Issue and Opposition: By 2018, the Filipinos were tired of the oppression and excesses of Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte served as the 16th Filipino president. His regime lasted from 2016 to 2022. Duterte was a nationalist who attempted to remain in power through somewhat populist measures. In reality, the extrajudicial killings of the Filipino drug sellers and users that he promoted often harmed innocent citizens and led to severe human rights issues. Before being elected as the president, Duterte served as a mayor from 1988 to 1998, 2001 to 2010, and finally from 2013 to 2016. Under his mayorship, the Davos Death Squad extrajudicially killed many Filipinos. The methods the Squad applied to torture, assault, and eventually terminate people on suspicion of drug and other crimes were severely criticized by human rights activists. In 2018, protests against Duterte’s administration peaked leading to a series of investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC). This particular dilemma action was organized by Opposition and left-wing activist groups such as Youth Act Now Against Tyranny and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan.
Dilemma Action: In Luneta, Manila, protesters stacked huge buckets painted with caricatures of Duterte and other members of his cabinet. The crowd enacted a version of a famous Filipino childhood game called “tumbang preso”. The word means “knock down the prisoner”. Following the rules of tumbang preso, the protestors threw their slippers at the empty buckets and made them come crashing down. This laughtivism was symbolic of the people’s intention of toppling Duterte’s dictatorship.
Outcome: Although this dilemma action did not lead to a regime change, it surely created a stir in social media and drew global attention to the political oppression in the Philipines.