved into a rival faction.

Far from being a clear victory for accountability, Duterte’s arrest spotlighted the messy reality of elite politics and the difficult terrain that activists, victims, and advocates for justice must now navigate as they seek to hold power to account within a system marked by moral ambiguity and dominated by elite self-interest.

And here is the warning.

Duterte boarding a plane to The Hague was never truly a farewell, just as exile to Hawai‘i in 1986 was not the end for the Marcoses. Only a few years after their downfall, former first lady Imelda Marcos tested the waters and ran for president, while the Marcos family systematically rebuilt their political bases in Ilocos Norte and Leyte. Over the ensuing decades, they appeared on glamorous magazine covers and granted interviews on talk shows where they fondly recalled their memories at the Malacañang Palace. With foresight, they invested in digital assets on YouTube and TikTok that allowed the Marcos family to rehabilitate their image among some of the world’s most active social media users. They joined TikTok challenges, played Mobile Legends with celebrity gamers, and blurred the line between politics and entertainment, presenting themselves as both relatable and aspirational influencers rather than political figures.

In three decades, the Marcos family flipped the national narrative. They transformed themselves from disgraced exiles carrying the brutal dictator’s legacy to victims of political persecution and symbols of redemption and return.

Meanwhile, the Dutertes did not need decades to recast themselves as victims of political persecution. Within hours of the former president’s arrest, a coordinated online campaign already framed his detention as “kidnapping” and “illegal detention.” Following the Marcos playbook, Duterte’s supporters flooded social media, rallied his base, and pushed a narrative that portrayed him not as an accused war criminal facing accountability, but as an old man persecuted by foreigners and betrayed by his own government. On March 28, Duterte’s 80th birthday, supporters from his hometown Davao City to as far as Finland and Qatar mobilized under a single call: “Bring Him Home.”

Back in Manila, Vice President Sara Duterte had stepped into the role of de facto opposition leader. She headlined campaign rallies for the “Duter-10” – a Senate slate put together for the May 12 midterm elections, defined not by a coherent legislative agenda but by loyalty to her father. Onstage, she sharpened her own brand of dark charisma. She joked that she could soon be president, which could be interpreted as a thinly veiled swipe at Marcos’ ability to finish his term. She echoed Duterte’s social media army’s attacks by calling Marcos “bangag” (a crackhead).

She also engaged in playful banter with Marcos’ sister, Senator Imee Marcos, who was seeking re-election but has aligned herself with the Duterte camp. “Sorry ma’am,” Sara said with the timing of a seasoned stand-up comedian, with each apology punctuating her digs at the administration’s broken promises, like its failure to control the price of rice. Her punchline hit cleanly: “Maybe it’s time you changed your last name,” she told the senator. 

Just weeks earlier, the Dutertes seemed politically finished. The House of Representatives had impeached Sara, and most candidates on the Duter-10 ticket were considered long shots. The arrest revived the Dutertes’ popularity, fueling resentment and renewed loyalty around the former president. In the recently concluded midterm elections, five of the Duter-10 candidates secured Senate seats, with Duterte’s aide and chief of police clinching the top spots.

Flipping the Script

It has long been a familiar conversation in political talk shows and YouTube commentaries, around kitchen tables at family gatherings, and in late-night cafés filled with night-shift workers, whether the Philippines is trapped in an endless cycle of rotating political families, who use elections not to redistribute power, but to entrench it. The recently concluded midterm elections offered some surprising victories over entrenched dynasties and marked political comebacks of good governance advocates. But, for the most part, dynastic power held firm, with nearly all winners coming from political families.

Academics and journalists describe these dynasties as either “fat” – with family members occupying different offices simultaneously across barangays (villages), city halls, and Congress – or “thin,” with relatives succeeding one another in the same positions over generations. The composition of the 20th Congress demonstrates such concentration of power, with a third of the Senate’s members coming from just four sets of siblings. Political dynasties, long linked to persistent poverty, continue to mutate rather than disappear. The Duterte-Marcos rivalry is its most vulgar expression yet. 

But there is a harder, more uncomfortable truth to confront. Perhaps Philippine democracy is not dysfunctional at all. Perhaps it is working exactly as it was designed to work. Democracy in post-war Philippines was never built to redistribute power. It was built to manage and moderate competition between elites. Benedict Anderson called the Philippines a “cacique democracy,” rooted in a colonial history where the Spanish created a local landed class whose descendants still dominate today.

U.S. rule only formalized this arrangement by introducing elections not as instruments of mass empowerment, but as tools to keep elite rivalries within manageable bounds. The 1986 People Power Revolution may have been hailed as a triumph of democracy, but in reality, it merely replaced one ruling elite with another, leaving the foundations of power untouched. Through every upheaval and every election, the machinery of elite dominance has not only survived. It has adapted, endured, and deepened its hold.

Voting Between Darkness and Evil

Memes on social media morbidly anticipated the midterm elections as a showdown between the rivaling camps of Duterte’s “Team Darkness” versus Marcos’ “Team Evil” (Team Kadiliman versus Team Kasamaan).

