After Duterte, the Philippines May Get More Duterte
He can’t stay in the top job when his term ends next year. But President Rodrigo Duterte can and will stage-manage what happens next.
Father-daughter team in the Philippines.
AFP/Getty
The way things are taking shape in the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte could soon be out — and back.
Barred by the constitution from standing again for the presidency, Duterte is preparing for life after next year’s elections from a position of unprecedented strength. He will almost certainly test norms well-established even in a country where personality and name have long mattered above all else. The anti-Duterte camp will cringe at the prospect of having a coarse, pugnacious populist around for years to come. Yet it's the nation’s democracy and its coronavirus-battered economy that would suffer most.