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“All the world is a stage,” wrote Shakespeare. “And a man in his time plays many roles.”
Amid rapacious empires and irresponsible oligarchs throughout the centuries, the Philippines has never had a leader like Rodrigo Duterte.
Here is a man who plays a thousand roles at the head of power, a consummate actor crowned by a people besieged in its darkest hours.
And if we were to believe, at first glance, the latest polls, President Duterte is also the most popular leader in the world.
What is its magic?
Mr. Duterte is a man of many firsts, a singular figure in our nation’s history.
Not only is he our first president of the long and unjustly marginalized island of Mindanao, a land rife with untold talents and limitless aspirations, he is also the first mayor to have been catapulted directly into the presidential palace.
In a long list of scented and elegant leaders, he stands proudly as the scruffy and moody “man of the people.”
I vividly remember how, during an awards ceremony in Malacanang, the president, then still in his first year in office, boasted that he was “haunted by former presidents” as he always “misbehaves.”
In a country where the elite love to brandish their Hispanic ancestors and American accents, Duterte has proudly claimed that he hails from Muslim (Maranao) and even Chinese descent.
Where Duterte stands out most from his peers and predecessors is his venomous disdain for the West, particularly the United States, and consequently his blatant adulation of the authoritarian leaders of Russia and China.
His foreign policy has been a surreal mix of contradictions and cheek.
In a truly populist way, it has threatened to bankrupt the country’s most powerful businessmen, the mestizo billionaires who dominate the economy and who have long been viewed as untouchable.
Most importantly, while he is the oldest man to ever occupy Malacanang, Duterte, 75, is the most energetic and media-savvy leader in the country’s history.
And here lies his last secret of power, the source of his unfathomable charisma.
By any objective standard, Mr. Duterte’s governance record is mixed at best and, in certain areas, simply mediocre.
Just think about your handling of the Covid-19 crisis.
According to the international medical journal The Lancet, the Philippines’ crisis management ranked in the bottom third of the nations surveyed, a dismal 66th out of 91 countries.
Affected by the worst outbreak in the region, the Philippines is also expected to suffer the second worst economic contraction this year.
No serious thinker would look at key national indicators in recent years and think that competition is the name of the game.
But Duterte remains popular because he knows how to “cast” leadership in our postmodern simulation where “impression management” trumps actual performance.
Scholars often use the term “performative governance” for this type of leadership.
The great scholar of populism Ernesto Laclau also rightly used the term “empty signifier.”
In our attention deficit “social media age”, do people really care about detailed, factual analyzes?
In the midst of this crisis, we have seen an emotionally transparent leader, surrounded by generals and senior members of the cabinet, delivering regular perorations on the state of the nation.
Meanwhile, legions of online propagandists carefully nip any criticism in the bud and tirelessly reinforce a curated image of a decisive and trusted leader.
Then there’s the pervasive climate of fear in working-class communities, top respondents, as well as top witnesses to Duterte’s scorched earth drug war.
Look at the “somewhat approved” numbers in the polls.
Interestingly, the latest Pulse Asia polls coincided with Bayanihan 2’s financial assistance to millions of anxious Filipino families, desperately longing for a “strong leader” amid a generational crisis.
In fact, it is precisely this atavistic need for a tough leader, a “father figure,” that explains why Duterte’s populist peers are experiencing historic approval ratings.
At the height of the crisis, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi saw his approval ratings rise to 90%, while Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoyed a 14-point increase.
Even Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro, considered one of the most incompetent leaders in recent months, is garnering his best approval ratings yet.
But above all of them, at 91%, is Duterte: the master of performative governance, his populism a Shakespearean stage.
• The writer is a columnist for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The newspaper is a member of The Straits Times’ media partner, Asia News Network, a group of 24 media titles.
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