The old man Duterte himself has said, as have their propagandists, that Sara is worse than her father. I tend to believe them all. After all, if there’s anything we now know for sure, while she might not have the same kind of “charm” that her father did, she has built a powerful woman vibe, the kind that gets away with saying she imagined beheading the President; or that she will have him, his wife, and his cousin conditionally assassinated; the kind that gets away with saying she wants a bloodbath. The kind that went on stage at various 2025 local campaign sorties to publicly take down, with photos and videos, those she considered as “enemy”.
That she has approval numbers like this despite an impeachment she deserves, as does her father jailed and on trial for crimes against humanity and the thousands killed in the drug war, should be reason for alarm—and urgent, focused, strategic action—if we care at all about our freedoms.
The numbers don’t lie
Regardless of whether you believe in Pulse Asia or Social Weather Station surveys, these firms have existed in our socio-political history as a way to capture public opinion at any given point in time. It does not posit the truth, as it does a truth for a specific moment. These surveys only make sense if we understand its methodology, and the painstaking care taken to get these data; it only functions as it should when we are able to contextualize it in the particular milieu within which these were done.
The latter, to me, has been important especially as I tend to see these survey results as tied to how the propaganda war is going.
The old man Duterte’s trust ratings in the Pulse Asia survey done from May 6 to 9 2025, showing that 63% of Filipino trust him, makes absolute sense to me given that context. It even makes sense relative to the SWS Survey from February 15 to 19 2025 where 51% of Filipinos agreed that Duterte should be held accountable for the drug war-related killings. It makes sense relative to new-kid-on-the-block WR Numero’s March 31 to April 7 2025 survey that showed that 61% of Filipinos believed it important that Duterte’s co-perpetrators on the crimes committed in the name of the war on drugs also be arrested and face the ICC, a question which to me is already premised on the belief that Duterte’s arrest by the ICC is valid.
And all of this makes sense relative to the same May 6 to 9 2025 Pulse Asia survey that says 58% of Filipinos disagree with Duterte’s arrest by the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague.