Aftereffects of Duterte Arrest Shake Marcos Administration
Duterte family now united, Marcos clan split
By: Viswa Nathan
As the saying goes, the sting was in the tail. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is feeling it now, with incumbent Senators Bato dela Rosa and Bong Go, both allies of the arrested and rendered former President Rodrigo Duterte, now polling among the top three preferred senatorial candidates in the May 12 elections.
Some vested interests in the administration, rather than the president, concluded that arresting the former president and hurriedly packing him off to the Netherlands to account for his drug war killings before the International Criminal Court (ICC) was advantageous. It could safeguard the remaining days of the Marcos presidency and annihilate the most powerful challenge they could face in the 2028 presidential race. But it has clearly boomeranged.
The arrest has led to Vice President Sara Duterte and her father, who is now in ICC custody, setting aside their long-running differences and unifying the Duterte camp. More significantly, it has driven a wedge deep in the Marcos camp.
The relationship between Sara and her father was deeply strained because of headstrong Sara’s actions three years ago, rejecting his advice to run for president to become his successor in 2022 with his acolyte Bong Go as her Veep. Then, she teamed up as the running mate of presidential aspirant Marcos, whom Rodrigo viewed with contempt.
With the tension between father and daughter now dissolved, Sara rushed to the Netherlands to organize legal defense. Speaking to supporters outside the Dutch prison where Rodrigo is detained, she said, with a hint of sarcasm: “It’s ironic, but I have to thank Bongbong Marcos” for making it possible for her and her father to bury their hatchets and embrace, forgiving each other.
With the Dutertes reunited, the Marcos clan has split apart, also over its move against the former president. The president’s sister, Senator Imee Marcos, who is seeking reelection, has moved away from her brother’s senatorial slate, even risking her chance of victory. And she did not stop at that. As the current chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, she began investigating the constitutionality of Duterte's arrest and subsequent transfer to ICC custody.
According to a legal expert, the decision to let the ICC take Duterte rather than bringing him before the local judiciary to account for his alleged wrongdoings had an ulterior motive. Unsure of the outcome of any move against Duterte, who commanded an 88 percent approval rating when leaving office in 2022 (which no other president commanded in the nation’s history), and considering all justices in the Supreme Court, except two associates, are Duterte appointees, the Marcos camp found it beneficial to move their political challenger out of the country and beyond the reach of the local judiciary.
It became evident when the Supreme Court, acting on three habeas corpus petitions filed by Duterte’s children, ordered Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin and other officials to explain the arrest and transfer of the former president. The Department of Justice responded that the habeas corpus petitions, enforceable only in the Philippines, are moot as the officials no longer have legal and physical custody of the former president.
While this judicial issue remains unresolved, the administration’s response to Imee’s Senate hearing brought the Marcos administration's command and control into question, thus giving credence to Rodrigo Duterte’s poor opinion of Marcos’s leadership quality.
The presidential communications undersecretary and palace press officer Claire Castro stated that the president would not prevent any executive branch official from attending the Senate inquiry into Rodrigo’s arrest. Accordingly, some key officials, particularly Eduardo Año, the head of the National Security Council, and Jesus Remulla, the secretary of justice, testified on the first day of the hearing on March 20. But 10 days later, the executive secretary wrote to Imee and Senate President Francis Escudero that no Cabinet official would henceforth attend the hearings. He invoked “executive privilege” in support. It raised the inevitable question: Who is in command of the administration? Is it the president or someone else? Then, again, the palace changed its mind, adding to the concern. Now, a dozen or so officials are allowed to testify.
Whatever is going on behind the scenes, a constitutional crisis is in the air, as there are calls to subpoena officials who ignore invitations to testify before Imee’s committee. How it plays out could profoundly impact the Marcos presidency, which is now approaching midterm.
Commenting on the unfolding political scenario, Francisco Tatad, a Cabinet member with the president’s father Ferdinand E. Marcos for over a decade, including some martial law years, and later a senator for eight years, noted in his Manila Times column on March 28 that whatever anger possessed the public over the alleged extrajudicial killings in the drug war “appears to have been replaced by a more powerful anger over the illegal arrest by a foreign court of their former president.”
According to a legal analyst, there were tactful ways to handle the arrest warrant from the ICC that Interpol presented to the Philippine National Police (PNP). As Interpol was acting for the ICC, and the Rome Statute no longer bound Manila, the PNP could have advised Interpol, without breaching its obligations, that it needed guidance from the Philippine Supreme Court before complying with its obligations to the international law enforcer.
After all, the president had declared on January 23, 2024 that he did not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC in the Philippines. He considered it “a threat to our sovereignty,” so Manila would not lift a finger to help the ICC.
“But some smartass in indecent haste to nail down Duterte threw caution to the wind and had the man arrested,” claimed the advocate.
The partnership between the Marcos and the Duterte camps was mobilized by Imee and the former president, Gloria Arroyo, as UniTeam for the benefit of both political clans against the well-entrenched post-EDSA oligarchs. Both women had good reasons.
President Arroyo, who was jailed for nearly four years during the time of her successor, Benigno Aquino III, was freed within three weeks of Duterte assuming office. Duterte also allowed the body of Imee’s father, the martial law dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, to be buried in Libingan ng mga Bayani, the Cemetery for the Heroes. Imee’s mother, the former first lady Imelda, had kept the dictator’s body in cold storage for 27 years, determined not to bury it anywhere else.
The partnership would not have soured, says an informed source, but for the political ambitions of the president’s cousin, Speaker of the House of Representatives Martin Romualdez. In 2022, Arroyo had given up her desire to bid for the speakership when she realized the president wanted his cousin to assume the position, accepting the deputy speakership.
Romualdez began developing the ambition to contest the 2028 election to succeed Marcos. But Sara, who won the vice presidency with well over half a million votes more than Marcos, stood in the way. Getting her and her massively popular father out of the way became essential.
The current situation, says an insider, is truly worrying Marcos. Much depends on the Catholic church. The Filipino masses are not easily arousable. When the democracy icon, Benigno Aquino Jr., was shot to death at the Manila airport, a shocked nation did not rise in protest. They rose only almost three years later when the Catholic church found the right opportunity to call them out to overthrow the dictator.
The church is now in a deep dilemma. Who would it support? The son of the dictator whom it helped overthrow four decades ago or the foul-mouthed, suspected criminal who called the Pope “a son of a bitch” and went on a tirade against priests and bishops, accusing them of homosexuality, corruption, and child abuse?
When Marcos came to power almost three years ago, stating: “Judge me not by my ancestors, but by my actions,” Asia Sentinel asked if his nemeses would heed. The political front, said a former lawmaker, seems to be getting darker. “No ICC verdict can promise any hope.”
Viswa Nathan is Asia Sentinel’s Philippines correspondent