Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest on ICC warrant spotlights clash between his and the Marcos families’ political dynasties.
2025.03.19
The political fallout from a Philippine strongman’s fall
Then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte attends the 34th ASEAN Summit in Bangkok, June 22, 2019.
Jorge Silva/Reuters
The Philippines isn’t known for speed and efficiency, but that’s exactly how former President Rodrigo Duterte’s arrest went down.
Hours after Duterte was arrested on a warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC) upon returning from Hong Kong, he was put on a private jet and spirited away to the Netherlands.
It all happened so fast, indicating there was a lot more planning behind the scenes than was let on when the presidential spokesman said “we are prepared for any eventuality.”
While there is a compelling legal case against Duterte that will play out in The Hague, the crux of the issue was the fallout between two rival political dynasties. The international arrest warrant was a tidy and convenient way to deal with a political threat to the Marcos clan.
How did we get here?
It wasn’t that long ago that the Duterte and Marcos clans were closely united. The Marcos family backed Duterte’s presidential candidacy in 2016.
In return, the newly inaugurated president fulfilled the Marcoses’ long-held dream of having the remains of former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who was ousted in the 1986 people-power uprising, interred at the Heroes’ Cemetery in Fort Bonifacio.
The alliance deepened during Duterte’s six-year term, culminating with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. sharing the presidential ticket with Sara Duterte in the 2022 election. It was a seemingly unstoppable political alliance between the powerful Marcos dynasty and the Dutertes, who have long dominated politics in the southern vote bank of Mindanao.
But relations quickly frayed. The younger Duterte was accused of misusing U.S. $10.6 million of intelligence and education funds. In addition, prosecutors recently released a ledger of payments she made to fictitious individuals.
House Deputy Majority Leader Francisco Paolo Ortega V. said the ledger included names that appear to be similar to names for junk food and cellphones, Philippine media reported.
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Perhaps the breaking point was the allegation that Marcos had reneged on his promise to protect Rodrigo Duterte from any prosecution, both domestically and by the ICC, over the extra-judicial killings in his war on drugs. Some estimates have put the death toll as high as 20,000 people, including innocent bystanders and children.
Impeachment of the vice president
On Feb. 5, the Philippine House took the unprecedented step of impeaching the vice president when 215 of the 306 representatives (70%) voted against Sara Duterte over her for alleged constitutional violations along with an alleged plot to assassinate the president.
The articles of impeachment were forwarded to the Senate, which is expected to hold pre-trial motions in late June before a formal trial slated to start on June 30. If convicted, she will be banned from holding high office.
But it’s not clear whether the needed two-thirds (16 of the 24 members) of the Senate would vote to convict her.
The Dutertes remain a powerful political clan, though it’s worth noting that the representatives who voted against her impeachment hail from around the Duterte’s political stronghold of Davao City, where both served as mayor before assuming higher office. But tellingly, 41 of the 60 remaining representatives from Mindanao voted to impeach her.
Sara Duterte’s net approval rating, according to the recent polling data, was only 22% in the fourth quarter of 2024; and even in her family’s political stronghold in the south, her support fell by 4 points in Mindanao. Across the nation, 41% of all Filipinos supported her impeachment.
The case against the former vice president has dominated the lead-up to the May 12 mid-term vote that will see the election of 12 senators in what is clearly a litmus test.
Two of those up for reelection, Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa and Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Tesoro Go, are close allies of the Dutertes and will be lobbying on her behalf.
Sara Duterte has refused to resign and denied all wrongdoing. There are concerns from the Marcos camp that sympathy for the vice president could tip the scales in her favor.
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Vice President Sara Duterte (second from left) and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., joined by members of both families, celebrate her inauguration in southern Davao City, Philippines, June 19, 2022. (Jason Gutierrez/BenarNews)
In early February, her supporters filed at the Supreme Court to drop the impeachment charges against her, citing a failure of due process. The court seems unlikely to rule in her favor.
All of that prompted a menacing threat, described by former President Rodrigo Duterte as a joke – “If only we could kill 15 senatorial candidates,” who included Marcos’ sister, Imee. That prompted a criminal complaint.
For his part, President Marcos tried to distance himself from the impeachment process, citing constitutional separation of powers, but that was a façade. His son, Rep. Ferdinand Alexander Marcos, and a cousin led the impeachment charge.
The president cannot run for a second term under the constitution. He is obviously doing his own calculations and has plenty to fear for himself and his family if Sara Duterte were to have the media spectacle of surviving impeachment, which could help her coast to the presidency in 2028. The Dutertes likely would exact vengeance.
This has prompted Marcos to act with alacrity once the ICC warrant against his predecessor as president was issued.
Marcos is hopeful that the ICC process is lengthy and allows Duterte all the due process he denied his victims, while the May elections lead to a Senate that is willing to convict Sara Duterte.
There is a risk that all this could backfire on the president.
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A supporter of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte holds a placard during a prayer rally in Manila, March 15, 2025. (Lisa Marie David/Reuters)
Rodrigo Duterte, meanwhile, is 79 and in poor health. His lawyers have called his delivery to the ICC in The Hague, Netherlands, a “kidnapping.”
Were he to die, in the midst of what is likely to be a very slow legal proceeding, he would be seen as a martyr to many. His daughter already is.
There has been street support for both Dutertes. While they are a new political dynasty, compared to the Marcos or Aquino clans, they have passionate supporters, a lock on politics in Mindanao and parts of the Visayas, and know how to weaponize social media.
They have supporters both within the police and the military, a factor that threatens to divide the country’s already fractious security forces. The combative Paolo Duterte, the congressional representative for Davao, is leading the charge to defend both his father and sister.
While the region looks to Rodrigo Duterte’s ICC trial as a victory over impunity, his arrest must be seen in the context of a dynastic war in the Philippines where the entrenched legacy dynasties move to stamp out the growing clout of the newcomers.
Zachary Abuza is a professor at the National War College in Washington and an adjunct at Georgetown University. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of the U.S. Department of Defense, the National War College, Georgetown University or BenarNews.