Strongman Duterte Executes a Militarized Pandemic Response in the Philippines

La Union, Philippines — For nearly two years, the pandemic has ravaged the Philippines. As of January 8, 2022, there have been more than 2.9 million Covid-19 cases and 52,135 deaths, according to the country’s health department, in a population of 111.8 million. Its inoculation drive, which began in March of last year, has been slow, with only 50.6 million Filipinos fully vaccinated — less than half the total population.

But perhaps what most exacerbates the country’s crisis is the government’s approach to containing the virus: violators of its pandemic regulations risk arrest, fine, or — as Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte himself ordered— being shot by police, the military, or the barangay officials (uniformed personnel who are deployed across the country to enforce quarantine protocols).

According to Human Rights Watch, citizens have been put in dog cages or overcrowded detention centers (as well as other settings that run a higher risk of infection) for violating curfew. As for those who’ve refused vaccination at this point, Duterte announced that they would be inoculated in their sleep, which his presidential spokesperson Harry Roque dismissed as a joke.

Previously, Duterte said he was fine with those who refuse to get vaccinated because it’s a democracy, saying only that they would just be escorted back home. Later, he changed his tune, saying they would be arrested. His most recent decree orders barangay officials to limit the movement of unvaccinated people nationwide and arrest violators, following the agreement among Metro Manila mayors to pass ordinances requiring the unvaccinated to stay home except for work or for essential goods and services.

Duterte’s preference toward the police and military has been evident since he took office in June 2016, appointing retired military officials in several cabinet positions. Now, the Philippines’ Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases, which leads the country’s pandemic response, is primarily led by former military officials and cabinet members — who are mostly non-experts in the field of public health.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III, who is part of Duterte’s cabinet, is the sole member of the IATF with any background in medicine or immunology.

Duterte defended the makeup of his task force by stressing the need for leaders with negotiation skills in order to secure vaccines, likening it to conducting business deals. His spokesperson said that the military officials are also logistics experts. Medical experts, then, are the minority in informing the pandemic response.

“I think Duterte saw the military as a partner because of its obedience and predictability,” said Dr. Aries Arugay, a political science professor at the University of the Philippines-Diliman and a visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.

The stress on the military’s backing and participation in Duterte’s response, Arugay told Women Under Siege, is also a political tactic, which, according to Professor Aurora de Dios, senior project director of the Women and Gender Institute at Miriam College in Manila, employs intimidation and the threat of violence to quell any opposition to his actions. It’s how he plays trying “big politics with a local town mayor approach,” said de Dios.

Military negotiations for vaccines

The country’s military capacity seems to be prioritized in every aspect of the government’s pandemic response: Duterte bartered for 20 million vaccines from the US in exchange for a review of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) — which allows US troops to operate in the country on a visiting capacity — otherwise, they would be booted from the country as soon as the VFA expired.

In February 2020, Duterte said that the Philippine government would scrap the VFA, which would then end in August 2020. He suspended it twice, in June and November of the same year, putting the agreement back into effect until 2021.

The VFA has been tainted with sexual violence cases involving US soldiers over the years, including the brutal killing of Filipina transwoman Jennifer Laude by US Marine Joseph Scott Pemberton in 2014. Pemberton was pardoned by Duterte on September 7, 2020, on the grounds of a “good character presumption.”

“No one reported from the Marines of his bad behavior,” said Duterte. The decision is suspected to have been based on political motivations prioritizing foreign interests, as well as an unsurprising response from a “misogynistic and transphobic” leader.

“Human rights are really at the back door of these kinds of defense and security agreements,” said Arugay. A Biden administration, however, might be more open to discussing safeguards against sexual violence with its democracy and human rights agenda, but relying on an ally to help enforce human rights in the country is unwise, he said.

A toxic masculine approach

Militarizing the pandemic response fails “to appreciate the critical public health and human security dimensions” of the health crisis, Arugay wrote in an op-ed for Heinrich Böll Stiftung, adding that a “heavy-handed and punitive” strategy is “often not grounded in complex science and empirical evidence that should guide public policy.”

That men in uniform lead decision making in the task force also points to a conspicuous omission in the country’s pandemic strategy — women’s leadership.

“It represents toxic masculinity; classic machismo that’s so disgusting,” de Dios said. “[It’s] not only seen through the use of force or violence but also in the way [Duterte] treats women.”

