‘Duterte Harry’ or not, democracy isn’t in peril

Is the rise of populist politician Rodgrigo in the Philippines just a sign of democracy in action, asks Sholto Byrnes.

A Filipino soldier walks past campaign posters during national election day in San Juan city, east of Manila in the Philippines. Eugenio Loreto / EPA

A candidate who makes outrageous remarks, including on religion; one who boasts of his prowess in the bedroom and appears to take a flexible approach to matrimony; a would-be president who says that only his straight-talking approach can solve the country’s long-standing and seemingly intractable problems.

I refer not to Donald Trump – although the description would fit the Republican nominee just as well. Instead, I am thinking of Rodrigo Duterte, the mayor of Davao City in the Philippines – and now, the country’s newly elected president.

When he started his campaign, it seemed unbelievable that a man known variously as “Duterte Harry” (after the cop played by Clint Eastwood) and “the Punisher” for his uncompromising approach to crime-fighting could beat the seasoned and senior politicians he was up against. Wasn’t he given to making remarks that were surely beyond the pale?

“Forget the laws on human rights,” he said recently. “If I make it to the presidential palace, I will do just what I did as mayor. You drug pushers, hold-up men and do-nothings, you better go out. Because … I’d kill you.”

He insulted the pope – not wise, one would have thought in so devoutly a Catholic country – and made a sickeningly tasteless joke about an Australian missionary who had been raped and murdered in Davao’s prison in 1989. But his antics only seemed to stoke his popularity and by the day after the vote he was an unassailable six million votes ahead of his closest rival, former cabinet minister Mar Roxas, who conceded by lunchtime.

Mr Duterte’s remarkable ascent grabbed the headlines from the candidate on whom otherwise all attention would have focused: Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who may win the country’s separately elected vice presidency.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the People’s Power Revolution, in which Filipinos finally rose up against the excesses of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. The president and his notoriously shoe-loving wife Imelda had to flee the Malacanang Palace in Manila for exile in Hawaii, bringing to a close the years of his dictatorship, during which he looted up to $10 billion (Dh36bn) from his country, leading Transparency International in a 2004 survey to name him the second most corrupt leader of all time.

Surely Filipinos would have no desire to install the Marcos’s son a heartbeat away from the presidency, setting him up perfectly for a future run for the job to which his father was originally democratically elected – before declaring martial law, curtailing democracy and eventually bankrupting the country?

But despite the best efforts of the outgoing president Benigno Aquino – whose mother Cory defeated Ferdinand Sr in the 1986 election he tried to rig, and whose father was an opposition leader killed by Marcos’s forces three years earlier – there has been no stopping the younger Marcos.

Universally known as “Bongbong”, he has been unrepentant about his father’s years in office, commenting: “Will I say sorry for the agricultural policy that brought us to self-sufficiency in rice? Will I say sorry for the highest literacy rate in Asia?”

If this duo is elected to the highest positions in the land, one may wonder how great Filipinos’ attachment is to democracy and the rule of law. But as the Trump phenomenon demonstrates, this is a time not just for political outsiders to triumph, but also for those associated with the smack of firm and decisive government – even if that suggests a casual approach to constitutions and a dismissive attitude to the supposed sacrality of democracy.

Last year, Nigerians elected Muhammadu Buhari as president, either overlooking or being cheered on by the fact that when he previously occupied that office, it had been by means of a military coup. Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the former Peruvian leader Alberto Fujimori, has managed to overcome the fact that her father left office by fleeing to Japan to escape corruption charges and is currently in prison on human rights violations. Ms Fujimori won the first round in Peru’s presidential elections this year by a large margin. She could take office on her second attempt (in 2011 she lost, but only narrowly).

Just as the Fujimori name is still associated with his ending of a long-running terrorist insurgency and bringing stability to an economy devastated by hyperinflation, so General Prabowo Subianto was not hurt by being the ex son-in-law of Indonesia’s former dictator, Suharto, when he stood for the presidency in 2014. He too lost, but also narrowly.

These instances demonstrate that the yearning for strong leaders can lead voters to overlook histories of dubious statements, and weigh success and stability more heavily in the balance than the protection of civil rights. But that is their choice.

There are many who freight the word “democracy” with far too much baggage. If Gen Prabowo had been elected, if Ms Fujimori or Mr Trump are, with Mr Duterte’s victory, and most certainly if he is joined by Mr Marcos Jr, we will hear dire warnings of democracy being “in danger”. It is nothing of the sort. The liberal pro-market dominance of so many democracies may indeed be in danger; but that is another thing entirely.

Liberal democracy is seen to have failed populations around the world who see greater inequality of income, believe themselves to be disenfranchised and marginalised by systems that are gamed against the “ordinary man”, and note that political and societal elites never seem to lose when economies tank and cuts must be made.

If they seek change, and decide to vote for individuals such as Mr Duterte who send shivers down the spines of sensitive liberal democrats, that is their right. That is democracy in action. Those who warn darkly of it being in danger might consider this: perhaps they are part of the problem that has engendered such reactions. For in a true democracy the voter, just like the customer, is always right.

Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia