by Siryako Akda
The Philippine Elections recently concluded here in "Flipland," and the new President-Elect is a guy named Rodrigo “The Punisher” Duterte, a political outsider who skyrocketed to fame partly due to widespread public dissatisfaction with establishment politics (which in the Philippines’ context is synonymous with oligarchical politics) and partly due to his assertive, no-nonsense, alpha-as-fuck charisma.
Duterte originally never wanted to run for president. He only entered the election after he was forced to do so by his many supporters. Thus, his rise to national fame is the result of push factors (he was pushed into office) instead of the usual pull factors (i.e. trying to attract as much political capital from as many different directions as possible). Like Trump, Duterte represents something relatively new to Philippine politics, because he invalidated the assumptions of the ruling political class and exposed the weakness of the political establishment.
