The Palace has announced that President Rodrigo Duterte will accept an invitation from US President Joe Biden to attend an online summit of leaders from more than 100 countries to discuss the decline of global democracy and to announce commitments for renewing democracy domestically and internationally.
The summit, which runs from Dec. 9 to 10, is hosted by the United States, whose own democratic institutions—including free elections—are being assaulted by right-wing elements associated with Biden’s disgraced predecessor.
In the US, 19 states have passed laws that will make it more difficult for Americans to vote, especially minority groups or the poor. Other efforts abound to subvert election results through partisan election administration.
The Philippines itself is no model of democracy, having passed a repressive anti-terrorism act that can be broadly interpreted and misused to stifle dissent. The government also launched a bloody war on drugs in 2016 that killed thousands of drug suspects—and which is now the subject of an investigation by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. The Philippines also remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists, and the President’s hostile rhetoric toward members of the media exacerbates an already perilous situation.
Elsewhere in the world, democracy as we know it is also under siege by forces drawn to populist and authoritarian figures.
Freedom House, an organization that tracks democracy, political rights, and civil liberties around the world, speaks of a shifting international balance in its 2021 Freedom in the World report.
“Over the past year, oppressive and often violent authoritarian forces tipped the international order in their favor time and again, exploiting both the advantages of nondemocratic systems and the weaknesses in ailing democracies. In a variety of environments, flickers of hope were extinguished, contributing to a new global status quo in which acts of repression went unpunished and democracy’s advocates were increasingly isolated,” Freedom House said.
The organization, which ranks countries a “free,” “partly free,” and “not free” depending on their score on political rights and civil liberties, notes a distressing decline in the number of free countries in the world, from 89 in 2005, to 82 in 2020. In the same period, the number of not-free states rose from 45 to 54.
The Philippines is only one of four states to be invited to the summit—the other three being Indonesia, Malaysia and Timor-Leste—but the government shouldn’t be congratulating itself prematurely. Its global freedom score in the 2021 edition of the Freedom in the World report was 56 out of 100, landing it squarely in the group of countries that are deemed partly free, scoring poorly in political rights (25 out of 40) and civil liberties (31 out of 60). This, in fact, was a decline from the country’s score of 59 in 2020.
“President Duterte welcomes the opportunity to share the Philippine democratic experience and commitment to democratic values and nation-building at the Summit for Democracy,” the Office of the President said in a statement.
That sharing, we hope, will focus on how to better resist the authoritarian tendencies that Mr. Duterte has exhibited instead of finding inventive ways to subvert our already tenuous democracy.