Behind the riddle of Duterte’s popularity

His critics ridicule Duterte’s avid fans – but they rarely pause to consider why it is that so many among us have developed intense loyalty to a leader with extremely unconventional ways.
The idolisation is all the more surprising given that Duterte shuns the long-established mould of a Filipino leader – elegantly dressed oozing charisma, and delivering eloquent speeches meant to inspire.
Instead, we have a president who instils fear, wears rough-spun shirts and slacks, and spews unprintable words in his public addresses. He curses the Church, fires expletives at the United States (the one foreign power Filipinos love most), and sings the praises for China (the foreign power Filipinos hate most). On top of that, he is seen as encouraging extrajudicial killings that have risen to a rate of more than 30 per day since he assumed office.
Duterte’s success in winning hearts and minds is related to the dismal failure of many of our traditionally moulded leaders to deliver in two crucial areas: 
First, pulling out of poverty almost 50 per cent of Filipinos. And second, finding solutions to everyday afflictions of crime and poor public services and infrastructure that are fuelled by culturally endemic corruption.
Duterte has cashed in on decades of empty promises from leaders cast in a traditional mould that is now thoroughly discredited among ordinary Filipinos. His predecessors oversaw policies that achieved glowing reviews for headline figures such as high gross national product, but ignored the threadbare fabric of public life that most of us experience as the background of our daily lives.
The long-festering frustration gradually spawned a deep desire for a non-traditional leader who speaks and rules not from the top down, but from the ground up, listening and responding to the core concerns of ordinary Filipinos.
We should have noticed this development when Joseph Estrada was elected president. We had a foretaste of the intense loyalty an unconventional leader could inspire when Estrada supporters almost overran the presidential palace while protesting his ouster.
Frustrated back then, the longing for an unconventional leader was expressed again when a huge number of the electorate voted for film star Fernando Poe Jr. The widespread belief was that he won the vote but was cheated in the results, and the longing for a leader in his mould was once again stymied.
The bottled-up frustration finally exploded last summer and landed Duterte the presidency. The loyalty we now see is all the more intense for its fermentation after the failures of Estrada and Poe Jr. Add to their ranks those long exasperated by government indifference over the crisis in our public services.
For President Duterte to succeed, he must now make a dent in the state of impoverishment of Filipinos and fix the dysfunction that plagues our public services. These must be the focus of his energies and the subject of his rants. Not the terrible and continued killing of his poorer constituents in a misguided and bloody war on crime that risks turning the whole country criminal.