EP79: Duterte’s Arrest and its Aftermath with Carlos Conde
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Visit myfico.com/free and discover the score lenders use most. Welcome to Straight Talk Southeast Asia. This is a podcast that covers current developments in the region, particular countries, domestic politics, as well as regional issues.

We look in depth at what is happening, why it might be happening. We speak to analysts, academics from the region, based in the region, and to better understand what's happening and what might be the projections of what's happening ahead. We're now in our second season. I'm Bridget Welsh. I'm a political analyst and academic who's worked on Southeast Asia for many decades. I was raised here. I'm living here. And very importantly, I care about what's happening in the region. Thanks for joining me.

Welcome to Straight Talk Southeast Asia. I'm your co-host, Zachary Abusa. On March 11th, Singapore's Electoral Boundaries Review Committee released a significant redistricting ahead of elections, which could come now as early as May. There will be one more group representation constituency and one additional single-seat ward, bringing the total number to 18 and 15, respectively.

the number of elected MPs will increase to 97, up from the current 93. 22 of the current 31 constituencies will see a change in their borders, which is sure to keep the opposition Workers' Party off balance, given their limited resources and ability to quickly regroup and contest the elections.

The Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission continues to interview former Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob over a case involving Malaysian Ringgit 177 million in seized assets. The Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating four of Sabri's aides. Sabri is the third former Prime Minister who is currently being investigated for corruption after leaving office.

The others include Najib Razak and Muhyiddin Yassin, though in both those cases, politics has impeded the wheels of justice. Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary Tho Lam traveled to both Indonesia and Singapore last week to celebrate the 70th and 50th anniversaries of diplomatic relations, respectively.

In both cases, diplomatic ties were elevated to Vietnam's highest diplomatic ranking, comprehensive strategic partnerships. Both countries are important for Vietnam, Indonesia politically and diplomatically, and Singapore economically. But the trip begs the question,

Why? Tho Lam and not President Luong Cong or Prime Minister Pham Minh Ching. Tho Lam, after all, is only the head of the Communist Party. He holds no formal state position. Less than one year ahead of Vietnam's quinquennial Party Congress, Lam is clearly remaking the general secretary position into an executive function.

Amidst a major government restructuring that has seen the consolidation of five ministries and three state-level agencies, not to mention the laying off of some 100,000 public sector officials, Lam is clearly demonstrating that he is in firm control and has the Central Committee's backing. He is most likely going to be re-elected to a full term in January 2026.

Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto appears to be trying to get parliament to fast-track the army law. Armed Forces Chief Agus Subianto declared that the law, which was passed in 2004 to legally end the country's dual function or duifungsi status, was outdated.

while Defence Minister Sajafri Sajikmousen has been trying to get an amendment passed that would formally allow uniformed military personnel to assume even more civilian functions. The current law gives uniformed military personnel the ability to hold 10 civilian positions in ministries directly related to national security.

These include the Ministry of Defense, the Coordinating Minister of Politics and Security Affairs, and the Head of National Intelligence. The draft amendment increases the number of positions open to uniformed military personnel to 15, and now include the Coordinating Minister of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, the Head of Counterterrorism, and the Disaster Management Agency.

But what has raised alarm the most is that the amendment proposes that the Attorney General can also be a uniformed officer and within the TNI's chain of command.

If passed, this would be the most serious reversal to civilian oversight over the military, which has been steadily clawing back civilian authorities that it ceded following the fall of Probovo's father-in-law, Suharto, in May 1998. This has deeply concerned democracy activists and civil society organizations.

And for all those celebrating, happy St. Patrick's Day. Cade Mila-Volger. This is Bridget Welsh, and I'm really delighted to welcome Carlos Conde to the program. He's a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch based in the Philippines. We're going to talk about what everyone is talking about in the Philippines, which is Duterte's arrest and its political aftermath. Carlos, thanks so much for being here on Straight Talk.

Hey, thanks so much, Bridget, for having me here. It's a pleasure to do this. Why is this arrest so important? Do you see this as a step for democracy and justice or a negative impact on democracy, creating more polarization, making the situation more untenable? What are your thoughts?

