Duterte’s Mixed Legacy
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President Rodrigo Duterte (Source: South China Morning Post)
Critics and most observers will undoubtedly focus on the trail of blood he left behind. Human Rights Watch’s 2022 report cited two contrasting casualty figures of Duterte’s war on drugs between 2016 and August 2021: some 12,000 to 30,000 according to different rights groups versus an expectedly smaller government admission of 6,190 people killed. These institutions may disagree over the exact numbers, but what they do not dispute is that 90 percent of those killed were poor.
Yet, “Tatay Digong” also leaves the presidency with a remarkable record of serving the poor even as his police officers and hired assassins continue to kill their fathers, mothers, and children. In an article, she published in the journal Development and Change, Prof. Charmaine G. Ramos of the Netherland’s Wageningen University wrote that in his first three years in office, Duterte had “overseen the highest level of social spending witnessed in the three decades beginning in 1986” with “the 2017-2018 government social spending … at its highest level for 32 years both as part of public spending and percentage of GDP.”
Sectoral Distribution of Public Spending in the Philippines, 2008-2017 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7078796/
The government's 2021 budget showed a consistent bias in favor of social welfare; a policy began by his last three predecessors, which he continued and expanded. As a result, education now gets the lion's share of the budget (P174.9 billion pesos, 16.7 percent of the total budget), followed by public works (P135.6 billion, 15.4 percent). The third-largest amount went to the local government department (P249.3 billion), which amounted to only 5.5 percent of the total budget. This sizeable allotment has enabled Duterte to sign into law the granting of free education in all state universities and colleges, despite warnings by his economic managers' that free education would cost the government an estimated $2 billion a year.
The same may be the case with Duterte's two other social programs.
Filipinos now enjoy universal health care courtesy of a law Duterte signed in February 2019. The law has expanded existing benefits by adding free medical consultation and laboratory tests. Covid-19 had slowed down the program's pace as the government had been forced to spend more than $32 billion in 2019 to deal with the pandemic. Yet, this hemorrhage in health funds – aggravated by an inefficient, corrupt health department – had not deterred Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez from declaring that the government was "fully committed to implementing the Universal Health Care Act."
Duterte also institutionalized the World-Bank-supported Pantawid Pamilya Program that began under President Gloria Arroyo and was continued by President Benigno Aquino Jr. Despite his animus for his predecessor, Duterte, expanded the program, backed by a $43 million loan from a giddy World Bank. Three years later, Duterte made Pantawid a part of the Department of Social Welfare and Development budget by signing Republic Act No. 11310 on May 22, 2019. Finally, Duterte lowered the personal income tax as part of his Tax Reform for Acceleration Law (Republic Act No. 10963). A higher consumption tax could quickly eat away at the now robust individual savings. Still, indirect taxation has also been effective in mitigating widespread anger.
Critics argue that these programs are unsustainable. A May 2022 regression analysis by economists of the 2006-2015 University of the Philippines admission data suggests that "the new free tuition policy is likely to benefit students from richer families" disproportionately. Others warn that the Pantawid's success will be limited given the "obsolescent data of the registry" of those classified as poor.
Still, others warn that an increasing imbalance in the debt-to-equity ratio will put a serious damper on these programs. In 2019, the government's ability to pay its obligations was at 39.6 percent. In 2020, it had jumped by 14.3 percent before reaching 58.1 percent by the end of 2021. As of March 2022, the total government debt had reached $233.2 million; 30 percent came from external sources, while 70 percent was from domestic borrowings.
Yet, even if his opponents are proved right in the long run, these programs so far have been enough to sustain Duterte's popularity. Filipinos – including the poor -- approve, forgive. and tolerate Duterte's brutal war in exchange for these dole outs. And Duterte kept their hopes high with a proposed 2022 budget of 5.024 trillion pesos that continued to favor social services. Congress approved the proposal but increased the percentage of the budget for national security at the same time as it did social welfare.
Source: Inquirer.net (September 29, 2021)
The potential catastrophes – if they ever happen - will not be Duterte's concern anymore. Instead, it will be his successor – be this be Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., or Vice-President Leni Robredo., Whatever political capital Marcos builds will quickly dissipate if he touches the social programs Duterte left behind. Robredo will expand these social programs further because of her concern for the poor. With a bloating debt-to-equity ratio, a Marcos or Robredo administration will have little wiggle room to pursue pet programs.
Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. (Source: South China Morning Post) and Vice President Leni Robredo (Source: Inquirer.net)
Finally, Duterte will also be remembered for one bold executive action. This was strong-arming selected business families and institutions to show Filipinos how anti-oligarch he was. For example, it supposedly took just one short lunch with the "untouchable" Lucio Tan to make him agree to pay back taxes worth $117 million that Tan's company, Philippine Airlines, had not paid. Within a week after the "request," sources reported that millions of dollars began pouring into the national government coffers from different offshore banks. After that, Philippine Airlines was left alone.
Duterte did a similar Vito-Corleone-ish “I'll-make-you-an-offer-you-can't-refuse" to the lesser-known second-largest cigarette manufacturer of the country, Mighty Corporation, which promptly agreed to pay about $493.15 million in back taxes, the most significant tax settlement ever in the history of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. Previous presidents had attempted this ploy, but none achieved as much as Duterte. Marcos will hesitate to do this, given that he wants Filipinos to forget his family's looting of the country entirely. Robredo will probably up the ante and go for the big one: the Marcoses’ ill-gotten billions. If she succeeds, she will be able to take the edge off the debt problem, even if this may be temporary.
However, any overall assessment of Rodrigo Duterte is expected to revolve around his drug war, boorishness, and "authoritarianism." That he simply continued with what were essentially his predecessors' social programs also prevents him from claiming these programs as his own. Duterte can assert that he took these programs to heights that presidents before him were unable or afraid to reach. And this he can claim as his legacy.
The sad thing is that all of these – from the killings to free health care – will quietly and quickly fade from people's memories. Given how remarkably uninterested Filipinos are in learning to read (we are now the lowest on a list of 79 countries evaluated by the Programme for International Student Assessment in 2018), and how easily most of us are fooled by fake narratives, we are turning backs on “Tatay Digong” and looking forward to the next big tsismis –how much Liza Araneta will out-Imeldific her mother-in-law once she becomes the next first lady.
Patricio N. Abinales teaches at the Department of Asian Studies, University of Hawaii-Manoa. He is working on a book on Mindanao and the Social Origins of Rodrigo Duterte and co-editing with Leia Castañeda-Anastacio an anthology on the regime of Ferdinand Marcos
More articles by Patricio N. Abinales