Duterte has been criticized in the past for his notoriously sexist and sexually-violent remarks against women, from admitting to sexually abusing a maid to commanding that female communist rebels be “shot in the vagina.”

The Philippines doesn’t have a policy mandating women’s inclusion in governance, unlike in other countries like Canada and Sweden, said Dr. Esperanza Cabral, who was the health secretary during former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s term, from 2001 to 2010.

“We didn’t have a president yet, male or female, who addressed that,” she told Women Under Siege. “It’s really a struggle for women to assert their right.”

Taking the grassroots approach

By stark contrast, Vice President Leni Robredo has taken it upon herself to implement a grassroots response to the pandemic. She has a strained relationship with Duterte, which accounts for her current lack of a cabinet post.

Duterte first assigned Robredo as head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council in 2016, and then co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD) in late 2019. But Robredo lost her ICAD post after meeting with the United Nations and requesting classified information about the drug war, neither of which action sat well with Duterte.

Her office has rolled out programs like Bayanihan E-Konsulta (a free teleconsultation service for outpatient cases); Vaccine Express (a drive-thru vaccination project in partnership with local government units); Swab Cab (a mobile antigen testing program); and free shuttle services for health workers and frontliners to target specific sectors and communities in the country.

The Bayanihan E-Konsulta services the National Capital Region and neighboring provinces via Facebook Messenger. With Vaccine Express, which targets particular sectors like transportation and delivery services, Robredo’s office provides the personnel and logistics, while the local government units (LGUs) supply the vaccines. Her office also hands out P500 (about $10) worth of gas incentives to those who line up for vaccination. Swab Cab focuses on areas with high transmission rates to assist LGUs in controlling spikes in cases.

Robredo tapped her supporters and volunteers in implementing her programs, who lent their vehicles for shuttle services and facilities for temporary shelters, among other things.

She has reiterated in the past that there’s a lack of decisive leadership under the Duterte administration, which is why the Philippines continues to suffer nearly two years on.

“You know, I am tempted to say to them, ‘Can you give me a chance to help and to manage this? Just give me a blanket authority.’ Maybe, this will improve!” Robredo said in an interview with Rappler on September 3, 2021.

She also doesn’t believe in the “false dichotomy of health versus the economy,” she told the Rotary Club of Manila on October 14, 2021. “For us to be able to open our economy again, we have to control the virus first. We have to control the transmission first.”

Dr. Maricar Limpin, president of the Philippine College of Physicians, also believes economic recovery is not possible without containing the health situation first. For the current government, Limpin said, it has always been a battle between health and economy, with the government prioritizing the latter. “Their perspective should change,” she said. “You can try to alleviate the health problems but at the same time push for economic recovery.”

Robredo’s approach, said Arugay, is more comprehensive and more inclusive — and, critically, “expertise- and knowledge-based.”

“[Robredo] didn’t treat the pandemic as a security crisis.”

What’s more, said Arugay, Robredo mobilized private sectors to assist in the response. “It’s smart,” Arugay said, praising a return to “the way things were done pre-Duterte.”

Light at the end of the elections

The Philippines is set to hold its national elections in May. Among those vying for the presidency are Robredo; Mayor of Manila Isko Moreno; ex-police chief and senator Ping Lacson; boxing legend and senator Manny Pacquiao; labor leader Leody de Guzman; and former dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s son Bongbong Marcos.

Adding to Filipinos’ current anxieties, Duterte has preemptively warned that he will use the “might of the military” should violence arise in the upcoming elections.

“This is what Duterte is good at. He’s a good campaigner,” Arugay said, pointing to the president’s strategy to imply the military’s backing while planting a seed “to frame that the electoral integrity might be threatened.”

The pandemic seemed to have rounded a corner in the last two months of 2021, with a dramatic drop in daily cases, but the virus, and its evolving variants like the more infectious Omicron, continues to threaten the country as it has elsewhere around the world. The Philippines still remains toward the bottom of Bloomberg’s Covid Resilience Ranking, which presents the countries that are most effectively handling the pandemic, with the least economic and social disruption. Its outstanding debt, too, is expected to balloon to more than P13 trillion (about $25 billion) by the end of 2022.

Duterte’s reign ends with the next election, but rebuilding the country after six years of populist rule — while actively responding to an evolving pandemic situation — is indeed a tall order for the next set of leaders. But Filipinos are hopeful that they will nonetheless turn the tide on these devastating, unprecedented times.