Duterte won power in May 2016 on a populist vote of the style that delivered Donald Trump to the White House and, two years earlier, Narendra Modi to India’s top job. All three men appear to be rough-and-ready, sleeves-rolled-up leaders who could get things done. Duterte, an acknowledged killer, won by skirting conventional channels and speaking straight to the common people, often in the language of the grassroots villages. He won by six million votes more than his closest rival, a huge electoral mandate that he used to justify a much condemned shoot-to-kill program with the aim of wiping out
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