Duterte, the last of the drug warriors?
Duterte, the last of the drug warriors?
WRITTEN BY DAVID HUTT
05 April 2022
Outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte may be synonymous with Southeast Asia’s drug wars. Some say tens of thousands of people have been killed extrajudicially since he took office in 2016; his government last year said at least 6,000. But he is far from original. In early 2003, the democratically-elected Thai Prime Minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, launched his own drug crusade that saw an estimated 2,800 people killed extrajudicially during the first three months alone. “We have to be as ruthless with drug dealers as they are to our children”, Thaksin stated at the time, a sentiment Duterte has echoed many times.
Like Duterte, Thaksin was vehemently against any international investigation into whether crimes had been committed by his authorities. “The UN is not my father”, Thaksin said in early 2003. Thaksin, however, was a little more regretful in retrospect. In March 2003 already, he said: “It's normal that we have some mistakes in such a big war, and a few cases may be the work of officers since there are some bad officers”.
After all, if slaying drug offenders wasn’t popular with the masses, a populist politician wouldn’t see it as a means of riding into office.
On the other hand, while Duterte did similarly sometimes blame bad apples in his police force for their excesses, he has remained boastful about his campaign. Last October, he said he would take full responsibility for this drug war, although he hopes to duck any charges in an international court once he retires as president in May.
Democrats and populists
It’s easy to write off Asia's drug wars as the pursuit of autocrats like Duterte, who since taking office in 2016 also stands accused of trying to systematically undermine his country’s democratic system. Yet, both Thaksin and Duterte were democratically elected with sizable majorities. Thaksin remained popular with the masses even after he was ousted by a military coup in 2006. His sister, Yingluck, rode that fanfare, and the popularity of their Pheu Thai Party to be elected prime minister in 2011, until she, too, was ousted by the military three years later.
After promising to unleash a drug war in his election campaign, Duterte won the 2016 presidential race by 16 percentage points over his closest rival. Stepping down after May’s presidential election — his formally fixed six-year term will come to an end — Duterte will likely leave office as one of the most popular ex-presidents. In December, the pollster PUBLiCUS Asia put his approval rating at 65 per cent.
Gloria Lai, regional director of Asia for the International Drug Policy Consortium, told me that “while there has been backlash from parts of the country, such as church leaders, Duterte appeared to retain significant public support for his policies, including his approach to drugs”. She went on, however: “it is worth noting the extensive efforts made by his administration to silence their critics — for example, the ongoing detention of Senator Leila de Lima, and the challenging of media outlets whose investigations have raised questions about Duterte’s government, notably ABS-CBN and Rappler”.
Another Asian drug-warrior is Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, who after her 18 years in power now holds the South Asian record as the region's longest-serving leader. Recently, the US imposed sanctions on senior officials of her country’s infamous Rapid Action Battalion, the main force behind the “war on drugs” she launched in May 2018. This force has resulted in hundreds of extrajudicial killings — an estimated 100 deaths and 12,000 drug arrests occurred in its first 15 days alone.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo, elected in 2014 on promises of championing human rights, has also led a “quiet” drug war for years. In 2016, he declared drugs “the number one problem facing Indonesia”. Of the 11 Southeast Asian states, only Cambodia, Timor-Leste, and the Philippines don’t mete out capital punishment for drug offences. The region makes up a “quarter of only about 32 states and territories in the world to do so”, one article explained.
Unexpectedly, it is the region’s authoritarian leaders who have been most willing to dabble in drug liberalisation. Thailand’s government, still composed mostly of officials who took power in the military coup of 2014, has flirted with drug legalisation for years, and even admitted that tough-handed responses don’t work. Although extra-judicial killings of drug users are still reported, last month Thailand became the first Asian country to approve the de facto decriminalisation of marijuana — perhaps the first stage in wider decriminalisation. The new narcotics law, passed last August, emphasises prevention and treatment instead of punishment for small-scale drug users.
