Punisher for President in the Philippines

Three months after winning public office in 1988, Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte emptied two magazines from a .45 handgun, killing three rape and kidnapping suspects in a government sting operation. Duterte, the current frontrunner in polls to become the next president of the Philippines, made the extrajudicial killing revelation in a national radio interview on December 9. In other media interviews, the incumbent mayor and licensed lawyer has vowed to kill as many as 100,000 criminals nationwide if elected president. 

The tough-talking politician leads a field of staid establishment candidates, namely senator Grace Poe, vice president Jejomar Binay and business tycoon Manuel Roxas II, among others who barely register in opinion polls. Duterte’s message and style cuts a sharp contrast with incumbent president Benigno Aquino’s nice guy persona, signaling a shift in the national mood ahead of next May’s presidential poll. Aquino was swept to power on a justice and reform ticket in 2010, but the son of a prominent political family has largely failed to deliver meaningful change during his up-and-down tenure.

Duterte, 70, has been likened to a Philippine version of U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, the demagogue frontrunner for the Republican Party’s nomination, though a better comparison might be former crime-fighting New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Like Trump, Duterte has played on popular fears to build a contrarian profile and differentiate his candidacy from a field of mostly bland rivals. In a recent interview Duterte put the country’s powerful and ubiquitous crime syndicates on notice: “I can slash open your body and eat your heart in front of you,” he said in a recent interview. 

Colorful populists often capture the national imagination in the Philippines, usually with mixed results. Joseph Estrada, a former actor who played Robin Hood-type lead roles in local action films, won the presidency on a pro-poor ticket during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. He was ousted amid corruption allegations and later imprisoned for seven years on economic plunder charges. Despite his pedigree as a crime-busting vice president, Transparency International ranked him among the ten most corrupt leaders of all time in 2004. Estrada was nonetheless popularly elected as Manila’s mayor in 2013. 

Duterte’s lead in opinion polls appears to reflect a popular desire for proven strong leadership to tackle internal and external threats which Aquino’s administration has failed to control or resolve. Big issues include a stubbornly high violent crime rate, unresolved armed conflicts in the country’s southern regions, and China’s usurping assertiveness over contested maritime territories in the South China Sea. Duterte’s popular appeal is also rooted in his straight-talking, folksy delivery, an often obscenity-laced departure from Aquino’s more measured rhetoric. Duterte’s campaign rivals are likewise viewed as straight-laced political elites.    

A seven-term mayor, Duterte is widely credited with converting Davao from a one of the country’s most violent cities into one of the safest. In populist fashion, Duterte has sometimes patrolled the city’s streets on a motorcycle cruiser accompanied by assault rifle-toting officials. On a softer note, he has offered to pay drug addicts who express their intent to come clean a monthly stipend administered through a drug rehabilitation and treatment center he established. Duterte has won or been nominated for various awards for outstanding leadership, including a prize from the American Cancer Society in recognition of his anti-smoking policies.  

Duterte’s policies and practices have simultaneously come at a high human cost. Earlier this year, Duterte acknowledged links to Davao’s notorious death squad, a vigilante outfit that U.S.-based Human Rights Watch says is responsible for the extrajudicial killing or disappearance of over 1,000 alleged drug dealers, petty criminals and street children since the late 1990s. A Commission on Human Rights investigation in 2012 found probable cause to seek murder charges against Duterte. The Office of the Ombudsman, however, inexplicably limited its investigation to 21 police who were found guilty of “simple neglect of duty.”

Duterte said earlier he would not seek executive office due to accusations surrounding the summary executions – though it now appears his deflections were more strategic than contrite. While his roughshod style has struck a popular chord with Filipinos frustrated by the country’s corrupt and labyrinthine justice system and its inability to combat crime, critics say his condoning and incitement of extra-legal murders has perpetuated the same culture of impunity he claims to have uprooted through no-mercy tactics in his hometown of Davao.

It’s a rule-of-law contradiction Duterte has masterfully spun to his political advantage in Davao, and a populist ploy that could democratically deliver him the presidency if cooler heads fail to prevail at the ballot box in May 2016.