For decades, ‘Duterte Harry’ did as he pleased – then police boarded his plane

“Assuming it’s true, why did I do it? For myself? For my family? For you and your children, and for our nation,” he told a crowd of Filipino workers in Hong Kong while drumming up support for his Senate picks at the May midterm elections.

He was arrested on return to the Philippines on Tuesday. Why then? That is when the warrant came through, we are told. Most likely it was timed to get him in Manila. In Davao, his stronghold, attempts to arrest him could have turned ugly.

In an age of strongmen, and with similar ICC warrants yet to be enacted against Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, it was striking to hear President Ferdinand Marcos Jr announce that his predecessor was actually (and involuntarily) bound for Europe.

Duterte, of course, is no longer in charge, unlike Putin and Netanyahu. And while his daughter Sara Duterte is vice-president, her hostility towards her boss is so great that she has threatened to dig up his father’s bones and toss them into the sea. This year she was impeached by the lower house for remarks that she had hired a hitman to kill the president if she were killed first. The Duterte-Marcos conviviality of the 2022 election has collapsed, and with it, it appears, the old man’s presumptions to protection.

Still, Marcos had declared the Philippines would not co-operate with the ICC investigation. So he was at pains to point out that his arresting officials were only co-operating with Interpol.

“We obliged because we have commitments to Interpol which we have to fulfil,” he said. “If we don’t do that, they will no longer help us with other cases involving Filipino fugitives abroad.

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“This is what the international community expects of us as … a democratic country that is part of the community of nations.”

Marcos is seeking international support to counter Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. He could hardly petition for a rules-based international order while flouting it himself.

Duterte’s arrest will have implications not only for the Philippines’ midterm elections, but geopolitics. Duterte turned the Philippines towards China. Marcos has brought the country back towards its ally the United States. Duterte’s backers will seek to use his fate to paint Marcos as a puppet of the West.

Asked on Tuesday night to respond to them, Marcos replied: “The government is just doing its job.”

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