Duterte's "War on Drugs" Rhetoric: Consolidating Power through Penal Populism

On 9 May 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines. The former mayor of the Southern Philippine city of Davao won the election on a platform of fighting illegal drugs, criminality, and corruption, and became infamous for tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings committed as part of his so-called "War on Drugs." Of these killings, most deaths were attributed to civilian vigilantes, often operating in coordination with the police and in a context where Duterte's incendiary anti-drugs rhetoric had become tantamount to a "license to kill."¹ The resulting human rights violations caused shock and outrage among civil society in and outside of the Philippines. Despite tacit popular concern about the killings and other militarized policies, polling institutes continued to measure high levels of approval for the president until the end of his term.² Although Duterte was not the first Philippine president to rely on a tough-guy approach to crime, his particular style of using this platform constitutes an unprecedented form of penal populism to win popular support against the backdrop of a performed crisis. Its success can be traced to many particularities in the context of the Philippines and at the same time can be placed in global trends of authoritarian populism.

Duterte's election victory and his presidency have been analyzed from a variety of perspectives, including the lens of populism. This article builds on these preceding analyses and focuses on the power-consolidating impact of the "War on Drugs" rhetoric, including its mobilizing power not only against drug criminals themselves but also against the political opposition. Employing the theory of penal populism complemented with the idea of cosmic war, this research aims to explain how the "War on Drugs" rhetoric justifies and incites increased levels of violence against drug users and pushers and at the same time human rights activists and political opponents.

Theoretical Framework

The concept of penal populism as described by John Pratt³ helps us understand how punitiveness functions as focal point of Duterte's populist rhetoric and tool for consolidating his power. Although the specific manifestations of penal populism are contingent on the local circumstances of each country, certain common elements can be observed.

First, penal populism centers on the rejection of an elite-controlled criminal justice system that is perceived as excessively lenient favoring the criminal over the victim of the crime and over law-abiding citizens in general. The assertion that criminals and prisoners have human rights is thought to be the pinnacle of a criminal justice system that disregards the interests and needs of "ordinary people." Such penal elitism is considered as one specific manifestation of the ruling elite being generally distant and preoccupied with their own gain and therefore incapable of looking after the "people."⁴ What follows is an overall rejection of deference to the traditional ruling class, civil servants, and expert opinion and the call for more citizen involvement in public institutions. In light of this, penal populism offers what it claims to be common-sensical solutions placing the interests of the victims at the center of penal policy.

Second, penal populism feeds on the perception of a law-and-order crisis and the associated fear of crime and the criminal. Focusing on personalistic, anecdotal victim accounts in crime reporting, penal populism stresses the possible victimization of citizens and thereby exaggerates the immediacy of the threat.

Third, penal populism taps into the fears of constituents by focusing on groups of criminals perceived as particularly monstrous. It juxtaposes idealized images of innocent victims with the animalistic Otherness of the criminal and the idea that crime is irreparably ingrained in offenders. Sex offenders in particular are often in the focal point of this narrative. Stressing the purity and defenselessness of the victims, the penal populist line of reasoning only allows for the conclusion that any intruder in this idealized image must be the antithesis of their victim: abnormal and inherently evil predators fully dictated by their sexual instincts and therefore unfit for rehabilitation. Utilizing such images of loathsome intrusions into the sanctity of...