The moment all authoritarians dread showed up this week.
Despite several efforts to insulate himself from the deaths of thousands of Filipinos, former President Rodrigo Duterte (71) was arrested Tuesday.
Arrested for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, what signal does this send to other authoritarians? The 50-year-old dominance of the Marcos and Duterte dynasties was inescapable during my visit to the Presidential Museum in Manilla last year.
Documented by Amnesty International, the elected administrations of Ferdinand Marcos (1965-1986) and Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2020) were responsible for mass corruption, hundreds of thousands of extrajudicial killings, unlawful detentions and torture, enforced disappearances and state violence against Filipino people.
