Since coming to power in mid-2016, President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drug war policies have led to the extrajudicial killing of more than 12,000 people (an average of approximately one death for every hour he has been in office). Senator Antonio Trillanes has emerged as the principle critic of Duterte’s policies since the president jailed Senator Leila De Lima on trumped up charges in February 2017. Senator Trillanes has alleged that Paulo Duterte, 42, the Vice Mayor of Davao City — and the President’s son — was complicit in bringing a 6.4-billion peso ($125 million) shipment of methamphetamine that slipped through the Philippine Bureau of Customs. Trillanes also alleged that Duterte Sr. amassed billions of pesos in ill-gotten funds, challenging him to open his bank accounts to scrutiny. With Senator De Lima in jail, Trillanes becomes Duterte’s new target. Duterte was reportedly saying, “I will destroy him or he will destroy me.”

Come to IPS to hear from the main Senator opposing Duterte’s excesses in a discussion moderated by IPS Fellow and Drug Policy Project Director Sanho Tree. This will be an opportunity to ask and learn about politically motivated maneuvers against the Supreme Court chief justice, the Commission on Human Rights, the Catholic Church and critical media outlets in the Philippines as the country drifts into authoritarianism.