How Did Duterte End Up in the Hague?
In a span of two days, former President Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on a plane returning from Hong Kong due to an ICC warrant for his arrest, as well as a request from Interpol. I do not think myself competent to comment on the legality (or illegality) of his arrest and extradition, but I do wish to take this moment to make some reflections on the dynamics of the Philippine State vis-a-vis the Duterte extradition as regards the underlying realities behind it.
To begin with, the actions taken by the Philippine government against the Duterte family are another push on the part of the State in consolidating its stability. This is not necessarily a good thing, but it is certainly the case. Many commentators have a habit of framing this particular incident as one family fighting another, but this conceals the deeper structural dynamics at play: the expansion of Power and the bureaucratic apparatus.
We should not miss the forest for the trees. Those who seek to win in, or to prolong their gains from, the game of Power must ultimately play by its rules. The interest of the executive branch of government is to consolidate the Center by any means possible, while other groups are in the process of supporting it or undermining it. Since it is the executive branch which justifies there being a president in the first place, Marcos is inevitably beholden to the interests of the apparatus in place: a figurehead of a large and deadly bureaucracy which seeks nothing less than its own expansion.
Rodrigo Duterte, likewise, was such a figurehead. When it was in the interests of the bureaucratic apparatus to give him his fifteen minutes of fame, it did so. And when it was in its interests to surrender him to the Dutch, it also did so, and without second thought. The leviathan is a jealous mistress, and it is no respecter of persons: the melodrama of family feuds or personal intrigues ultimately serves to conceal the fact that, after all is settled, the machine remains. The “winners” or “losers” in such a feud are ultimately determined by what is most convenient or useful for their big, bureaucratic patron.
This does not mean that those involved in this saga act without consideration of personal or familial interest. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The bureaucrat or pencil pusher has something to gain from the expansion or consolidation of his department, the President has something to gain from the consolidation of executive power (i.e., the bureaucratic apparatus), the Dutertes have something to gain from Sara becoming president in 2028 insofar as she would become a beneficiary of the same leviathan, so on and so forth. But their personal interests are ultimately gatekept by the apparatus which can, will, and has existed with or without them.
Of course, the President can certainly fire the individual managers or staffers who constitute the executive apparatus. But he will have to replace them, not with himself or even his relatives qua relatives, but by other people with equal skill and technical know-how to manage the apparatus. To do otherwise (say, to replace a non-compliant yet competent bureaucrat with a compliant but unskilled one) would constitute institutional suicide not only for the bureaucracy, but for himself as well. The loss of bureaucratic support is what can turn a president into a private citizen (or worse) in a matter of days.
The decision to extradite the former President on the basis of his (real or alleged) involvement in extrajudicial killings has undoubtedly been lauded by many in the public, private and third sectors. But even in the distribution of justice the expansionist interests of the establishment can be identified. As Bertrand de Jouvenel and other thinkers understood it, the Center (the ruling elite) must forge an alliance with those left out by the previous arrangement in order to undermine those subsidiaries of power which could rival it, that is to say, those elements in society that can exercise a command other than that of Center.
By appealing to these disenfranchised sectors of society, Power finds in them a loyal base of people who serve as its clientele. These clients are then used as pawns to legitimize and support the central government. On one hand, we have those terrorized by crime or frustrated by the reformist agendas of previous administrations serving as a loyal base for the Duterte administration, where those who were disenfranchised or who had something to lose during the Duterte administration now serve as a base for the Marcos administration.
Indeed, Samuel Francis’ Leviathan and Its Enemies spoke of the possibility of the “soft” (i.e., liberal) managerial regime being replaced by a “hard” managerial regime, which emphasizes in-group persistence and is more prone to the use of force, on account of the potential failure of the former to effectively deal with crime along with the gradual disenfranchisement of post-bourgeois middle-income groups. A glimmer of this might be seen in Duterte’s voter base, which Teehankee and Thompson interpreted as “groups who are marginally better off after years of solid growth—such as taxi drivers, small shop owners and overseas workers—but worried that their gains could be threatened unless ‘order’ is restored.” (Julio Teehankee and Mark Thompson, “Duterte Victory a Repudiation of Aquino,” Nikkei Asian Review, May 12, 2016. See also Julio Teehankee, “Duterte’s Resurgent Nationalism in the Philippines: A Discursive Institutionalist Analysis,” Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs 35, no. 3 (2016): 72.)
But given the failure of this middle-sector reaction to fully establish a hard-managerial order, the liberal-managerial regime continues to prevail. Using those who were disenfranchised, undermined, or otherwise disadvantaged during the Duterte administration as a base, the liberal establishment can once again consolidate itself. Its overtures against the Dutertes and their allies (the impeachment of Sara, the extradition of Rodrigo, among others), its campaign against POGO operators and Chinese agents, as well as Marcos’ own role in “uncovering” various flood control project anomalies provide a common rallying point for the further extension of executive prerogatives against potentially destabilizing factors.
This is not a question of whether or not the people involved have good intentions. It is completely possible that both sides of the aisle sincerely believe that they are working in the interests of justice—whether it be justice for those victimized by criminals, or those victimized by the war on drugs. But this does not change the fact that certain interests are served, perhaps over and against others, in the further consolidation of executive power. And while Duterte enjoys the rest of his life in an IKEA hotel, the same leviathan is left unpunished.