This is extremely important in the Philippines for Filipinos. If you take into account the fact that the drug war by Duterte and many other killings attributed to him have created so much damage and havoc in the Philippines when he was president and when he was mayor of Davao City, we have to keep in mind that as many as 30,000 people were killed during the drug war and a few thousands more when he was mayor in Davao City.

through the Davao Dead Squad. These families of the victims, these victims have been struggling long and hard for accountability for all those murders. And in the Philippines, they hardly stand a chance to do that because our criminal justice system, our law enforcement system just don't work in terms of giving them readdress. So that is why they went to the ICC and sought justice there.

Directly, this is extremely important for the thousands of families in the Philippines that have been victimized by the drug war.

I don't think I can overstate the importance of that. And this may even have ramifications in Southeast Asia, in Asia, and even the world, how Duterte ended up in the ICC. But on your question on whether this will end up being a polarizing force in Philippine politics, I have no doubt that will be the case in some ways. The camp of Mr. Duterte, they're already spinning this as a political maneuver by Mr. Marcos, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.,

so that they will increase their chances in the elections in May and also eventually in 2028. I think that is a legitimate perspective. But again, it pales in comparison. If we compare the magnitude of the problem, the proportionality of that view is just not correct.

Instead of looking at this as a political battle between two families, I'm not ignoring that. Let me be clear about that. Instead of just focusing on that, I think the whole Filipino public and the international public need to understand that this is the best human rights news that the thousands of these victims have ever received. And even the history of human rights violations in this country, this is the best human rights news ever. And we think that this could further

fix some of the problems in the Philippines, but we can delve into that later. Yeah, I think it's really important to take it from different perspectives. As you've rightly pointed out, people are focused on the electoral side, which we'll talk about, but more importantly, to look at it more holistically for the victims that suffered under the war on drugs in the Philippines. Let's unpack a little bit. How did this process of going to the ICC start?

How did they make the case with the ICC? We understand the global news managed to be able to shout out what's happening in the United States, but when they focused on Duterte's arrest, it was big news. It was very dramatic. A lot of hard work went into putting the ICC case together. Can you talk about that process? What happened to lead to the arrests?

It's important to keep in mind that all these allegations against Mr. Duterte were not just concerning the drug war that began in 2016. If we consider the fact that Mr. Duterte, through his death squad in Davao, launched a relentless and brutal anti-crime campaign there, beginning when he was mayor there, back in the early aughts, it's safe to say that this should have been done a long time ago.

If you look at that, the ICC came in rather late in the game. They should have seen the signs early on when there were only hundreds more were being killed. And this is to the testament of the victims in the Philippines, both in Manila, elsewhere in the Philippines, but also more especially in Davao.

When Duterte was mayor there, and I was based there, I was covering the Philippines at the time for the New York Times, and I wrote about these killings in the Times and many other publications. It was very clear that this man is wreaking havoc, not just on democracy in that big city, but also upending the lives of so many people. The methods were very, very clear. Extradition killing, ordering police and their assassins to target suspected criminals, a lot of them children.

And the signs were there. This is the template that Mr. Duterte later on used across the Philippines. And in fact, during the campaign in 2015, the presidential campaign, he made no bones about promoting the violence that he started in Davao City and promised to the public that if you elect me as president, what I did in Davao, I will also do to you, to the whole Philippines. And that's exactly what happened. Again, even at the time, the ICC and the international community should have listened, should have taken a look.

When he became president in 2016 and then the killing started in 2017, it became really bad. That's when many of the families of the victims and helped by human rights groups such as ours, we went to the UN in Geneva, the Human Rights Council. We complained. We filed complaints. We filed manifestations there. We talked to the diplomatic community that they need to take a look at this.

That was the groundwork. In 2018, Fatou Benzouda, the office of the prosecutor at the ICC, took notice of the complaint filed earlier by the camp of Senator Trillianes and decided to launch a preliminary examination of the complaint. And that's where it started.

Keep in mind, at that time, Mr. Marcos was not in the picture at all. This was all the doing of the victims and their advocates and some politicians who are admittedly with the opposition but are also doing this because they were concerned about the victims. So that's how it started. And then it fell on the lap of the ICC. And when the investigation happened, I think this trial was inevitable.

That's the overview of that. Now, all of this political thing between the Marcoses and the Dutertes, we can unpack a little more of that later, but I can say that these are not the only factor why this happened, why Mr. Duterte was arrested and brought to the hay.

