88% of Filipinos back Duterte “war on drugs”: Pulse Asia

October 16, 2017

Filipinos support the Duterte administration's campaign against illegal drugs but some say extrajudicial killings are occurring in this campaign, private pollster Pulse Asia said Monday.

Support for the government's "war on drugs" garnered a rating of 88 percent among 1,200 Filipinos in this survey done September 24-30, Pulse Asia said.

"Only two percent of Filipinos are not supportive of the campaign while nine percent are unable to say if they support or do not support the same, " said Pulse Asia.

But "the majority sentiment among Filipinos (73 percent) is that extrajudicial killings are occurring in the conduct of the Duterte administration's 'war on drugs' between June and September 2017," the pollster added.

"Agreement with this view becomes slightly more pronounced (plus six percentage points) while disagreement eases markedly ( minus nine percentage points)," the pollster said.

"However, 20 percent of respondents do not believe extrajudicial killings are happening in the implementation of the anti-illegal drugs campaign," it added.

Pulse Asia said in June, 67 percent of respondents believe that extrajudicial killings were taking place in the anti-drug campaign and the figure rose to 73 percent in September. Among regions, seventy-eight percent of respondents in NCR believe extrajudicial killings are happening compared to 67 percent in June.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents say that the Catholic Church should help in rehabilitating drug addicts as part of the administration's anti-illegal drug campaign. DMS