When Rodrigo Duterte announced in 2016 that he would be “happy to slaughter” some of the Philippines’ drug addicts, it sounded like crude political theater — an authoritarian flourish designed to dazzle and terrify in equal measure (Guardian 2016). What came after was more than rhetoric. Over the next six years, a dizzying state campaign against drugs combined public spectacle with state violence, leaving thousands dead, dozens of police under investigation, and families bereaved without real recourse (Human Rights Watch 2017; Amnesty International 2019).

Official tallies and independent tallies differ sharply. The Philippine National Police (PNP) count of deaths in police anti-drug operations landed at roughly 6,200 as of the end of Duterte’s term; human-rights groups, nongovernmental monitors and investigative projects put the toll far higher — in the tens of thousands when killings attributed to vigilantes and other actors are included (Reuters 2025; Human Rights Watch 2017). The International Criminal Court (ICC) has treated the killings as more than isolated law-enforcement excesses: its judges authorized an investigation into crimes against humanity linked to the campaign (ICC 2021; Coalition for the ICC 2021).

Those numbers alone are morally devastating. But they are also politically revealing. They invite a question that goes beyond guilt or innocence in particular cases: Was the drug war primarily law enforcement — an ardent, if brutal, attempt to dislodge networks and reduce a market — or was it something else: a political instrument of spectacle and selectivity that consolidated power, intimidated rivals, and diverted attention from governance failures?

Spectacle as political strategy.

The mechanics of the campaign were clear. Televised police presentations, gruesome “buy-bust” narratives, and presidential speeches celebrating lethal outcomes kept the story in front of the public every day. The moral choreography was simple: couched as moral cleansing, the killings produced shock and the illusion of decisive action. The tactic was effective at keeping headlines off more complicated governance questions — economic mismanagement, corruption in pandemic procurement, and systemic failures in institutions charged with accountability.

Consider the economic context. The Duterte presidency launched a massive infrastructure program — “Build, Build, Build” — financed in part by borrowing (AMRO 2021; World Bank 2021). National government debt roughly doubled during his administration, from about ₱5.95 trillion in mid-2016 to about ₱12.79 trillion by June 2022 (Bureau of the Treasury 2016; Bureau of the Treasury 2022). Debt alone is not a moral indictment; governments borrow for investment and crisis response. But when borrowing coincides with dramatic lapses in transparency, procurement controversies, and a pandemic that devastated incomes and employment, the politics of distraction matter.

Economic performance confirmed the danger. The pandemic triggered a historic contraction: GDP fell sharply in 2020 (PSA/World Bank 2021). Filipinos felt the effects in lost jobs, shuttered businesses, and strained public services — conditions that made a simple narrative of “order through force” resonate, even as it masked structural deficits. The drug war’s spectacle thus served as a pressure valve for popular anxiety, while the harder tasks of rebuilding institutions and checking corruption remained incomplete.

Selectivity and the political economy of drugs.

If spectacle was the cover, selectivity was the content. For critics, the drug war seemed to operate on two levels: violent enforcement against poor users and small-time sellers, and a softer, more permissive approach to high-value syndicates that purportedly benefited from political protection. Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV — a frequent and vocal Duterte adversary — advanced this thesis bluntly. He has publicly argued that the drug war was used to “protect” certain personalities and to neutralize competitors, and in July 2024, he filed drug-smuggling and graft complaints against Representative Paolo Duterte and several others in connection with a high-value 2017 Valenzuela shabu shipment worth some ₱6.4 billion (Philippine Star 2024; Philippine News Agency 2024).

Those are explosive allegations. Reporters and investigators traced the Valenzuela seizure to lapses in customs oversight and to questions about the “tara” system — payoffs that can grease port and import operations — which in turn prompted a Senate inquiry in 2017 (Al Jazeera 2017; Inquirer 2017). Paolo Duterte has denied links to illicit syndicates and has filed libel suits against accusers (ABS-CBN News 2019). Yet the very plausibility of Trillanes’s claims is telling: when institutional transparency is weak, the absence of prosecutions at the top becomes suspicious, and law-and-order rhetoric can appear less like public safety than like selective enforcement.

