Rallies in Manila for and against Duterte
Protests highlight how drug war has polarised the nation
MANILA // Supporters and foes of president Rodrigo Duterte staged large rallies in Manila yesterday, highlighting how his brutal drug war has polarised the Philippines.
A prayer rally for Mr Duterte’s anti-narcotics crackdown drew up to 200,000 people, according to police.
“Your presence here shows the strong support that your president continues to enjoy,” said justice secretary Vitaliano Aguirre.
Mr Duterte, 71, who spent the weekend in Davao, was elected last year after promising to eradicate drugs in society by killing tens of thousands of people. He launched the crackdown after taking office in June and police have reported killing 2,555 drug suspects since then, with about 4,000 other people murdered in unexplained circumstances.
Critics of Mr Duterte, including former president Benigno Aquino and vice president Leni Robredo – who was elected separately from the president – joined one of the other rallies held near the national police headquarters in Manila. This gathering marked the 31st anniversary of the victory of a pro-democracy movement that ended the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
Some at this rally criticised the drug killings, many of them described by international for- eign monitors as state murder. The protesters said that they foreshadowed another dictatorship. By nightfall, some sections of the protesters were openly calling for Mr Duterte’s removal from office. “We are warning our people about the threat of rising fascism,” protest leader Bonifacio Ilagan said.
Ilagan, a playwright who was tortured for two years in a police prison under Marcos’s martial rule in the 1970s, said a culture of impunity was arising from the crackdown.
Mr Duterte, who ranked Marcos as one of the country’s best presidents, has not ruled out using martial law to prevent what he said was the country’s slide into narco-state status.
The president stoked large street protests last year when he allowed the Marcos family to bury the former leader’s remains in Manila’s Cemetery for Heroes.