What about the timing of the arrest and others in terms of the recent process? My understanding that this has been in the works for, as you said, not only years in terms of building the case, but the indictment and the arrest have been in the works for almost six months.

Again, the ICC is a little bit too tight-lipped about these things. It doesn't like telegraphing its punches for good reason. We were only relying on the procedures that are outlined in the Rome Statute that created the ICC. And we knew that when the preliminary examination was launched in 2018 and in response, Duterte withdrew from the ICC and that withdrawal took effect in 2019.

This was going to happen sooner or later. We just didn't realize that it was going to be sooner. But think about this, Bridget. If the groundwork had not been laid before all of the events that led to Marsha Levin's arrest, the ICC, Office of the Prosecutor, or even the pretrial chamber one, wouldn't have enough to justify a warrant of arrest.

The ICC, of course, does not respond to the political wranglings in the Philippines. It responds to what is presented before it that are evidence, that are credible information. In other words, the ground had been set in the past how many months after so many years of work by victims of the violence and also by their advocates.

When the Marcoses and the Dutertes had a falling out a little over a year ago, and then that climax in this really dramatic incident in Congress that led to Sara Duterte, the vice president, who is the daughter of Mr. Rodrigo Duterte, actually threatened to kill the president Marcos, his wife, and his cousin, who is the house speaker, if something were to happen to her.

At that point, it was clear from all of us that there's no turning back on the path that Miss Sarut 30 had taken. There's no more repairing the damage that had been done on the Alliance.

Of course, a lot of us were very frustrated with the Marcos administration because it had to ally themselves with the Dutertes. But when that fracturing happened, we could say it was fortuitous. Regardless of whether we think that Mr. Marcos is driven by self-interest here, regardless of the suspicion, which is probably correct, that he's using the ICC investigation to sideline the Dutertes, to make them politically weak, regardless of that,

From my perspective, that does not matter as far as the human rights victims were concerned. You cannot make the political infighting here the main focus of all of these.

It has to be the victims of the war on drugs and the death squad killings that Duterte is being accused of. Because these are just egregious, Bridget. The drug war and all of this is the worst human rights catastrophe in the history of this country. Not even during the dictatorship of this president's father was the human rights situation really this bad.

During the dictatorship, a little over 3,000 were killed by the state forces. At least 10,000 or probably more were victims of torture, enforced disappearances, and so on. Now, compare that with what happened in the drug war, which is from 6,000 to as many as 30,000 were killed.

None of this have been significantly investigated. And of all these thousands of cases, only four cases have actually resulted in court convictions. And you see here the impunity that really continues to reign in the Philippines. This is why this is so important. This is why the action taken by the ICC

And the cooperation of the Philippine government with the Interpol, they're very careful not to say the cooperation with the ICC because officially they're not recognizing the ICC. This is a step toward justice for the thousands of victims of the drug war.

Hope you're enjoying listening to this episode. If you want to find out more about previous episodes, you can reach this on the website, straighttalksoutheastasia.com. The link should also be available in the show notes. If you want to contribute to the production costs of the podcast, you can hit the link, buy me a coffee. Every little penny counts. All that money will not go to me, but go to the producers who are helping me to put the show together. Thanks for listening.

Carlos, how much justice can really be brought in the circumstances? This is the tough part. I take your point very well that this is a landmark case. It's a recognition. It basically signals issues of impunity. But what can be brought back to the families and victims? Put this also in the context that the ICC itself is facing international threats from a perspective of recognition.

We study these issues such as the human rights violations against the Rohingya, which is also a case that we're hoping will have indictments that will lead to arrest in the case of what's happened there, especially for the junta. I hear you that this is something about recognition and a positive step from a human rights perspective. But what kind of deliverables can there be? What is the worst that can happen to Duterte? What's the best that can happen for the families?

Of course, the most ideal probably outcome of this, Bridget, is that he is found guilty, convicted, and then sentenced to 30 years at least in prison in the hate. I think the families of the victims and we at the humanized community are hoping that would happen. But of course, we're also realistic. The families and us, we manage our expectation about this. So if Mr. Duterte is acquitted, God forbid, regardless of all these testimonies and all of this documentation,

That would have a really tremendous negative effect on the human rights situation in the Philippines. And we can only imagine that if that happened, Ms. Sarah Duterte would win the presidency in 2028 or whoever else that's supportive of them. And the worst case scenario would be for some revenge against the victims and the testimonies of the witnesses. I'm not going to dwell in that. We're just happy that the process has started.

