Abante on campaigning for Duterte: We never thought 30,000 would die

Former President Rodrigo Duterte and Manila 6th District Rep. Benny Abante Jr. during the House quad panel hearing on the drug war on Nov. 13, 2024 (Photo screen grab via House’s Facebook Live)

MANILA, Philippines — Manila 6th District Rep. Benny Abante Jr. on Wednesday revealed that he is a Baptist pastor and he campaigned for former President Rodrigo Duterte in the 2016 elections.

In his opening remarks during the House of Representatives quad committee’s 11th hearing, Abante disclosed that he even met with Duterte and prayed for him “to arrive at the right decision” about running for president.

READ: Ex-president Duterte shows up at House quad comm drug war hearing

“I am Bishop Benny Abante, the president of the Bible Believers League for Morality and Democracy, which has 6,000 churches worldwide,” he said in Filipino. “I do not know you (Duterte), but I believed in your cause. I believed in your plan and because of this, I worked hard to campaign for you. Many of the pastors of the Baptist community voted for you.”

“You started a war on drugs. We pastors loved you, and you said you could finish it in six months; it took you six years until now we have a war on drugs,” he added. “We never thought that more than 30,000 would die; thousands of members of the Baptist community voted for you.”

Based on some reports, the drug war left at least 6,000 people dead. However, data from human rights watchdog Karapatan showed that there were over 30,000 cases of extrajudicial killings during the drug war.

During the Senate hearing on the drug war last October 28, Duterte confessed that he organized a seven-man hit squad when he was Davao City mayor, but he did not tap police officers as they might be in a quandary if they got suspended for the operations they conducted.

Duterte also revealed that all former national police chiefs he appointed — now-Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, retired police Lt. Gen. Vicente Danao, retired Gen. Archie Gamboa, and retired Gen. Debold Sinas — led death squads.

During one of the hearings of the House quad panel retired police colonel Royina Garma disclosed that Duterte and other high-ranking officials during his administration sanctioned covert operations, replicating the Davao City model of extrajudicial killings on a national scale.