16 The EconomistFebruary 22nd 2020
1T
he womenagree among themselves. As
field staff for Social Weather Stations
(sws), a pollster in Metropolitan Manila,
they find that the vast majority of Filipinos
approve of President Rodrigo Duterte’s
campaign against illegal drugs. People re-
peatedly tell them that they just want the
drugs trade controlled, and the results of
their inquiries show that almost two in
three Filipinos believe that the number of
drug users in their area has dropped since
Mr Duterte came to power in 2016. Their
own experience tells them something sim-
ilar. They say they can now go about their
polling in parts of drug-ravaged cities that
were once too dangerous.
“Find them all and arrest them. If they
resist, kill them all.” Mr Duterte’s hard line
on drug dealers and other miscreants was
at the core of his election campaign. The
number of suspected criminals dispatched
since his victory is hard to assess, but large.
The country’s human-rights commission
believes the total number of extra-judicial
killings to be some 27,000. One can onlyguess how many private scores have been
settled under cover of the drug war. The
death toll bears comparison to the 30,
who “disappeared” under the Argentinian
junta of the late 1970s, though Argentina’s
population was a lot smaller—there are
106m Filipinos.
The police, for their part, reported more
than 23,000 “homicide cases under inves-
tigation” during the two years from July
2016; it is unclear how such cases are incor-
porated into the compilation of official
crime statistics, and which involve drugs.
Police data also show a 21.5% drop in re-
ported crime over the same period. But
Leni Robredo, the vice-president, claimed
in January that figures presented to a gov-
ernment anti-drugs committee showed
just 1% of the country’s total supply of crys-
tal meth had been seized over the past three
years. Ms Robredo is a staunch critic of the
president—Filipinos elect their president
and vice-president on separate tickets—
and Mr Duterte’s allies derided her claim,
though not always compellingly. The presi-dent’s spokesman argued that even if Ms
Robredo’s calculations were accurate “it
does not mean it’s a failure”.
In all this uncertainty, the costs of the
bloodshed to Mr Duterte’s reputation are
much easier to gauge. There have been al-
most none. Filipinos harbour few illusions
about the drugs war. Polls published by sws
last month found that more than three in
four see “many” human-rights abuses in
the campaign; an even higher share be-
lieves that “ninja cops” sell on the drugs
they have confiscated. Nevertheless, most
Filipinos—including, often, people whose
families have lost loved ones—continue to
support the campaign and the man who
promised it to them. More than three years
into his six-year term he remains consis-
tently popular. Filipino presidents often
enjoy popularity for their first few years in
office before falling quickly from grace, as
Mr Duterte’s immediate predecessor, Be-
nigno Aquino III, did (see chart 1 on next
page). Mr Duterte looks likely to maintain
his touch to the end.
If Mr Duterte’s remarkable rhetoric—in
office he has labelled both the pope and Ba-
rack Obama sons of whores, called God
“stupid” and offered to eat the liver of a ter-
rorist—and explicit encouragement of
extrajudicial killing outrages some in the
country’s political elite, their disquiet does
not count for much with the people. In-
deed, what looks like hand-wringing may
bolster the president’s support.
The voters elevated Mr Duterte from
mayor of Davao, a tough city on the south-
ern island of Mindanao, to president be-
cause they were tired of the status quo
overseen by an entrenched and arrogant
elite. When, in 1986, protests ousted Ferdi-
nand Marcos, the dictator who had run the
country since 1965, there was a widespread
hope that the restoration of democracy
would bring economic and social progress.
Income per head did indeed increase near-
ly sevenfold over the next three decades,
and life expectancy rose by seven years to- But many Filipinos were discontent. In-
frastructure was crumbling; corruption
was rampant. Inequality, though falling,
remained pervasive. “People saw electoral
politics as a basketball game among the
elite with the ball being passed between
them,” says Sheila Coronel, a journalist.
Mr Duterte’s vulgar hyperbole—by his
own estimate, only two in every five of his
statements are true—showed that there
was a new type of player on the court. But
his aggressive populism does not alienate
the middle class and university graduates:
indeed they cleave to him. His sexism does
not seem to put off women any more than
his blasphemy and anticlericalism puts off
the four in five Filipinos who still declare
themselves Catholic.
Term limits mean Mr Duterte cannot
Still the people’s choice
MANILA
President Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs has done nothing to dent his
popularity. But does he have anything else to offer?Briefing The Philippines