01/10/2025
[MORNING COFFEE THOUGHTS | REFLECTION] Rodrigo Duterte and the Karmic Ghosts of His Past Sins: An Essay on Justice Deferred But Not Denied
Power intoxicates. It blinds leaders to the weight of their actions. Rodrigo Duterte once strutted through Malacañang, promising to “kill them all” in his drug war.
Now he sits in a sterile detention cell in The Hague, facing charges of crimes against humanity.
The karmic wheel, slow but relentless, has turned with the weight of thousands of extrajudicial killings, shattered families, and a country scarred by state-sanctioned violence.
Karma isn’t just spiritual talk. It is a consequence.
Duterte’s fall isn’t only the arrest of a former head of state; it’s justice materializing after years when masked gunmen roamed Manila, Davao, and cities across the archipelago, executing alleged drug users with impunity.
The ghosts of his past, once suppressed by power, now walk openly in the antiseptic chambers of international law.
🟥 The Architecture of Violence: Building a Legacy of Blood
Duterte’s path to this reckoning started long before the presidency, on the blood-soaked streets of Davao City, where he spent more than two decades as mayor.
The Davao Death Squad, which he eventually admitted to creating and directing, became the prototype for the industrial-scale killing machine he later unleashed across the country.
He built a political brand on extrajudicial violence, selling the idea that brutality was the price of order, that summary ex*****on was the path to peace.
When he took office in 2016, he nationalized that creed with apocalyptic flair.
His “war on drugs” became state-sanctioned hunting of the poor, the marginalized, the defenseless.
Under the clean label of “buy-bust operations,” police became ex*****oners, turning neighborhoods into killing fields where due process was a luxury the impoverished could not afford.
The numbers tell a story that defies comprehension.
Official figures admit to more than 6,000 dead. Rights groups estimate 12,000 to 30,000. Men, women, children.
People whose “crime” was often being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Each number is a family destroyed, a future put out, a dream buried in unmarked ground that now forms part of Duterte’s legacy.
🟥 The Theater of Impunity: When Power Shields Evil
For years, he moved inside an armor of impunity, protected by populist approval and a political system comfortable with power’s corruption.
He boasted of killing with the indifference of a man ordering lunch, saying he would “be happy to slaughter” drug addicts.
International condemnations bounced off. Reports gathered dust.
Families of victims were silenced by fear and pushed to the margins of a society trained to see their loved ones as expendable.
Pulling the Philippines out of the International Criminal Court in 2019 looked like a masterstroke, a move to escape the reach of international justice.
He seemed like a chess player anticipating every countermove, neutralizing all threats to his impunity. It felt like the karmic bill would never fall due.
But karma runs on a longer clock than any single term.
While he dismantled checks on his power, the machinery of international justice turned.
Testimonies were gathered. Evidence stacked up. The ICC methodically built its case.
The very withdrawal from the Rome Statute became a tell: a sign of consciousness of guilt, a desperate dodge that would fail.
🟥 The Unraveling: When Alliances Become Instruments of Justice
The twist is sharp. Former allies helped bring him down. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who rode to victory in 2022 on the “UniTeam” alliance with the Duterte family, became the agent of Duterte’s surrender to international justice.
A marriage of convenience between two powerful dynasties devolved into a feud that delivered Duterte into the hands of prosecutors.
The karmic poetry is hard to miss.
Marcos, son of a dictator accused of widespread abuses, found himself enabling accountability for another strongman’s crimes.
The calculations that once protected Duterte—stability, fear of his popularity, mutual benefit—crumbled as the alliance cracked under ambition and self-preservation.
Sara Duterte’s impeachment proceedings and her father’s arrest mark the final act of this political tragedy. Allies turned enemies. The same machinery of power that once shielded him now helps prosecute him.
The daughter once framed as continuity now faces her reckoning, while the patriarch shrinks into a frail old man claiming cognitive impairment to escape consequence.
🟥 The Ghosts Speak: Voices of the Victims Echo in The Hague
The most profound turn lies in the voices of victims—long stifled by bullets and fear—now speaking through international justice.
Maria Pasco, who lost two sons to the drug war, said through tears: “At last, after many years of waiting, this is happening.” Her words carry the weight of thousands who never thought they’d see this day.
