Duterte and the Philippine president as killer
Here’s an intriguing and scary thought: If Rodrigo Duterte wins the election next year, he would become the first Philippine president to have publicly claimed that he’s a killer.
In fact, he doesn’t just claim that he’s killed people, he brags about it. And we’re not talking about killing just one person.
The tally is “mga 1,700” as he himself put it. Not 700, he insisted, reacting to one critic who apparently undercounted his killing spree.
“Nagkulang ho sila sa kuwenta,” he told reporters.
Of course, this could just be all hot hair, the crazy claim of a politician known for projecting a ‘don’t-mess-with-me’ macho tough guy image.
But it did make me think: Who among the nation’s presidents has killed another person?
The “Philippine President as Killer” or “Death and the Philippine Presidency” would be a compelling research project for historians or history students.
Let’s start with Emilio Aguinaldo and Andres Bonifacio.
There’s a debate on who should be considered the first Philippine president. We won’t go into that. In any case, we know that they both fought in the revolutionary war against Spain.
Aguinaldo was, of course, controversial for his alleged role in two historic killings: Bonifacio’s and that of another hero of the revolution who is now much more well-known, Antonio Luna.
Manuel L. Quezon, who served as president of the Philippine Commonwealth, also fought in the revolution.
But did he actually kill anyone personally?
To get answers, I turned to my friend and former high school classmate, Emil Avancena, who is one of Quezon’s grandsons.
“As far as I know, si Quezon walang napatay na personal,” he told me in an email. “But he was a colonel in the revolutionary army and fought against the Americans, so I guess it’s possible that he fired shots and actually killed someone in battle.”
Emil referred me to another Quezon grandson, his cousin Manolo Quezon, who serves in President Noynoy Aquino’s administration, “whose knowledge of Philippine history from that era is encyclopedic.”
And yes, indeed, Manolo knows this stuff.
He said their grandfather was “primarily a staff officer” in the revolutionary army but he did see combat, especially during the Philippine-American War.
Quezon actually spoke of killing in a 1937 in a speech in Washington D.C. at the banquet of the Military Order of the Carabao, a fraternal organization of U.S. military veterans, Manolo told me in an email.
“I remember the days when my great ambition was to kill an American soldier, and my constant fear was to be killed by an American soldier,” the late president said.
In his autobiography, Quezon recalls the time when he actually did.
He wrote of leading an encounter with American troops: “At the first discharge of our rifles the horse ran away with his rider and instinctively the tired soldiers followed their leader. We killed two whose corpses I had buried. It was my last engagement with the American troops, for from that time on my malaria came back and I was never well enough to indulge in any guerilla warfare.”
Other presidents also had experience in guerrilla warfare, especially during World War 2.
Manolo pointed out that while other former presidents did perform military service in one form or another “none served as front-line soldiers.”
Aguinaldo
Marcos
Duterte
During World War II, Manuel Roxas was a liaison officer between the U.S.A.F.E.E. and President Quezon. Ramon Magsaysay was also with the guerrilla movement as an intelligence officer. Carlos Garcia was said to have led a guerrilla unit in Bohol.
Then there’s Ferdinand Marcos. He came out of the war with perhaps the most incredible stories about guerrilla exploits against the Japanese.
After the war, he requested recognition for his guerrilla force from the Americans by claiming in a 29-page document that his unit, supposedly called Maharlika, ”spawned from the dragging pain and ignominy” of the Bataan death march and that its members ”grew such a hatred of the enemy as could be quenched with his blood alone,” according to a January 1986 New York Times report.
The document is believed to have been written by Marcos himself. In it, Marcos is portrayed as a dashing Rambo-like hero, a one-man Avenger team: “’It seemed as if the Japanese were after him alone and not after anyone else,” the document said, according to the New York Times report.
It was a fantasy. And the late dictator was eventually exposed as a fraud and a liar.
In fact, the U.S. Veteran’s Administration even uncovered an ugly truth about Marcos’ guerrillas: instead of being heroes, some of them were actually notorious for engaging in “nefarious activity,” such as selling contraband to the Japanese, the report said.
Ray C. Hunt Jr., the former U.S. Army captain who helped lead guerrilla activities in the northern Luzon during the war, even told the New York Times: ”Marcos was never the leader of a large guerrilla organization, no way. … This is not true, no. Holy cow. All of this is a complete fabrication. It’s a cock-and-bull story.”
What’s ironic is that Marcos is also notorious for telling what many consider another cock-and-bull story — this time to defend against a charge that he killed someone. At 18, he was accused of assassinating his father’s political opponent. He later was acquitted with help from influential allies.
So Marcos was not just a brutal dictator — he was also a convicted murderer.
Marcos is even more notorious for something else: he holds the distinction of being the Philippine president who killed, tortured and imprisoned the greatest number of Filipinos in our country’s history.
Here’s the tally of victims for the Marcos dictatorship:
- 70,000 incarcerated
- 35,000 tortured
- 3,200 murdered
Yep, Marcos holds the record: 3,200 people killed.
Would Duterte be able to match that if he becomes president? Well, if his claim is true, then he’s got a huge head start with the 1,700 he said he’s already killed.
Still, he has ways to go.
He would need to kill 1,500 more people to tie Marcos. That’s 250 a year, or about 21 a month in a six-year term. Or roughly a person a day except weekends.
But then again, maybe he’s not looking to stay in power for just six years.
And one point is worth noting: Duterte claims to have done the killing himself. Now, imagine how many more people he would be able to kill if he learned to delegate …
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