One-party-ruled Vietnam removed drug possession as a capital offence in 2001, leaving only trafficking. Eight years later, it reformed its criminal law to essentially decriminalise drug use, although it has often struggled to live up to promises of harm-reduction through community-based treatment programs; these are often little more than prisons. One-party Laos last year declared drug prevention a “national agenda” following a surge in trade amid the pandemic, but it has also resisted the excesses of brutality seen in the Philippines.
Learning from others
During a visit to the Philippines in early 2019, Sri Lanka’s President Maithripala Sirisena praised the country’s drug war as “an example to the world”, and vowed to restore the death penalty for drug offenders. Why is Duterte an inspiration to some but not others? “If there's one thing Duterte has proven, it is that his type of ‘drug war’ — violent, dismissive of human rights and civil liberties, and anti-poor — does not work to deal with drug problems”, Carlos H. Conde, a senior researcher at the Asia division of Human Rights Watch, tells me.
Even Duterte’s enforcers admit as much. “Shock and awe definitely did not work”, Colonel Romeo Caramat, head of drug enforcement for the Philippine National Police, said in 2020. Again, this realisation is nothing new. Thaksin’s drug war in Thailand in 2003 was declared a brutal failure not long after it ended. Even the United States, which is often blamed for bringing ideas of a “drug war” to Southeast Asia in the 1970s, has significantly moved towards harm reduction and legalisation in recent years.
However, drug-warring politicians are rarely empiricists. According to Carlos Conde, a senior researcher at the Asia division of Human Rights Watch covering the Philippines. Drugs are a “very volatile issue that is easily exploited by politicians like [Duterte], so I won't be surprised if others will copy it to gain popularity”. “Coupled with toxic language that appeals to the base instincts of voters, as well as the seemingly intractable nature of the drug problem, ‘drug wars’ are extremely popular, and I fear they will remain so”.
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, who some pollsters contend is the frontrunner for May’s presidential election in the Philippines, says he will continue Duterte’s policy, albeit with less zeal and violence. “Several candidates for the upcoming presidential elections have already pledged to continue the anti-drug campaign, with some pointing out it will be without extrajudicial killings”, says Lai of the International Drug Policy Consortium. “As a result, it seems likely that even without Duterte, others will perpetuate a drug war that has devastated the lives of so many”.
Much of the coverage of Southeast Asia’s drug wars has focused on the drug warriors themselves. It is Duterte’s Drug War, we are informed, just as it was Thaksin’s Drug War in 2003. But if, as experts say, populist politicians regard drug wars as an easy way to capture votes, perhaps the problem lies first with society, not with politics. After all, if slaying drug offenders wasn’t popular with the masses, a populist politician wouldn’t see it as a means of riding into office. That, perhaps, explains why more authoritarian governments, such as in Thailand and Vietnam, are less risk-averse in experimenting with drug reform.
Yet, it offers little comfort for campaigners who want an end to the brutal drug wars. Recall that it took more than four decades — from the 1970 Controlled Substances Act to Washington and Colorado’s decriminalisation in 2012 — for marijuana to go from criminalisation to decriminalisation in the US. And that’s just marijuana, a relatively uncontroversial drug. For much of Asia, the drug of choice — and the drug of moral panic — is more personally-dangerous and socially destructive methamphetamine. Whichever way one looks at it, we’re unlikely to see an end to Asia's drug warriors until there are major changes in how the masses think.
Indeed, in October 2017 almost nine out of ten Filipinos supported Duterte’s war on drugs, according to a survey by the local pollster Pulse Asia. In 2019, the Social Weather Stations poll found that 82 per cent of Filipinos were satisfied with his drug war. And as Duterte prepares to step down after May’s presidential election, a survey in March 2022 by WR Numero Research found that 60 per cent of Filipinos want the next administration to continue his drug war.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
David Hutt is a political journalist who was based in Cambodia between 2014-2019. He is Southeast Asia Columnist at The Diplomat, a contributor and columnist at Asia Times, and writes regularly for Foreign Policy, Nikkei Asia, World Politics Review and the Economic Intelligence Unit. He is also an associate editor at 9DASHLINE. Image credit: Wikimedia/Robinson Ninal.