[Rappler’s Best] Standoff – and a mockery – in Davao 

What a long weekend not just for the privileged among us but for the Dutertes’ home court, as a composite team of about 2,000 cops from three regional police commands raided dawn of Saturday, August 24, the enclave of doomsday preacher and fugitive Pastor Apollo Quiboloy in Davao City. 

It’s Monday, August 26. The arrest warrant against the fugitive and alleged sex and child offender, and his associates, was issued by a local court five long months ago, in March. And so whatever the Philippine National Police (PNP) is doing now is an organizational saving-face, saving-a ___ act. The Dutertes’ political muscle, combined with police cowardice, corruption and, to borrow cop jargon, dereliction of duty, have allowed Quiboloy and his allies to mount rallies outside Davao in the past months, to agitate and mobilize their base, and to prop up their vast Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) property that is located near the city’s international airport.

Last night, Sunday, August 25, hundreds of KOJC members protested at the diversion road that leads to the airport, blocking traffic, and burning tires in retaliation, they told media, for the tear gas lobbed by the cops in the area. As of this writing, there were no signs that Quiboloy’s followers were going to pack up and go home.

It’s an old playbook.

I can’t help but recall how it had been in a posh Greenhills subdivision in San Juan, Metro Manila, more than two decades ago, in April 2001, when the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan ordered the arrest of ousted president Joseph Estrada and his associates for plunder. Estrada was ousted in a civilian-backed military revolt three months prior, in January, catapulting his vice president, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, to the presidency.

As word of an impending arrest order spread, Estrada loyalists started camping out in Greenhills, and for one day on April 24, 2001, managed to stop the police from taking the ex-president into custody. It took a warrant from a court sheriff’s visit the following day, and cooler heads from Estrada’s legal team, for him to be finally brought to his special detention center in a sprawling compound in Tanay, Rizal. 

Agitated and led by Estrada’s senator-allies, notably the late senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Tito Sotto, and now Marcos Jr.’s presidential adviser Juan Ponce Enrile, hundreds of thousands of Estrada supporters marched to the EDSA Shrine and then to Malacañang, calling for the ouster of Ms. Arroyo.

Backed by the Iglesia ni Cristo, the seven days of protests saw Estrada loyalists breaking through police lines, throwing stones at cops, burning vehicles, including those belonging to media organizations, and bringing the capital to its knees.

Arroyo eventually prevailed, but this moment hardened her core against protests and future destabilizers that would hound her administration.

Surely there are hard tactical — and strategic — lessons from those days that should inform all the decision-makers and commanders now involved in today’s Davao standoff?

After all, the protests are not just about protecting Quiboloy. It’s about former president Rodrigo Duterte and his fear that the International Criminal Court, with (what he suspects is) the connivance of Marcos Jr., is closing in on him over his alleged crimes against humanity. 

• Note how his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, blasted the “gross abuse of power” in the PNP’s raid of the Quiboloy compound even as she apologized to the KOJC for having asked them, in the 2022 presidential polls, to vote for…Marcos. The PNP had pulled out 75 cops from the Vice President’s security, though she still had about 400 cops and soldiers securing her as of early August.
• Note how the PNP is now blustering its way to please Malacañang, which apparently had been assured of a Quiboloy arrest in time for the President’s State of the Nation Address on July 22. We will stay here until Quiboloy and his four associates surface, vowed Brigadier General Nicolas Torre III, Davao Region’s police chief. He said they carry solid information that he’s inside the 30-hectare property. It’s a perverse game of hide-and-seek, as our Mindanao editor Herbie Gomez put it. 
• PNP chief Francisco Rommel Marbil declared they are legally allowed to prolong their stay and search in the area.  
• Note, however, how Duterte allies senators Bato dela Rosa and Bong Go, have been treading this rather cautiously. They are gunning for reelection in midterm elections that are usually dominated by the incumbent administration. 

It’s come to this that a fugitive on the US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s most wanted list since 2022 remains at large apparently in his own hometown. 

Davao has been a tough nut to crack for the Marcos government, because it is also handicapped by a law that provides local executives the power to short-list and appoint police officers in their own areas. The Dutertes control the PNP in Davao – in the same way local politicians control their police forces in their own areas. That is the flipside of devolution, as enunciated in the Local Government Code and the PNP law.

• The government tried to fix this in a series of moves. In May, at least 40 Davao cops were relieved from their posts over alleged drug charges, among others.
• In June, the Davao Region police chief, Aligre Martinez, was relieved, following the botched raids at the Quiboloy compound. After this, investigators and special action forces of PNP Davao were also reassigned to the Southern Tagalog provinces.
• In July, the government went for the kill as it replaced the city police chief and all station commanders under him. The major shakeup in the Davao City Police Office was the first of its kind in its history, according to keen Davao watchers.
• But Davao City Mayor Baste Duterte, mandated by the law to choose who he wants, appointed Colonel Lito Patay as police chief. The government removed Patay hours after he assumed the post. Patay, assigned in Metro Manila when Duterte was president, was part of the infamous “Davao Boys” group, which was allegedly behind the many killings at the height of Duterte’s bloody war on drugs.

What’s next? How the Davao standoff will end depends on how this government will navigate its desired endgame  — whatever that is. – Rappler.com

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