Duterte Harry: why is he the Philippines’ most popular ever leader?
If you thought Donald Trump was rude to journalists, hang on to your hats. Miffed by a journalist’s temerity in asking about his health, president Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines exploded: ‘How is your wife’s vagina? Is it smelly? Or not smelly? Give me a report.’ Duterte, a 75-year-old provincial politician who revels in the sobriquet ‘Duterte Harry’ after Clint Eastwood’s cop, arrived in national politics in June 2016 with all the media hullabaloo of other internationally reviled populist leaders such as Viktor Orbán and Recep Erdogan. The foul-mouthed Duterte, clearly a coprolaliac, is just as brutal with his political opponents. After obtaining a tape of his leading senatorial antagonist,
