From the very beginning of his ascendancy to the highest office, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has taken great lengths to peddle to the Filipino people that his administration will improve their lot in life even if it means doing it the hard way. That has turned out to mean a bloody drug war that has claimed thousands of lives, an authoritarian style of leadership and decision-making, and an implacable aversion towards accepting doubt, criticism, or prying eyes into his family’s activities.
In the present-day political and social milieu, it has hardly been surprising that the Filipino people have embraced Duterte’s highly controversial stratagems and actions, or what political scientist Richard Javad Heydarian refers to in his expository and astute 2017 book, “The Rise of Duterte: A Populist Revolt Against Elite Democracy,” as Duterte’s “tried-and-tested scorched-earth policies.”
Heydarian’s study of the Philippines’ 16th president is comprised of direct examinations and assessments that find traction in the face of the anti-democratic trends we are seeing around the world today. Heydarian writes that “Duterte shares significant similarities with other successful strongmen such as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Vladimir Putin, who upended the politics of their respective countries by promising an alternative form of governance and political worldview under a firm and decisive style of leadership.”
One of the main pillars of Duterte’s power and sources of legitimacy is represented by the swing away from liberal democracy towards right-wing populism that is being witnessed in several corners of the international community. As a result of the widespread disillusionment with the promise of globalization and the technological revolution, populism sometimes in intemperate form, has been making its rounds around the planet and blighting liberal democracies in the process.
Heydarian is persuasive as he emphasizes the role populism has played in catapulting Rodrigo Duterte to power. He paints a picture of Philippine populism in the 21st century that has been a response to the failure, or unwillingness, of the plethora of post-1986 EDSA leaders and exponents to realize the reformist promise of that event.
As Heydarian concludes about the episode of Philippine history commonly known as the “People Power” phenomenon, “The upsurge of right-wing populism in the Philippines is the natural byproduct of the failure of the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution to fulfill its greatest emancipatory potentials.”
In other words, Rodrigo Duterte did not arise out of a vacuum. As a presidential candidate and now president, he assumed the role of both spokesman and standard-bearer for the Filipino masses, expressing their primal cry for the justice, prosperity, equality, and rule of law that was supposed to be granted them after EDSA I.
Denied those ideals, the Filipino masses turned to what other distressed societies throughout history became vulnerable to according to Heydarian: “mobilization by demagogues and strongman leaders, who offer not only simplistic solutions, but also overnight salvation and a utopia of collective empowerment (often in the name of the country) in exchange for unbending obedience to their absolute authority.”
Duterte’s rule, in courting popularity and loyalty, has strongly knit together a ruling narrative of power that has impressed upon Heydarian that the Philippines is “on the verge of crashing into a frenzy of anarchy, swallowed by a mindless orgy of violence, hatred, and intolerance. There were nights when one was not sure whether you would still wake up to a democratic society.”
Heydarian cautionarily writes that Duterte has brought the Philippines to what he calls a complicated “interregnum,” a liminal phase in which it finds itself “struggling to anchor itself somewhere between strong man populism, autocratic nostalgia, and democratic resistance—with no clear resolution on the horizon. The Philippines has entered a twilight zone.”
With the recent 2019 midterm elections in the Philippines, Heydarian’s book takes on even greater meaning. The midterms resulted in a comfortable victory for Rodrigo Duterte’s political allies. Moreover, they have empowered him with even more of a popular mandate to augment and more likely than not, expand his powers.
As the Philippine democracy unrelentingly approaches a precipice, Filipinos need to get in touch with the lessons of their country’s recent history for they are in danger of repeating the mistakes of the past. Richard Heydarian in “The Rise of Duterte” proves to be willing and able in getting this point across.
ALLEN GABORRO
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