IN April 2016, Filipinos already read the writing on the wall: Davao City’s then-mayor Rodrigo Duterte would shatter most electoral norms in the presidential elections the following month. The first president from Mindanao. The first candidate running from a mayoral perch to be elected president. The May 2016 elections would just validate what survey after survey said: a Duterte victory is certain, with a margin unheard of in previous presidential polls.
In the air that particular April were talks of a dramatic remaking of the structure of Philippine polity — and a bigger one about a shift to a parliamentary form of government and the traditional micro-level pursuit of law and order getting elevated as the core policy plank of the incoming administration. Leoncio Evasco Jr., a former priest-turned-communist rebel-turned-Duterte confidant, was said to be drafting the ideological rough draft for “Dutertismo,” similar to Argentina’s “Peronismo”: the governing political principles that would last beyond Duterte’s presidency, the deep imprint that would be his legacy to Philippine governance and politics after his term ends.
In April 2026, only very few men of a certain age can still recall that six years of Duterte as president even made the vague promise of writing down a governing principle, or even the vaguer promise of a transformational presidency. At the end of his term, very little of the democratic institutions that were fully functional under his predecessor remained unscathed. The promised rule of law, according to Leila de Lima, the senator jailed by the Duterte administration on trumped-up charges, became the rule of one vengeful man.
Duterte is now detained under the custody of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague in the Netherlands, and is awaiting trial for crimes against humanity for allegedly killing thousands of mostly poor and innocent people in his bloody war on drugs. The April decision to try Duterte was made after a pre-trial confirmation hearing on the charges against him determined there was basis for a trial.
How the mighty have fallen.
As they say, when it rains, it pours. In that same April week the ICC decided to put Duterte on trial, his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, faced the harsh reality that the congressional panel hearing the impeachment case filed against her finally declared it had gotten hold of evidence to prove that she allegedly committed “high crimes” and “betrayed the laws and the Constitution.” Crimes against humanity against the father; betrayal of public trust and other high crimes against the daughter and anointed political heir.
It was hard to miss the striking parallels in the lives and times of the two Dutertes in April 2026. “April is the cruelest month of the year,” wrote the celebrated poet T.S. Eliot. “Breeding lilacs out of dead land, mixing memory and desire.”
Out of the dead, bloodied land that was Rodrigo Duterte’s legacy to the country — at least according to the findings of the ICC’s pre-confirmation hearings — the dream of another Duterte ascending to the presidency is now in real jeopardy, this time according to the representatives hearing the Sara Duterte impeachment case.
We found the “smoking gun,” said Akbayan Party-list Rep. Chel Diokno, referring to what he said was solid evidence that allegedly proved Sara Duterte betrayed public trust and should be impeached.
The smoking gun referenced by Diokno involved a staggering sum: P6.77 billion. That was the volume of money movement, either credited or debited, in the bank accounts of Sara Duterte and her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio, from 2006 to 2025. Banks had confirmed the mind-boggling account of money movements in the couple’s bank accounts to the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC), the veracity of which has been confirmed by that body before the congressional panel hearing the impeachment case.
The voluminous bank withdrawals and deposits that totaled P6.77 billion took a darker turn when Antonio Trillanes IV alleged that some of the multimillion-peso entries in the bank accounts of Sara Duterte came from one Samuel Uy, who the former senator said was a Davao-based “drug lord.”
More incriminating was the allegation that billions of pesos that moved into the bank accounts of the couple were never reflected in Sara Duterte’s statement of assets, liabilities and net worth, or SALN. A body of allegedly compelling evidence led the impeachment panel to declare there was “probable cause” to impeach the Duterte princeling. That would have to be approved by a forthcoming plenary vote.
As if the ICC trial for Rodrigo Duterte and the AMLC’s disclosure of billions of pesos that moved in the bank accounts of Sara Duterte and her husband were not enough, that streak of flailing fortunes even descended on some of the most loyal Dutertistas.
A KTV bar and hotel in Pasig City were ordered closed by Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto following a raid by the National Bureau of Investigation, which tagged the establishments as fronts for human trafficking and prostitution. Their alleged owners are the wife and son of former party-list representative Mike Defensor, who has made a name fighting pro-Duterte causes. Defensor has been linked to shadowy groups out to unsettle President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s administration to pave the way for a Sara Duterte presidency.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Internal Revenue has filed tax evasion cases against former presidential spokesman Harry Roque, his wife and a business associate of theirs.
All at one time in April 2026, fate was cruel to the Duterte principals and their minions.
