Former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte once boasted about how, as mayor of the southern city of Davao, he used to ride on a motorbike looking for drug suspects to kill. Now his bloody wars on narcotics have landed him in a Netherlands jail cell accused of crimes against humanity.  

Duterte’s fall from retired head of state to International Criminal Court detainee has been as sharp as his rise to rule his country between 2016 and 2022. The man branded “the Trump of Asia” won power and popularity by casting himself as enforcer, nationalist and peace-bringer, in language laden with insults and menace. The same ruthless politics that took him to the top have now unseated him, after his successor Ferdinand Marcos Jr, son of the dictator, paved the way for his arrest. 

“Duterte rode a singular crest of bravado and brutality,” says Richard Javad Heydarian, author of The Rise of Duterte and senior lecturer at the University of the Philippines’ Asian Center. “But the defiant hubris that catapulted him to the presidency and notoriety, also blinded him to his vulnerability. In the end, he picked a fight against the wrong opponent — the Marcoses, the masters of Machiavellian politics in the Philippines.”