The ICC became the place where ghosts found their voices.
Seventy-six specific murders in the charges are not just counts, they are human stories.
Ray Siapo, 19, with deformed feet, unable to outrun his ex*****oners.
Angelito Soriano, 15, killed in a police operation and written off by Senator Ronald dela Rosa as “collateral damage.”
These names, once swallowed by the machinery of state violence, now echo in the chamber where Duterte will face judgment.
This karmic justice stretches beyond one man.
It’s a reckoning with the culture of impunity that has haunted Philippine politics.
For the first time, families see officials, police, even a former president, held to account.
The system that once protected killers now seeks to prosecute them.
Victims shift from statistics to witnesses, from forgotten casualties to agents of justice.
🟥 The Frailty of Power: From Strongman to Broken Man
Look at him now: 80 years old, claiming cognitive impairment.
The man who bragged about throwing suspects from helicopters, who barked “kill them all,” now presents himself as a confused elder unable to grasp the charges.
His legal team talks of “significant cognitive deficiencies,” a bid to duck accountability through diminished capacity.
Power is temporary. The wheel turns for everyone. Bodies used to commit violence decay. Minds used to justify cruelty cloud over.
That’s the lesson in his frailty.
And the irony is even more ironic. He showed no mercy to the vulnerable and defenseless. Now he pleads for mercy on the grounds of vulnerability and defenselessness.
Predator to prey. Hunter to hunted. The man who denied due process to thousands now depends on due process for survival.
🟥 The International Stage: Where Karma Becomes Law
His prosecution at the ICC is more than personal accountability. It’s the moment karmic justice takes legal form.
The decision to pursue charges despite the country’s withdrawal from the Rome Statute says something simple: sovereignty doesn’t shield leaders from crimes against humanity.
The journey from the presidential palace in Manila to a detention cell in The Hague is more than miles.
It’s moral distance, the gap between impunity and accountability, between power exercised and consequences faced.
Even the private jet that carried him there reads like a vehicle of karmic transport, ferrying him from the scene of his acts to the venue of judgment.
🟥 The Broader Reckoning: A Nation Confronts Its Ghosts
His fall forces the country to tally the debt built up under his rule. Violence normalized. Institutions bent. Rights eroded.
The wounds reach far beyond the immediate dead and grieving. The nation now sits with the fact that it elevated officials who torched basic human dignity.
The family feuds, impeachment, broken alliances—this is what collapse looks like when power is built on violence and deception.
The crash harms not just the central figures, but the entire system that enabled them.
Out on the streets and online, protests both for and against his arrest expose a divided nation.
Supporters still chant “Pray for Tatay Digong.”
They are the segment willing to trade human rights for the illusion of order.
Their loyalty to a man now charged with crimes against humanity shows how deep the moral wound runs.
🟥 The Philosophy of Justice: When the Arc of History Bends
Martin Luther King Jr. said the moral universe has a long arc that bends toward justice. Duterte’s path—from peak power to international prosecution—fits that line.
Karmic forces don’t care about electoral calendars. Justice can be delayed, not denied.
Seven years from his rise to arrest, the momentum built.
Each extrajudicial killing added weight to the scale.
Each public boast of violence became evidence.
Each attempt to dodge accountability invited more scrutiny.
The things he believed proved strength turned into the tools of his downfall.
Moral laws work with the certainty of physical ones. What goes up comes down. Those who rise on violence meet its consequences.
🟥 The Eternal Return of Justice
He sits in The Hague now, waiting for trial on crimes against humanity.
Karmic justice isn’t abstract anymore. It has become legal charges, witness testimony, documentary proof.
His story is a warning to would-be strongmen.
Power built on violence is unstable. Impunity is temporary.
The arc may be long, but it bends where it should.
Families who once seemed powerless now watch their oppressor face the prospect of spending his remaining years behind bars.
The ghosts he raised have caught up. Shadows turned solid.
The man who thought himself above the law learns that no one—not even former presidents—escapes the return of justice.
The wheel has completed its turn. The reckoning that felt impossible has arrived.
Photo credit: Aljazeera
