The week-long operations in Davao City involving at least 2,000 police personnel reportedly augmented with four companies of Army soldiers have so far failed to arrest wanted fugitive Apollo Quiboloy. Quiboloy, who is wanted for sex-trafficking and abuse of women and children, is one of the closest stooge of former president Rodrigo Duterte. He built his kingdom through land grabbing and slave labor in his mega-hacienda plantation of banana for exports.

These police and military operations form part of the deepening and increasingly violent contradictions between the different factions of the reactionary ruling classes, particularly between the Marcos ruling clique and the dislodged clique of the Dutertes. These were carried out after Marcos removed police officers loyal to Duterte and replaced them with his own.

Marcos is using this operation to arrest Quiboloy to undermine Duterte’s Davao kingdom in line with his aim of removing all obstacles to his ambition of monopolizing political power. He authorized the use of heavy-handed tactics and overpowering force by way of imposing his fascist will in Davao. Thousands of police have rampaged through Quiboloy’s private property (masquerading as a religious compound). People who were drawn into Quiboloy’s “kingdom” were made to barricade the compound and be at the receiving end of police violence.

Marcos has ordered the police and military forces to arrest the fascist warlord Quiboloy, but the greater and more urgent demand of the Filipino people is the arrest and trial of Duterte himself. The families of the several thousand people killed in the course of Duterte’s so-called drug war and the war of suppression have long clamored that Duterte and his criminal factotums be held to account for their innumerable crimes, perpetrated during their many years in power. They have filed a case before the International Criminal Court and hope to face him in trial.

Marcos himself is condemned by the Filipino people for having benefited from Duterte’s power, which gave his “uniteam” with Sara Duterte a “landslide” victory during the 2022 elections through fraud and manipulation of the automated counting. Their opportunist unity, however, did not last long due to either side’s boundless greed and political ambition.

Marcos’ avarice for wealth and power have aggravated the socioeconomic conditions of the broad masses of the people who suffer from skyrocketing prices of food and basic commodities, low wages, lack of income and economic dispossession. His penchant for fascist rule and state terrorism has subjected people to widespread violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, which have roused people to resist, defend themselves and fight for their aspirations for genuine freedom and democracy.