Let me first address your question about what does this mean to the international community now that the ICC is being under assault? Precisely, we think that this is very significant for the ICC to be seen internationally across the globe, particularly in the global south, that the ICC can be a force for good.

especially in countries where violations of human rights are not only rampant, but are allowed to be committed with impunity. So this is a huge boost for the ICC itself. Now, we don't know if the arrest warrant that they put out against Putin or Netanyahu or many others can be carried out in the same way as what happened in Mr. Duterte's case, because obviously the political context of the country where this is happening is also key, right?

But this is a warning shot, as it were, to many potential tyrants around the world. If the ICC will do their job very well, that will hopefully make tyrants like Putin and also prime ministers like Netanyahu think twice about violating wholesale the rights of their people.

On another side of this is the one kind of upshot that we would like to see in the Philippines is that this experience with Duterte should compel the government of the Philippines to really make good on its commitment to reform the human rights situation of the Philippines, but also the accountability and law enforcement mechanisms in the Philippines need fixing. That is what we hope.

Mr. Marcos would do. If it turns out that he's not doing any of this follow through to improve the situation in the ground, then you would only give credence to what the critics of this administration and the supporters of Duterte that all of this is political persecution. All of this is a stage political event to sideline the Dutertes. So Mr. Marcos really needs to do a lot more. He's putting himself in a position where he probably wouldn't have a choice but to really improve

human rights and accountability and law enforcement and the justice system in the Philippines. I want to pull out a couple of points that I think are really important from this conversation so far, Carlos. The first of which is that this case is not only unprecedented in the Philippines, it's also unprecedented globally. It's not a civil war. It's a particular crimes against humanity of which the ICC is focused on. And I think it's also a precedent for that court and

And as you rightly say, it sends a signal that tyrants or dictators or even people who are elected that abuse power, which Duterte was elected and also abused his power. There is international accountability. So I think this is some ways also a landmark decision for the ICC so far. The second part is one of the elements you didn't answer is about justice to the families. You know, you hope that there'll be a conviction. And I think there is something to that.

But also the process of truth telling and having their voices heard, moving from four cases in the Philippines to having an international court listen to all the documentation, the tremendous work that human rights organizations have put in, I think is also going to be a very important step. This is not going to be just about the end result. It's going to be also about the process.

The third point I want to pull out of what you've described, the question will be what will come next in terms of building accountability and others. It is unfortunate that you have to go outside of the legal system when the current legal system doesn't work.

We will see, as you rightly said, what will happen. Let's turn to the elite conflict. We have the senatorial elections and the government elections this year, and we also have the presidential elections in 2028. Much of the analysis is focused on the Duterte-Marcos alliance breaking up and what that means, especially for the Duterte alliances, which is now fragmented. Let's try to move away from that. While acknowledging that the elite conflict is important,

What does this tell us about the nature of political family politics in the Philippines? Yes, do you think this is also the end of the Duterte political power or it's still too early to tell? Is this really still just going to be about family politics or is the whole nature of politics changing when you have greater accountability through a process like this?

Those are good points. But before I go into that, Bridget, let me just answer quickly your second point, which is about truth-telling and all of that. This is actually a big issue for us because you would think that given the magnitude of the violations of human rights during the drug war, the government would have by now set up a truth commission to really document and put on record what happened during the drug war. There are efforts to do that by NGOs and by academia, but really not an official one.

That can still be done by the Philippine government, by the Commission on Human Rights. And we hope that will happen because really a trust commission like that drawing out all the testimonies, all the eyewitnesses about what happened could really be instructive on the Philippines and how to proceed from here on out. Now, on your point about the political dynamics here.

I think it's too early to say that this is going to be the end of the Dutertes, but certainly I think this is, to put it mildly, a chink in their armor now. The arrest by the ICC certainly solidified the argument that the Dutertes are this bunch of corrupt, rights-violating family. And really, that is the hope by a lot of Filipinos, that they need to be taken into account for all of that. But

And the wider question of whether this will change or will have an impact on political families

In the scheme of things, the Philippines and in the ERK of human rights violators in the Philippines, Duterte is an outlier if you look at it. A lot of the human rights violations in the Philippines from the Marcos dictatorship in the 70s up to the time that he was hosted in 1986 and then the subsequent governments there that followed, most of the human rights violations were committed by the national security forces, military, the police, and many agents of government.

