Former president Rodrigo Duterte often spoke in hyperbole. “Shoot me”, he dared soldiers during a speech in an army base if he overstays his six-year term. To ride a jet ski and plant the Philippine flag was his response when asked about his strategy for disputed territories with China. “I will eat them alive”, he said in a speech in Vientiane, threatening Islamic State fighters that captured the city of Marawi. He just needs salt and vinegar, he added.

Over the years, observers have become familiar with Duterte's rhetorical style. The former Philippine president is a melodramatic performer, the quintessential celebrity politician befitting from the televisual age (Pertierra 2017). His vocabulary is meant to shock and amuse. His words are not meant to be taken literally.

But it is different when it comes to his war on drugs. In the first month after Duterte was elected president in May 2016, there were 581 documented cases of summary executions. This figure covers those killed in police operations and shot by unidentified gunmen (ABSCBN News 2018). The death toll increased as the Philippine National Police (PNP) officially rolled out its anti-narcotics campaign, resulting in over 7,000 deaths in its first seven months (Rappler 2016). Duterte's claim that the war on drugs would be bloody differs from his other pronouncements. This statement was not an exaggeration.

Duterte's drug war proved popular, with polling data revealing 77 per cent of Filipinos finding it “satisfactory” (SWS 2017d). Duterte himself enjoyed a “very good” net satisfaction rating of +66 a year into his term and stayed at that level throughout his presidency (SWS 2017c, 2022). The Philippines has embraced a strongman, so the story goes. By electing Duterte, Filipinos have forged a new social contract where they are willing to give up some of their liberties for the sake of the common good.

But there is danger in perpetuating a single story. Such a narrative about the drug war is not inaccurate but incomplete (Adichie 2016). Behind the coherent narrative of popular support for the president and the drug war are multilayered narratives of contestation, which challenge (1) the truths perpetuated by the state, (2) the politics that legitimize the drug war, and (3) the ethics of justifying the bloodbath. This chapter focuses on these angles of contestation. We aim to expose the different meanings associated with the drug war and prompt reflections for democratic practice.