THERE is a peculiar kind of political immortality that only controversy can confer. As Rodrigo Duterte sits in a detention cell in Scheveningen, The Hague, watching ICC prosecutors present evidence that he orchestrated the murder of thousands of Filipinos in the name of a drug war, his name has never been more globally recognized. The ICC confirmation of charges hearing that concluded on Feb. 27, 2026, the first time an Asian former head of state has faced this tribunal, has turned the Duterte name into something it was always becoming: an international brand. The question that should trouble every Filipino strategist, diplomat and citizen is whether that brand will be an asset or a liability come 2028.
From a communications standpoint, Rodrigo Duterte has always been a marketer’s nightmare and a political consultant’s dream. His brand DNA was built on transgression: profanity-laced speeches, extrajudicial swagger, the theatrical cruelty of a strongman who wanted you to know exactly what he was capable of. In the Philippines, that translated into electoral dominance. Globally, it made him a case study. With the ICC hearing now broadcasting live around the world, complete with prosecutors alleging involvement in at least 76 murders between 2013 and 2018, with some estimates placing the total death toll in the drug war as high as 30,000, the Duterte brand has gone fully global. But the audience is no longer just Filipino voters.
Here is the strategic paradox: at The Hague, the brand is being destroyed. In Manila, it is being refined.
ICC proceedings have a way of elevating their subjects to a different plane of public consciousness. Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor, Jean-Pierre Bemba are examples of those whose trials transformed them from mere political villains into global symbols. Duterte is now in that company. For the international community, the confirmation hearings cement his legacy as the face of state-sanctioned brutality in Southeast Asia, a cautionary tale told in witness statements and forensic evidence. For human rights organizations, victims’ families, and international observers, the hearings, with relatives of those killed watching livestreams from the Philippines with what one Nikkei Asia report described as “joy,” represent a long-awaited reckoning with impunity.
But impunity is not a universal pejorative in Philippine politics. It is sometimes a selling point.
Among Duterte’s core base — a constituency that stays significant, vocal and organizationally intact, the ICC proceedings read not as accountability but as persecution. His defiant letter to the court declaring he does “not recognize” its jurisdiction and that he is “proud” of his legacy is not the statement of a broken man; it is a carefully calibrated message to his supporters back home. Every procedural delay the defense engineered, every medical fitness argument, every reference to “kidnapping” in cooperation with Marcos, feeds a counter-narrative: that Rodrigo Duterte is a nationalist martyr, surrendered to foreign courts by a political rival, punished for doing what weak leaders refuse to do. This is a powerful brand story, and it is one that Sara Duterte is already beginning to inherit.
Which brings us to the second front: the renewed push to impeach Vice President Sara Duterte, with the House committee on justice formally initiating hearings on Feb. 23 — the very day her father’s ICC hearings opened in The Hague. The symbolic coincidence is too neat. Father and daughter, both on trial. Both defiant. Both casting themselves as victims of a Marcos-orchestrated political purge.
Sara’s announcement on Feb. 18 that she is running for president in 2028 transformed the impeachment drama from a governance accountability exercise into a presidential campaign prologue. The National Unity Party’s Feb. 25 statement that it would “most likely” vote against her impeachment is already evidence that her presidential ambitions are reshaping congressional calculations. In Philippine politics, as any seasoned observer knows, the threat of future power is often more persuasive than the weight of present evidence.
What we are seeing, then, is a brand bifurcation. The Duterte brand is splitting in two. One version — Rodrigo, detained and facing crimes against humanity charges, with a Pre-Trial Chamber decision expected within 60 days of the hearing’s close is being internationalized, framed in the language of international criminal law, and increasingly associated with the most severe category of human rights violations. The other version, Sara, impeachment-tested, presidentially positioned, leaning into the family’s victimhood narrative is being domesticated, repackaged for 2028 consumption, shorn of the drug war’s body count and refocused on a simpler message: the Marcos administration is afraid of us because we represent the people.
This is textbook brand crisis management. Distance the sub-brand from the liability; redirect the emotional loyalty of the base; pivot the narrative from accountability to persecution; and use every legal and political setback as proof of the threat you pose to the establishment.
Whether this works depends on two variables that communications strategy cannot fully control: the ICC’s ruling and Sara’s ability to survive impeachment intact.
If the Pre-Trial Chamber confirms all three charges against Rodrigo Duterte, murders committed during the Davao period, targeted killings of high-value drug suspects, and the barangay clearance operations during his presidency, the case moves to trial. That means years of internationally televised proceedings, more evidence, more victim testimony, and a sustained global narrative that ties the Duterte name to crimes against humanity. For Sara’s 2028 campaign, that is a reputational anchor she cannot escape through rebranding alone. Internationally, it forecloses diplomatic space. Domestically, it will test whether Filipino voters are willing to elect the daughter of a man on trial at the world’s premier human rights tribunal. Still all these add up to a strong leader narrative who is ready to make bold decisions for the country and the Filipinos. That boldness is the key to handling certain sectors that hamstring the development of the nation: religion, oligarchs and captured governance.
If, however, the charges are not confirmed, an outcome considered unlikely by most legal observers given the breadth of prosecution evidence, but not impossible, the Duterte political machine would claim one of the most dramatic reversals in modern Philippine political history. The ICC would become, in their telling, the institution that tried and failed to break them.
The 2028 election is still two years away, but the brand calculus is being set right now, in a courtroom in The Hague and in the committee rooms of the House of Representatives. For the Duterte family, every legal proceeding is also a political communication. Every charge is a martyrdom narrative. Every hearing is a fundraising pitch to the base.
Filipino voters ultimately decide what the Duterte brand means. But the world is watching too, and for the first time in Philippine political history, what the world thinks may actually matter in leadership, governance, reform, and Asean.