The International Criminal Court probe — authorized in 2021 and later appealed and confirmed by appellate judges — focuses on patterns of killings, including evidence that suggests a state or state-adjacent plan rather than intermittent overreach (ICC 2021; Coalition for the ICC 2021). In other words, the argument that the campaign was a systematic instrument of political power — used in some instances to protect allies and to suppress rivals — cannot be dismissed as mere partisan rhetoric. It is now part of a dossier being examined by an international court.

Corruption, procurement and the diversionary function of violence.

While headlines about operations and “nanlaban” narratives dominated, other stories quietly unfolded in the background. The pandemic procurement scandal involving Pharmally Pharmaceutical Corporation exposed billions of pesos in pandemic-era contracts awarded to a small company with ties to political insiders, prompting a string of explosive Senate hearings in 2021 and a surge of public anger over emergency purchasing (Senate Blue Ribbon Committee 2021). The Bureau of Corrections and Bureau of Customs controversies revealed lax oversight, irregular payments, and, critics charge, patronage networks that benefit the politically connected (Senate press releases 2019; COA reports 2017–2021).
Duterte himself occasionally acknowledged governance shortcomings. He was quoted as admitting limits to his reach against corruption and as assuming responsibility for the drug war’s violent outcomes while rejecting international legal oversight (Axios 2021; ABS-CBN News 2020). The impression left by these contradictions is uncomfortable: a lawless spectacle in the streets and slow, fitful accountability within the corridors of power.

Numbers matter.

Let us be precise. The PNP’s official operational tally recorded roughly 6,200 deaths attributed to police anti-drug operations by the end of the Duterte administration (Reuters 2025). Human-rights organizations, monitoring projects, and civil-society researchers place the total — when vigilante killings and other suspicious deaths are included — far higher; Human Rights Watch documented more than 12,000 killings and reported that at least 2,555 killings were attributed to police operations in one tracked period alone (Human Rights Watch 2017). ACLED and other data projects found similar patterns of civilian harm and shifts in geographic concentration (ACLED 2021). The ICC judges’ decision to authorize an investigation followed careful procedural steps — a sign that international legal actors considered the patterns credible enough to merit inquiry (ICC 2021).

On the economic front, national debt surged from around ₱5.95 trillion in mid-2016 to about ₱12.79 trillion by June 2022 — an increase of more than 100 percent (Bureau of the Treasury 2016; Bureau of the Treasury 2022). The economy’s 2020 collapse — historic and brutal — reduced output more than in most recent downturns (PSA/World Bank 2021). The state’s fiscal response required extraordinary borrowing; yet public attention, political capital, and institutional energy were often devoted to the war on drugs rather than to structural reform and transparent oversight of emergency spending.

Why selectivity is more dangerous than efficiency.

Defenders of Duterte have claimed that the campaign made neighborhoods safer, disrupted drug markets, and showed a government willing to act where others had wavered. Tough measures can, in the short term, reduce visible crime. But the cost of selective enforcement is systemic: when enforcement is predictable only for the weak and generous to the well connected, criminal markets adapt, elites capture benefits, and public trust in institutions erodes.

The post-Duterte state must answer not only for deaths but also for how those deaths were instrumentally used. If the chief executive turns law enforcement into political theater — if kill counts are trophies and selective immunity the unwritten policy — then the fabric that binds a liberal democratic polity is torn.

What accountability should look like.

A sober program of accountability would separate investigation from vengeful politics: transparent inquiries into police operations, judicial review free of executive pressure, and prosecutions only when evidence exists; independent audits of pandemic procurement and customs operations; and a public conversion of borrowed funds into investments shown to raise living standards rather than patronage. International mechanisms like the ICC are rightly controversial — sovereignty matters — but when domestic remedies are weak, independent review becomes an instrument for victims and a check on impunity (Human Rights Watch 2021; ICC 2021).

The political choice ahead.

Duterte’s spectacle worked because it solved a political problem: it allowed a president to be seen as decisive while deeper problems went unattended. A country can tolerate dramatic force for a time; it cannot, however, rebuild institutions if force becomes the primary form of governance. Restoring public trust requires real transparency, prosecutions based on evidence rather than partisan selection, and a clear turn from theatrical brutality toward durable reform.

