Philippines nabs 6 Duterte-linked fugitives in space of three weeks

Analysts say arrests came after Marcos' alliance with his predecessor came apart

- Mara Cepeda

The month of September was a whirlwind of activity as the authorities closed in on the Philippines' most wanted fugitives, some of whom had evaded arrest during the tail end of the previous Duterte administration.

The government nabbed six high-profile suspects in a span of nearly three weeks a feat that analysts say was laudable, but would probably not have happened if President Ferdinand Marcos Jr's alliance with his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte and Mr Duterte's daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, was still intact.

Four of those arrested have evaded the authorities for weeks, if not months, and were cornered by law enforcement agents only after it became clear that Mr Marcos and the Dutertes were no longer friends.

"I look at it as Marcos being on the offensive against the Dutertes," Dr Carmel Abao, political science department chair at Ateneo de Manila University, told The Straits Times.

"He is doing this to project an image, saying, 'We are the good guys. We are nice, but we also get things done"," she said.

First to be netted was former mayor Alice Guo, accused of being a Chinese spy and of having links to a criminal syndicate which used now-banned online casinos to run scam operations that thrived during the Duterte presidency.

She fled the country in mid-July but was arrested by the Indonesian authorities on Sept 3 and deported back to the Philippines the next day.

Just days after that, on Sept 8, Philippine police arrested infamous doomsday preacher Apollo Quiboloy in Mr Duterte's home turf of Davao City. Quiboloy, the former president's spiritual adviser, faces arrest warrants, both at home and in the US, for allegedly raping and trafficking women and girls as young as 12 years old.