The Dutertes’ 40-year reign: Forged from strongman and victim

Editor’s note: This is part of a Rappler series on Filipino families that have held political power for generations. The series traces how they built their influence, where it is strongest, and how it has endured over time. Each profile examines family ties, political networks, business interests, and roles in local and national government.

It’s been 38 years since Davao City knew any other kind of governance but the Dutertes’. 

What began with one man brandishing a local peace and order campaign in 1988 has expanded into a Philippine allurement to safety — a move that solidified the Dutertes’ political stronghold with three generations now being elected into city and national government positions. 

Despite the family’s numerous human rights violations and corruption allegations, this growing dynasty has been constantly amplified by an unbowed Duterte following on the ground and online with perennial backing of coordinated disinformation. 

Davao-based supporters had even staged a massive rally passionately calling to bring the former president Rodrigo Duterte home after he was arrested and detained in The Hague, Netherlands for charges of crimes against humanity in March 2025. 

What makes the Dutertes so attractive that people are willing to fight or lie for these public officials amid their explicit controversies? 

Rappler analyzes some narratives the Dutertes and their allies have fed the public throughout the years in relation to their track record, and how these stories have influenced the family’s staying power. 

Monopolizing the strongman narrative

Davao City in the 1980s was known as a hotbed of communist insurgency, triggered by rampant military abuses during the Marcos dictatorship. With warring state forces, armed resistance, and vigilante groups, the crimes, poverty, and political unrest worsened across the city, once giving Davao the moniker ’Murder Capital’ of the Philippines.  

First elected as mayor in 1988, Duterte primarily approached this dilemma with an aggressive and bloody peace and order campaign, eliminating alleged criminals, drug addicts, and even street children through vigilante-style killings or the notorious Davao Death Squad. 

Many believe Duterte and his strongman methods curbed the violence and ushered economic opportunities, making Davao one of the most progressive and safest cities in the country. This also established the “Duterte magic” with the majority of Dabawenyos who revere him as savior of the city.  (READ: Why does Duterte remain popular, influential in Davao City?)

“The narrative is it was just him and his will that turned us around, and made us peaceful, and stamped out criminality,” peace and development worker Mags Maglana told Rappler in 2025. 

“But there were laws upheld like the Local Government Code of 1991 giving local governments more resources and power…to manage the situation. But that’s the local government, not just one person,” she explained. 

Propelled by an impenetrable Mindanao and Bisaya base, Duterte dominated the 2016 presidential elections. His banner platform of deterring crime and corruption captured the general Filipino public, enabling the replication of the Davao model nationwide. Ten years later, Duterte faces trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for presumed murders committed from November 2011 to March 2019 during his terms as Davao mayor and Philippine president. 

Based on official police records gathered by Rappler in 2020, almost 8,000 people were killed by Duterte’s drug war which largely targeted poor communities, especially across Metro Manila. But human rights groups estimate around 27,000 to 30,000 deaths, including vigilante-style killings. 

Discrediting victims and dissenters

Duterte’s ICC case is considered an international tribunal landmark as he is the first former head of state arrested through such a ruling. As drug war victims’ families celebrated this step towards justice and accountability, the unprecedented arrest had an opposite effect in Davao and other parts of Mindanao, where Duterte remains highly prominent for his ethnopopulist appeal and resonating contributions to the historically-marginalized region. 

Days after the March 11, 2025 arrest, Duterte’s online networks boosted paid and coordinated content framing the former president as a victim, which imitated the Duterte camp’s false claims of the ICC kidnapping and illegal detention. A year into the case, disinformation narratives have also targeted the ICC’s legitimacy, while the real victims’ families and allies continually face online threats and fear physical harm. 

But in Davao, The Hague arrest was primarily received with anger and a sense of betrayal as an outside entity jailed their hometown father, cementing the pathway for the Dutertes’ landslide wins during the 2025 midterm elections. 

Today, Duterte’s popularity and perceived legacy has catapulted six family members into government, namely, his children Sara Duterte (vice president of the Philippines), Sebastian Duterte (Davao City mayor), and Paolo Duterte (Davao City 1st District representative); Paolo’s wife January Navares Duterte (Barangay Catalunan Grande chairperson, Association of Barangay Captains Davao City president), and his sons Omar (Davao City 2nd District representative) and Rodrigo II or Rigo (Davao City 1st District councilor and designated vice mayor) who made their national debut in the last elections. 

Blocking transparency mechanisms

In the Duterte biography, Beyond Will and Power, author Earl Parreño wrote that early into his political career in the mid-90s, Duterte felt uncomfortable having a kin succeed his position. But due to continuity concerns in Davao’s development and leadership, Duterte eventually chose Sara as his running mate in the 2007 local elections, the same year Paolo ran as barangay captain of Catalunan Grande in the city’s first district, which became a precursor for establishing their political dynasty.  

Long-time political ally turned opposition Ruy Lopez told Rappler in 2025 that the potential abuse of power with a father-daughter tandem in office made him retract his support for Duterte.  

“There’s no check and balance. And that’s what happened from 2007 up to now, [the] budget for confidential funds, and peace and order funds have no accountability,” he said. 

Apart from a culture of impunity, Duterte’s administration from 2016 to 2022 was heavily marked by a lack of transparency and major corruption issues, contrary to his campaign pledges. This includes restricting public access to officials’ Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN), awarding P10-billion-worth of anomalous Pharmally contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the retail sale of laptops supposedly for public school teachers under the Department of Education (DepEd), among others.

Meanwhile, Sara is currently facing her second impeachment trial at the Senate for various allegations such as the underdeclared SALNs and the misuse of P612.50 million confidential funds under the Office of the Vice President and the DepEd. 

Sara has not appeared in any of the impeachment trial hearings to date, and depicted the trial as a blood bath while supporters tagged it as political persecution, consistent with the Dutertes’ shifting strongman and victim rhetoric ever since the dynasty’s public inception. – Rappler.com

*Quotes have been translated to English for brevity.