I SHARE President Duterte’s dissent to the branding, expressed on the same day the story broke out. That he was among four world leaders that Time magazine in its May 14 international edition refers to in the cover story “The Rise of the Strongman.”
Our president is not a strongman. Not in the sense of “one who rules a country with absolute power, a dictator” (Webster’s) or “a political leader who controls by force, a dictator” (dictionary.com).
We’re a democracy
We’re still very much a democracy, with separation of powers and checks and balances and a Supreme Court that’s the final arbiter on the exercise of governance. Our president swore to the Constitution that orders a rule of law and a bill of rights. He’s the commander-in-chief but civilian authority is supreme.
Duterte himself said he cannot be a strongman because (1) he never jailed anyone for criticizing him, (2) he takes criticism well, not just from foreigners, (3) he “never acted like a king,” and (4) he was elected freely with six million votes over the next candidate.
Look at 3 others
Why then did Time put Duterte in the same “basket of deplorables” as Russia President Vladimir Putin, Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan?
Putin is known for persecuting critics and activists and ordering torture and murder of his enemies. He is serving his third term as president, interrupted with stints as prime minister, largely because of rigged elections and elimination of the opposition.
Orban just won his third term last April: He has been PM since 2010 and before that, from 1998 to 2002. In 2004, he called Hungary’s authoritarianism as “illiberal democracy.” Less than a week after his election, 100,000 Hungarians marched in protest against “tight control of media and electoral stations.”
As for Turkey, in 2016 BBC News asked if that country was still a democracy, with Ergogan engaged on a spree of expelling his opponents and cheating at the polls.
How could Time put Duterte on the same league as those “leader thugs,” as one US broadcast network called the strongmen? Wrong assessment and label. At least as of the past two years of his rule.
Other labelers
This isn’t the first time the mislabeling is done. The Atlantic, in a March 4, 2018 article, “Shout-outs to Nine Dictators,” which noted that US President Trump had praised those leaders. Duterte was in the list, along with two others in the Time cover story. National Public Radio (NPR), last May 2, reported that “six strongmen,” including Duterte, were hailed as champions by Trump.
At least two other news organizations, before Time did, looked at the country and us as being governed by a strongman, though not the likes of Francois Duvalier or Papa Doc of Haiti, North Korea’s Kim Jung-un, or Xaires Mobutu. who combined acts of repression with being totally weird.
Tapping anger
Duterte may fit into the Time mold of “tough-talking populists” or of “muscular, assertive leadership.” He may be accused of having tapped people’s anger against drugs, poverty and corruption. But he won’t blend into the composite image of leaders who use violence and force to stay in power.
That is where the Time theory collapses. Duterte is described by the magazine as “a former mayor who talked more like a mob boss than a president” who promised “to wipe out the drug trade with his own brand of justice.”
Tough talk is why?
The way the president speaks could be the reason he’s being perceived by foreign media as a strongman or dictator.
Tough talk about killing not just traffickers but also addicts of illegal drugs. Threats to dismantle the republic and set a revolutionary government, shoot rebel women in the vagina, and scare media with lawsuits and restrictions on access. Jailing the woman senator who is also his chief critic. And those curses: at the Pope, the European Union, UN human rights officials. (At weekend, he apologized again for his coarse language.)
Time--and Atlantic and NPR--might see Duterte not for what he is now but for what he might become. He might disappoint them on that forecast. The nation hopes he will.