The killings of 2016–2022 were not an unfortunate by-product of a relentless attempt to disrupt a destructive market. They were also, as critics have argued and as some legal findings now suggest, entangled in a political economy that benefited from selective enforcement. The question the Philippines must answer is neither merely judicial nor merely moral; it is existential. Will the country build institutions that punish the guilty, regardless of their connections, and protect the innocent, regardless of their poverty? Or will violence remain a public stage designed to distract, intimidate, and consolidate power?

If the past six years under Duterte proved anything, it is this: spectacle can hold power together only as long as it keeps the worst stories off the front page. Democracies survive not by spectacle, but by accountability. The families of the dead deserve neither theater nor excuses. They deserve justice — and the country deserves an honest reckoning.

References:
ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project). 2021. “The Drug War Rages On in the Philippines.” ACLED, November 18, 2021. ([ACLED][1])
ABS-CBN News. 2019. “Paolo Duterte Denies Getting Payoffs from Drug Ring.” April 3–4, 2019. ([Wikipedia][2])
ABS-CBN News. 2020. “Duterte Admits Corruption Still Pervasive.” 2020. ([Axios][3])
Al Jazeera. 2017. “Paolo Duterte and Others Grilled in Drug Case.” September 2017. ([Department of Finance][4])
Amnesty International. 2019. They Just Kill: Ongoing Extrajudicial Executions in the Philippines’ War on Drugs. 2019. ([Amnesty International][5])
Ash Carter/related — see Guardian. 2016. “Rodrigo Duterte Vows to Kill 3 Million Drug Addicts and Likens Himself to Hitler.” Guardian, September 30, 2016. ([The Guardian][6])
Bureau of the Treasury (Republic of the Philippines). 2016. “National Government Debt Recorded at P5,948 Billion as of End-June 2016.” Press release. ([Department of Finance][7])
Bureau of the Treasury (Republic of the Philippines). 2022. “National Government Debt Recorded at P12.79 Trillion as of End-June 2022.” Press release, Aug. 5, 2022. ([Department of Finance][8])
Coalition for the ICC. 2021. “ICC Judges Authorize Investigation into the Situation in the Philippines.” Sept. 15, 2021. ([Coalition for the ICC][9])
Guardian. 2016. “Rodrigo Duterte Vows to Kill 3 Million Drug Addicts.” Sept. 30, 2016. ([The Guardian][6])
Human Rights Watch. 2017. License to Kill: Philippine Police Killings in Duterte’s “War on Drugs” and related reporting on the Philippines’ war on drugs. (See HRW tagging and reporting). ([Human Rights Watch][10])
ICC (International Criminal Court). 2021. Decision on the Prosecutor’s Request for Authorization of an Investigation into the Situation in the Republic of the Philippines (Article 15). Sept. 15, 2021. ([International Criminal Court][11])
Inquirer (Philippine Daily Inquirer). 2017. “Trillanes Linking Polong to Triad Sidetracks Senate Probe.” Sept. 2017. ([Inquirer News][12])
Philippine News Agency. 2024. “Trillanes Files Drug Smuggling Raps vs. Paolo Duterte, Others.” July 31, 2024. ([Philippine News Agency][13])
Philippine Star (Laqui, Ian). 2024. “Trillanes Files Drug Smuggling, Graft Charges vs Paolo Duterte, 9 Others.” July 31, 2024. ([Philstar.com][14])
PSA / World Bank. 2021. Philippine GDP reports and World Bank country economic updates reporting a sharp GDP contraction in 2020 and recovery dynamics in 2021. See World Bank Philippines Economic Update 2021 and PSA releases. ([World Bank][15])
Reuters. 2025. “What Happened in the Philippine Drug War That Led to Duterte’s Arrest.” March 11, 2025. ([Reuters][16])
Senate Blue Ribbon Committee (Philippines). 2021. Hearings and press releases on Pharmally pandemic procurement contracts; related Senate press releases (September 2021). ([Senate of the Philippines][17])
(Additional source material: COA annual audit reports 2017–2021; Bureau of Customs and Bureau of Corrections investigation records; various Philippines mainstream news outlets cited above for contemporaneous reporting.)