This is the first time, in fact, that somebody like Duterte used the national security forces targeted non-political targets, such as drug users. It had always been communist, leftist, suspected communist, but that's still going on. That, I think, in fact, is the second aspect of this, that I'm worried that the Marcos administration may not be as gung-ho or robust in its response compared to the drug war and the ICC.

All of these violations of human rights and the activists, journalists, civil society actors are still happening even as we speak. Would this change the political dynamic in the Philippines when it comes to the political dynasties? I would like to think that anybody, for instance, the Marcos family who will come in after this, would have to recon with what's happening in the Hague.

Obviously, they'd be stupid if they did what Duterte did, given what's happened. And I also think that this will lead to some realization within the law enforcement and national security agencies that they can be held to account internationally.

My hope is that political families in the Philippines, and they're everywhere in the Philippines, Philippine politics is dominated by political dynasties. And they're small ones or political warlords that control certain provinces or regions. That's a reality in the Philippines. A lot of the human rights violations that we see in the regions are commuted by actors that are aligned with all of these political groups.

Just to cite one example, most killings of journalists in the Philippines were committed in provinces and were committed by people identified with local political warlords. So that's something. Will this ICC thing have an impact on that and how politicians will carry themselves out in the future?

The hope is that, yes, I think it's important to point out that apart from the ICC, there are legal mechanisms in the Philippines that could potentially discourage them from doing any more of this egregious human rights violation. We're talking about, for instance, a law. We do have an international humanitarian law in the Philippines. One of the things that it forbids or seeks penalties is crimes against humanity. The same crimes against humanity that Mr. Duterte is accused of.

If all of these things are carried out in a way that's sufficient, in a way that's right-respecting, then that is the value of what the ICC investigation carries in all of this. What next steps should we be looking out for ahead? What's the process going to be moving forward?

In the ICC, they just announced that the next hearing will be in September, which is quite a long time from here. So Mr. Duterte is going to be spending quite a bit of time there, obviously. But I think from the Philippine side, my view is that many of these victims and many of the domestic human rights groups that have been helping them will continue to push for more cases to be brought to the ICC.

And if it happens that the trial proceeds and if Mr. Duterte gets convicted, I'm sorry to say that unless the Dutertes are completely politically annihilated because of this, they will continue to create troubles.

Keep in mind, they're still everywhere. They have a lot of supporters, especially in the South. And using social media disinformation, which has been quite massive, if you ask me, they are in a position to really influence public opinion about them. And I can only shudder at the thought of what that can do. It will divide Filipinos even more.

That's my bleak worst case scenario here. But that also gives some honest to leaders like Mr. Marcos, again, assuming that he's serious about improving all of this, to really try to fix things, to really try to be more inclusive.

At the end of the day, the supporters of the Teotihuacan are Filipinos who feel like they have been neglected, who feel like they live in poverty and the political elite in Manila are not minding their station in the way that they should be minded. You have this almost Trumpian kind of situation here where a large chunk of the population are really expressing their disgust toward the political elite or

and are much more willing to take shortcuts that are being propounded by the likes of Mr. Duterte. So really, a lot of this hinges on how Mr. Marcos is going to govern in the next two years.

As you rightly point out, when there is positive news, there's also often challenges and often sometimes backlash. So it's a really challenging time for the Philippines. We'll be continuing to follow this issue here on Straight Talk Southeast Asia. We really appreciate, Carlos, your insights and sharing your insights and all the human rights work you're doing, which has really been helpful as part of the reshaping and allowing this important case to become international news.

hopefully will be a step forward for the families and the victims. Happy to do this, Bridget. I'm really thankful that you reached out and talked about this. Obviously, this is a very important subject for me, not just for my organization, but personally, but also the victims of the drug war need to hear all of this. And this is why I said this is a momentous occasion for a lot of us. So really, I'm thankful for people like you who are taking the time to unpack all of this. I wish you all the luck.

Thank you so much. May the victims of the drug war be seen and their truth and their stories be heard.