But the surprise of the midterm elections was the strong showing of opposition figures who have consistently set themselves apart from both the Marcos and Duterte camps. These include politicians and civil society leaders often linked to the post-1986 democratic movement, such as former vice president Leni Robredo, now the mayor-elect of Naga. Returning Senators Bam Aquino and Kiko Pangilinan, shut out in previous electoral races, secured positions in the top five. In the party list race, Akbayan secured the highest number of votes ever recorded for any party-list in Philippine electoral history.

These victories come after years of smear campaigns and conspiracy-driven attacks from Duterte and Marcos loyalists that have forced liberal-progressive opposition figures into the defensive.

But, in 2025, their official campaigns tested a new playbook that ditched moral certainty in favor of strategic ambiguity. Consider Bam Aquino avoiding either endorsement or condemnation of Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial by deflecting that this issue is not the main concern of voters. His ground and social media campaign also involved outreach to the Duterte stronghold of Davao by highlighting his mother Melanie Aguirre Aquino’s roots in the city.

Then there was Robredo’s calculated decision to endorse two Marcos-backed, underperforming senatorial candidates, widely perceived – but never confirmed – as an attempt to build a coalition with “Team Darkness” against the Dutertes’ “Team Evil.”

If in 2022, the liberals’ campaign was criticized for its late attempt at bridge-building and campaigning at the grassroots, in 2025 key opposition leaders sought out dialogue with high-profile figures of opposing camps. Previously “canceled” celebrity figure and prominent supporter of the Duterte-Marcos alliance, Toni Gonzaga, hosted Pangilinan and opposition figurehead Senator Risa Hontiveros for her 7.8 million followers on YouTube. The conversation, held in soft and conciliatory tones, would have been unthinkable three years before.

On the ground, opposition groups deployed steady and stealthy coalition work with local government leaders.

The surprising results of the 2025 elections showed opposition forces learning from their previous mistakes to work with imperfect allies and build broader coalitions.

Achievements of political accountability, as seen with Duterte’s arrest by the International Criminal Court, are never black and white and require degrees of complicity. They are the result of backchannel negotiations, institutional maneuvering and uncomfortable compromises. This is not Machiavellianism but the reality of practical politics, where consequential outcomes require engaging with actors beyond one’s ideal coalition. Without these alliances, efforts toward accountability often stall in symbolic protest or principled isolation. Practical politics matters because power is rarely given up voluntarily. It must be chipped away through strategic collaboration, even with those whose agendas may only partially align.

A continuing key challenge for opposition forces who have long stood apart from Duterte and Marcos is how to rebuild trust and dialogue with fellow citizens, including those whose voting choices they strongly oppose.

Politics as practiced on social media often rewards purity tests, with algorithms favoring moral certainty and performative outrage. Nearly a decade into discussions on “fake news,” many critics of Duterte and Marcos still cling to the idea that those who voted for strongmen were “technologically brainwashed,” mere “Pavlov’s dogs” who have “lost their free will.” These framings have proven not only inaccurate; they are deeply dehumanizing. To reduce voters to manipulated automatons is to deny them agency and rationality, effectively excluding them from the democratic conversation.

Memes that mock contradictions like “prays during papal conclave, votes for thieves on Monday” may be satisfying to share, but they reinforce a politics of contempt. What strongman leaders have mastered is channelling narratives of injury and betrayal at the hands of unaccountable elites. Opposition leaders appear to have learned that they only reinforce this narrative when they respond with ridicule and defensive gatekeeping instead of finding the necessary balance between direct engagement and strategic ambiguity.

Working With Imperfect Allies

Liberals and progressives need to build on their newfound fluency of navigating moral grey areas and working with imperfect allies in the last three years of Marcos Jr’s presidency. The point should not be to whitewash or erase complexity, as with attempts by some liberals to attribute Duterte’s arrest by the ICC as a pure victory of international law and human rights.

An approach grounded in authenticity and relatability – currencies that matter in today’s digital politics – invites citizens into open conversations about political and moral compromise. Debating political endorsements, comparing voting strategies, and setting short-term goals are not signs of weakness but essential practices of democratic engagement.

Purity tests shut down these conversations, turning tactical disagreements into moral divides. Mocking bloggers and influencers, however satisfying it may be to expose their lies, risks backfiring if the only proposed solution is top-down, techno-chauvinist regulation. When discourse is policed rather than broadened, it reinforces the perception that only certain voices are allowed to shape the narrative. This is precisely the grievance strongman populists know how to exploit.

The Philippines has long been known for its vibrant civil society, and Duterte’s arrest is its most visible, if not the most morally complicated, achievement on the global stage. What comes next may be less about grand victories and more about navigating the uneasy work of coalition-building, compromise, and sustained political engagement. In a landscape shaped by strongmen and shifting alliances, clarity is rare, which makes deliberation and justified action on morally complex issues all the more urgent.