It is perilous to be an activist in President Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines.

The government's attacks on dissenters and activists have escalated in the name of counterterrorism over the past year, replicating the aggressiveness of its bloody and longstanding “war on drugs”.

During the period from June 2016 (when Duterte was inaugurated) to August 2020, 328 anti-government activists have been killed, according to human rights group Karapatan. The latest killings in this record were often carried out by unidentified perpetrators, suspected by Karapatan of being linked to state forces. The difficulty of identifying the perpetrators makes it challenging to claim justice for these killings.

Over the past year, state security forces have become more brazen, in full view of the public, in raiding the offices of legal activist organisations. Many Manila-based activists have been falsely identified as communist rebels and have been included on a terrorist list, which can have fatal consequences.

In 2019, the Philippines was classified as the worst country in Asia for environmental defenders with 43 killings, according to Global Witness.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Duterte signed an anti-terror law that critics warn can allow most forms of political dissent to be sanctioned.

It is no surprise that the administration of Duterte, known for his anti-human rights action and rhetoric, would attack militant left activists associated with human rights groups. But this was not the case approximately five years ago.

Duterte had been successful in working with the militant left while he was mayor of Davao City, despite his notoriety for supporting and fomenting drug-related extrajudicial killings.  This working relationship resulted in progressive social programs in the city, such as a law on respect for women.

Duterte also facilitated the release of high-level military captives of the Communist Party of the Philippine’s (CPP) New People’s Army and is closely associated with Leoncio Evasco, a former communist rebel whom he recruited to be his chief of staff when he became mayor.

Further, some of Duterte’s campaign promises aligned with the left’s agenda, such as ending labor contracting, opposing environmentally destructive large-scale mining, and showing antipathy towards the Philippines’ alignment with the United States.

Most importantly, Duterte promised to restart peace talks with both Moro separatists and communists engaged in armed conflict with the government, and to release political prisoners.

Duterte’s gestures toward the left became more convincing when he asked the CPP to nominate individuals to his Cabinet, resulting in the appointment of well-known militant left leaders, like peasant movement leader Rafael Mariano, former community organizer and professor Judy Taguiwalo, and former leftist party-list representative Liza Maza.

We argue that the left was both friend and foe, engaging in both contentious and cooperative actions to advance its own agenda.

The left reciprocated Duterte’s friendly gestures during the campaign with supportive pronouncements, and by refraining from directing street protests against his government.  Most conspicuously, on Duterte’s first State of the Nation Address in July 2016, the left did not burn an effigy of the President as had been customary, and street rallyists proclaimed the rally was not ‘anti-administration’. 

Militant left organizations opposed the continuation of neoliberal economic policies. The CPP and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines rejected neoliberal economic policies by proposing a Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-Economic Reforms through the peace talks with Duterte’s government.

Kadamay, a movement of informal settlers advocating for free mass housing for the poor, acted against the government’s neoliberal approach to public housing. In March 2017, an informal group of settler families organized by Kadamay took over some 5,000 unoccupied public housing units in Pandi, Bulacan. Eventually, Duterte agreed to assign the unoccupied units to the occupying families, but in the same breath he vowed to repel further takeovers of empty assets by force. 

Militant left Secretary of Agrarian Reform Rafael Mariano urged Duterte to order a two-year moratorium on the conversion of land to non-agricultural uses, which was a device by which land was being removed from the scope of the land reform program. Further, as Social Welfare and Development Secretary, Judy Taguiwalo, had introduced changes to pre-existing welfare programs meant to undercut their use in perpetuating patronage politics and corruption.

The event that decisively broke the friend-and-foe relationship between the left and Duterte occurred on Nov. 18, 2016, when the Marcos family, with Duterte’s authorization, buried their late patriarch, president-dictator Ferdinand Marcos, at the Heroes’ Cemetery.

Bayan categorically opposed conferring ‘any official honors for the dictator Marcos, whether as a hero, soldier, or former president’. Progressive groups unsuccessfully attempted to block the burial, and Bayan took an active role in the protests that afternoon.

Later on Dec. 10, Bayan and its allies organized a huge street protest for International Human Rights Day. Their demands included ‘an end to impunity in the war on drugs, as the death toll rises and as state agents are emboldened by presidential pronouncements’.

The relationship between Duterte and the militant left worsened in the succeeding months. Drug-related killings continued to escalate. Progressive Cabinet members were not confirmed by the Commission of Appointments. The peace process become more uncertain. Militarization of the countryside escalated as the administration attacked militant left activists, including human rights organizations.

Finally, in September 2017, Makabayan broke away from Duterte’s super-majority coalition. The failure of the left–Duterte alliance underscores and confirms the extreme difficulty of pursuing reform of and within the Philippines’ elite democracy.

As the Philippines lurches even more clearly towards authoritarianism, radical opposition, not progressive cooperation, is becoming more imperative.

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Emerson Sanchez is a PhD candidate, University of Canberra, and Jayson Lamchek is a visiting fellow, Australian National University. This article has been co-published with Melbourne Asia Review, Asia Institute, University of Melbourne.