Getting Away With Murder? Unmasking the Roots of Impunity in Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs in the Philippines

Abstract

When in 2016 Rodrigo Duterte became the 16th president of the Republic of the Philippines, he had a clear objective in mind: eliminate suspected drug traffickers and users within the country. Since his first day in office, President Duterte embarked on a national War on Drugs, which resulted in skyrocketing numbers of extrajudicial killings perpetrated by the Philippine National Police. Yet, despite the rising death toll of Duterte's anti-drug campaign, the Filipino government and judiciary's inability to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of the killings highlighted a controversial nexus between impunity and state-sponsored violence. This thesis aims to unmask the roots of impunity in Duterte's War on Drugs by exploring how and why the President used it to sustain a campaign of terror, where governmental officials could perpetrate violence without fear of punishment. Grounded on the concept of institutionalized impunity, this research examines two interconnected facets – structural and strategic – of the phenomenon. This framework captures how impunity operated simultaneously at different levels of Duterte's drug war, from the structural traits of state institutions and the legal system, shielding state officials from accountability to strategic power relations between Duterte and his agents, granting them a free license to kill. I argue that within Duterte's campaign of terror and violence, impunity was the means to the War on Drugs' end, functioning as a precondition for the President to achieve his political objectives. I demonstrate how and why Rodrigo Duterte strategically and effectively leveraged the features of the legal system and state institutions to erode the independence of accountability mechanisms in the country, thereby protecting state officials from legal prosecutions. Concurrently, I highlight how and why Duterte publicly empowered and legitimized his subordinates to kill with impunity, securing their loyalty necessary for the President to fuel his drug war. Ultimately, this thesis contributes to the under-researched impunity-gap problématique in Duterte's WoD by shedding light on how and why impunity was practiced and implemented.