Candidates to Lead Philippines Seek to Tap Into Aquino Fatigue

By FLOYD WHALEY | APRIL 19, 2016

MANILA — Rodrigo Duterte had the crowd with him. The Philippine presidential candidate was telling a recent rally about a prison riot in 1989 in the southern city where he is mayor, and was mayor at the time.

Speaking with the cadences of a stand-up comic, he recalled how a 36-year-old Australian missionary was taken hostage, raped and murdered, and how he reacted when he saw her body.

“She looks like a beautiful American actress,” he said. “What a waste. They lined up and raped her. I was angry because she was raped. That’s one thing. But she was so beautiful. The mayor should have been first.”

The crowd erupted with laughter.

It was the candidate in characteristic mode: speaking bluntly and breaking the rules of politics and polite society. But many others are not laughing.

Mr. Duterte, who has advocated vigilante killings of suspected criminals, boasted about his sexual conquests and insulted Pope Francis, is the front-runner in opinion polls among dozens of candidates to succeed President Benigno S. Aquino III.

Mr. Duterte, who apologized on Tuesday for his comment about rape, is emphasizing his law-and-order views and positioning himself as a political outsider who is going to shake up the establishment.

Mr. Aquino has overseen nearly six years of strong economic growth and a good-governance agenda that ratings agencies and international organizations say has made the Philippines less corrupt than in decades.

But the leading candidates before the voting on May 9 have put the fate of Mr. Aquino’s legacy in question. Analysts note that many voters have grown tired of what they perceive as an indecisive and ineffective administration on matters that directly affect people’s lives.

The climate of voter dissatisfaction has buoyed candidates like Mr. Duterte and Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., the leading candidate for vice president. (In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president, and often the two are political opponents.)

Mr. Marcos’s father, the country’s former dictator, was accused of plundering billions from its coffers. The son speaks nostalgically on the campaign trail of his father’s era, when he says the Philippines was more successful and orderly. Both he and Mr. Duterte promise strong, decisive leadership that some say sounds like a return to dictatorship, according to Richard Heydarian, a political-science professor at De La Salle University in Manila.

“What is at stake here,” Mr. Heydarian said, “isn’t Aquino’s legacy only, but the whole democratic system that supplanted the Marcos dictatorship.”

Critics of Mr. Aquino note that ordinary people do not feel the benefit of a ratings upgrade or a steady growth in gross domestic product. Despite six years of relative prosperity, thousands of Filipinos still leave the country every month to work in often dangerous and degrading jobs in the Middle East because they cannot find jobs at home. Workers who do have jobs at home often find themselves commuting four or five hours a day because of the crippling traffic in Manila and other large cities.

Mr. Aquino has received accolades from the World Bank and others for increasing tax collections, but critics of his administration say the greater revenue has not translated into improved infrastructure.

The country’s main commuter train in Manila often breaks down, forcing people to exit on dangerous, elevated tracks, and it has been known to catch fire while moving or have its doors fly open. The country’s main airport, where sections of the roof have fallen on passengers and which has been rated one of the world’s worst, recently endured a nearly six-hour power outage that left travelers sweltering in the dark because officials had failed to maintain backup generators.

Mr. Duterte, who apologized on Tuesday for his comment about rape, is leading in opinion polls among dozens of candidates. He is emphasizing his law-and-order views and positioning himself as a political outsider who is going to shake up the establishment.

The contest is essentially one of personalities. In the Philippines, major political parties are generally not aligned with traditional liberal or conservative politics but rather are loose coalitions of popular politicians and geographic areas.

Running a close second to Mr. Duterte is Grace Poe, a senator, and the daughter of one of the country’s most popular movie stars, who had to renounce her United States citizenship in order to seek office. She has cast herself as a populist but also as a young, fresh face in politics not tainted by scandal.

Jejomar Binay, the current vice president, is another contender. For more than a decade he was mayor of Makati, where many of the country’s major corporations are based, and he is credited with bringing prosperity to the city. But he has also been the subject of multiple corruption allegations that he says were fabricated by the Aquino government, which his pro-business campaign habitually denigrates.

Mr. Aquino’s handpicked successor, the former interior secretary Mar Roxas, is running on a platform of replicating the current administration’s policies, and he is trailing in the polls. Mr. Roxas is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an investment banker in New York before returning to the Philippines in 1993. He has served as trade secretary, senator and congressman. He is the grandson of the first president of the independent Philippines, Manuel Roxas, but he is seen by some voters as disconnected from the country’s poor.

Among supporters of Mr. Aquino’s comparatively soft-spoken approach to governance, Mr. Duterte’s divisive statements have created the most alarm. But one analyst noted that his comments are unreliable as indicators of what his policies as president would be.

“What you hear during the campaign shouldn’t be take that seriously,” said Ramon C. Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform, based in Manila. “These comments are designed to get votes.”

Mr. Casiple said that although Mr. Duterte’s comments could be outrageous, many of the policies he put in place in Davao City, where he is mayor, had made it easier to do business there and had improved people’s lives. The candidate has also engaged expert advisers and could be expected to do the same as president, Mr. Casiple said.

All four of the leading candidates recognize the importance of the economic resurgence of the Philippines, and none of them have put forward proposals to dismantle the policies of the Aquino administration that relate to governance and economy policy, he said. The candidates are also promising to do a better job of spreading economic benefits to the poor, he said.

“I am confident, no matter who is elected, the basic economic policies will not be touched, particularly those that have led to steady economic growth,” he said. “When it comes to those policies, I don’t think anyone wants to rock the boat.”

Yet there remains widespread outrage over Mr. Duterte’s rape remark. Although it is not clear if his supporters will abandon him on Election Day, many say the comment proved he was unfit for office.

“Mayor Duterte, it is not O.K. to disrespect women,” said Aurora Javate de Dios, executive director of the Women and Gender Institute at Miriam College in Quezon City. “Even if they disagree with you, it is not O.K. to violate a woman’s dignity, whatever their situation in life is. It is not O.K. to make jokes about rape victims. You victimize them over and over with every joke you make about their tragedy.”

Source: www.nytimes.com